1781.] moment. THE ADDRESS OF CHEYTE SING. his captains, to re-occupy Ramnuggur. The courage and decision of Hastings never deserted him for a He disdained sending any replies to the apologies. He ordered Major Popham's detachment to march against Ramnuggur, and halt within a mile of it, for further orders. It consisted of four companies of sepoys (including Birrel's), one of artillery, and one of the French Rangers, under Captain Mayaffre. Colonel Blair's battalion of sepoys from Chunar was ordered to the same place, and when it came up the attack was to be made. Meantime, Hastings took measures to obtain succour from down country. "In order," says Macfarlane, "that his fleet messengers might get through the blockading rabble without losing their despatches, he wrote in the smallest hand, on small slips of paper, which were rolled up and put into quills. When Indians travel they are accustomed to lay aside their enormous gold earrings, and put quills into the orifices of the ears to prevent their closing up; thus no notice would be taken of the pieces of quills containing the Governor-General's earnest calls for immediate succour: for, so little had this storm been apprehended, that Mrs. Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice, and Lady Impey, were travelling up the country to join the Governor-General at Benares. Upon receiving his quill, Impey made every exertion to send sepoys and friends to the rescue." Ere they came, a rashness was committed at the palace of Ramnuggur. It is, says the "Narrative," "a vast pile of irregular massy buildings, constructed of stone, on the river-side. To its original strength, Cheyte Sing had added some bastions of stone and earth. The town round it was large, which rendered the approach to it suspicious; and the intricacy of the passages and apartments of the palace was such, that a cautious officer would hesitate, under almost any encouragement, to enter it." Though no orders had been issued to attack the place, Captain Mayaffre, anxious to distinguish himself, marched too close to it by some narrow and tortuous lanes, where, on the 20th of August, his party were attacked, defeated, and nearly annihilated. Captain Doxat and twenty-three Rangers were killed, and ten wounded. The battalion of the 6th Sepoys now came on, but was driven back with the loss of ninety-eight killed and wounded. Captain Blair covered the retreat with great bravery, and orders were sent to LieutenantColonel Blair to push on the rest of the regiment from Chunar. The result of this repulse was, that Hastings had to quit Benares with all his followers, as the fanatical multitude had gathered fresh courage; 251 and before daybreak, he had reached the strong fortress of Chunar, which occupies the summit and sides of a rock, thirteen miles from the holy city. It is surrounded by precipices on all sides, and the face, towards the Ganges, abuts boldly into the On the very apex of the rock is a ruined Hindoo temple, and a slab overshadowed by a pepul-tree, on which the natives believe "the Almighty is seated personally, though invisibly, for nine hours every day, removing during the other three to Benares." * stream. The flight of Hastings gave great courage to the revolters; and we are told that hideous fakirs, smeared with ashes and ghee, spread the tidings everywhere. In the temples the bearded Brahmins harangued, the holy monkeys swung by their tails in the gilded pagodas, with grimaces prophetic of the downfall of the Unbeliever. The whole country rose in arms, and from Oude and Behar people came flocking, with vows to protect the rajah and his holy city. They spoke with confidence of driving the Feringhees out of that part of Hindostan at least, and soon an immense native force assembled between the rock of Chunar and Benares. In an address he issued to neighbouring rajahs, he wrote, and with much show of truth, as comparing the state of the Company's territories with his own : "My fields are cultivated, my villages full of inhabitants, my country is a garden, and my subjects are happy. My capital is the resort of the principal merchants of India, from the security I have given to property. The treasures from the Mahrattas, the Jauts, the Sikhs, and the most distant parts of India, are deposited here. The widows and orphans convey here their property, and reside without fear of rapacity or avarice. The traveller from one end of my country to the other, lays down his burden and sleeps in security; but look at the provinces of the Company. There famine and misery stalk hand in hand through uncultivated fields and deserted villages. There you meet with nothing but aged men, who are unable to transport themselves away, or robbers watching to waylay the helpless. . . Not contented with my treasures, they have thirsted after my honour also. They have demanded a sum of me which it is out of my power to pay. They want the plunder of my country; they demand my fort, the deposit of my honour and my family, whom they would turn helpless into the world. Arm yourselves, my friends; let us join to repel these rapacious strangers. It is the cause of all. When your honour * Heber. companies of the nabob's guards under Lieutenant the breaking out of the war, that I hope it will, in Polhill. Cheyte, after the river was crossed, fled at the first sound of our cannon, and in a few hours nothing could be seen of the great hordes he had mustered, and all his forts were taken with singular rapidity. He fled to Bidjeerghur, the chief fortress of the princes of. Benares, fifty miles distant from that city, and there he deposited the most of his treasures, while Major Popham came on in hot pursuit. Poor Sing (i.e., "lion "--but lion in name only) had not the courage to await his approach, but fled in the night to find an exile, from which he never returned, among the fastnesses of Bundel cund. In his haste he left behind him his wife, his mother, and all the women of his seraglio, who became the prisoners of Popham when, on the 10th November, he captured the castle, which was surrendered when about to be mined and stormed. Hastings stated that the rajah carried off with him an immense sum in money, besides jewels; but £250,000 sterling in rupees were found in the old castle, and were appropriated by the troops, who, as usual, had been months in arrears of pay. The following is the official despatch announcing to General Stibbert, Commander-in-chief in Bengal, the fall of the castle of Bidjeerghur : "Nov. 11th, 1781. "Sir, I have the honour to inform you of the surrender of this place, which was taken possession of last night by the European and native grenadiers, and light infantry, under Major Crawford. "The Rhanny is allowed to reside in this province, or to follow her son, as she may choose; and if the last, will be escorted to our frontiers by a proper safeguard. She is allowed to have fifteen per cent. on the effects in the fort. "The behaviour of the officers and troops has been such, upon the whole of the service, since some measure, be rewarded by the prizes from the effects within the fort. Had not the besieged surrendered, a mine would have been sprung immediately on their refusal, which would probably have given a practicable breach for the storm. I have the honour, &c., "W. POPHAM.” In the distribution of prize-money, Popham's share was £36,750 0 O Each major 5,619 0 The soldiers shared in proportion, and of this distribution Hastings wrote thus to Major Scott : the distribution of the plunder was begun before I "Judge of my astonishment when I tell you that knew the place was in possession, and finished before I knew that it was begun." Refunding was found impossible; the unpaid troops rightly kept what they had got. When 300 women, including the princesses, came out of the fort, they were all subjected to a rather degrading process of search for money authority; by the soldiers, says another—as it was or jewels-by four female searchers, says one feared that the old ranee might defraud them of their "loot" if this were not done. After the capitulation, she affirmed that the money found was not Cheyte's, but her own; that made no difference to the soldiers, and perhaps less to Hastings, after recent events; and he, considering some species of puppet rajah necessary in Benares, set up in Cheyte's place his nephew, a lad of eighteen, raising at the same time a tribute of forty lacs of rupees, and taking into his own hands the entire jurisdiction of the city and country. Even the mint, the last vestige of sovereignty, was taken from the boy rajah, and placed under the control of our resident at Benares. CHAPTER L. THE BEGUMS OF OUDE-THE GIFT TO HASTINGS. By this for the Company eventually-lucky revolution in Benares, though an addition of £200,000 per annum was made to the exchequer, yet ready money there was none; and to Hastings, and all concerned, it was but too evident that, unless it were procured somehow or somewhere, the French, ever ready to take advantage of our necessities, would triumph in the Carnatic, and India might be lost after all. The Governor-General therefore thought that 1781.] THE BEGUMS OF OUDE. 255 the screw could not be better applied than on would at once have set out for Lucknow, the Asoph-ud-Dowlah, the Nabob of Oude and Lord capital of Oude; but this was unnecessary, as Asophof Rohilcund, deemed then one of the most con-ud-Dowlah, in his eagerness or anxiety to come temptible, debauched, and extravagant of Indian to an understanding with the Company, presented princes. He had been kept on his throne solely himself at Chunar, where, shortly after his arrival, by the presence of a brigade of British troops quartered in his dominions; but as he squandered his treasure on favourites and pleasure, he soon complained of his inability to pay for this brigade, "the price of whose services had certainly been raised upon him year by year with little delicacy or justice." Two years before this crisis, he alleged that he was without money to pay his cavalry, and that without the latter he could not collect his revenue; that he was without money for the payment of the debts of his father, or for the harem and all the children that his father had left behind him; still less had he money to pay for his own. The Governor-General admitted his alleged poverty; but urged that it was the result of his own excesses, adding that he could not defend himself for a day against the Rohillas and Mahrattas, and far less his own malcontents, were the brigade withdrawn; and he gave the luckless nabob to understand plainly that, whatever might have been the terms of the original treaty between them, the said brigade, and a considerable cavalry force, called the "Temporary Brigade," which somehow had been added thereto, should be kept in Oude so long as the Company | chose; and that so long as these horse and foot remained there, he (the nabob) must find the means of paying them. He pleaded the impossibility of doing so on one hand, while on the other it is alleged that the officers in command of these troops frequently received large sums from him in secret, by working on his nervous fears, while he indulged in every luxury peculiar to India, in a taste for the erection of costly palaces, till the cultivators of the soil and the traders, maddened by over-taxation, fled from Oude; and his arrears were so far accumulated that, at the time Hastings went to Benares, the nabob's debts to the Company, as charged in their books, amounted to a million sterling. It has been said that one of the chief objects of Warren Hastings, in making his journey up-country, was to obtain the liquidation of this heavy debt; and also, that had it never existed, a pressure of some kind would, at that time, have been put upon the nabob in some fashion: for though his exchequer might be empty of treasure, there were others in Oude who had it, and concealed it after the manner of the East. On the adjustment of affairs at Benares, Hastings a treaty, taking its name from that castled rock, was concluded between Hastings and the nabob. The latter urged that if his payments for the two brigades had fallen into arrear, some of the forces might be dispensed with; so it was arranged that all who were deemed superfluous should be withdrawn, as it was evident that the Company gained nothing by keeping troops in Oude, to be paid for by themselves. A single regiment was to remain, as the body-guard of the resident. In return for these concessions, the nabob was to rob (there is no other word for it) his mother and grandmother, and give the produce of that robbery to the East India Company; and the Governor-General knew that these ladies were the possessors of hoards of hidden treasure, "vast enough to achieve the salvation of the British empire in India." These hoards were estimated at £3,000,000 sterling, partially collected by the late Sujah Dowlah, who, as "a mark of affection to his mother, and the most beloved of his wives," bequeathed them also certain jaghires, which enabled them to live in great state and splendour. As the proceedings at Benares had resulted in the production of no ready money, and had, for the time, increased the financial difficulties of the Company, Hastings, in his desperation, agreed to the spoliation of the two Begums of Oude; thus the second article of the Treaty of Chunar provided for the resumption by the Company of the jaghires. It was said that doubts were entertained as to the validity of the testamentary bequests of Sujah Dowlah; that his will had never been produced, and that he could not alienate the jaghires from the state. It was proved, moreover, that the begums had promoted insurrectionary movements in Oude, had favoured the partizans of Cheyte Sing, after the massacre in the palace of Ramnuggur, and that their retainers had attacked small parties of the British troops. From the history of Hastings' trial, and the Memoirs of his friend Impey, it appears that these last-named facts were sworn to by British officers and other Europeans at the time, though they were denied in after years, when the names of the begums resounded in Westminster Hall. On the 19th September, 1781, the Treaty of Chunar was signed, and therein it was definitely agreed between the Governor General and the nabob, that the two old begums should be dispossessed of a portion of their great property; that |