with red turbans, in which each had a spray of the richest pearls. Round their necks were strings of the same jewels, to which was suspended a pendant, consisting of an emerald and ruby of great size, surrounded by diamonds. To each prince, Lord Cornwallis gave a gold watch. In return, he was presented with a fine Persian sword; then betel-nut and otto of roses were distributed; a fuzee and pair of pistols were given to the elder child, after which they were conducted to their own tents, under a guard of honour. Thus ended a war during which the British, with their allies, had wrested from the enemy seventy fortresses, 800 pieces of cannon, placed hors de combat, or dispersed at least 50,000 men, and obtained the cession of half of the sultan's dominions. On the morning of the 28th, the cannon of Seringapatam again thundered from the walls, as Tippoo fired a salute to announce his satisfaction at the treatment his sons received, though there was a strong suspicion that he had actually murdered many of his British prisoners, after the preliminary treaty of peace had been signed; and that others were still retained in secret dungeons. Ten sepoy prisoners, each with his right hand struck off, were sent back to our camp. On the 19th of March, the young princes, at ten in the morning, delivered the definitive treaty to Lord Cornwallis; but the vakeels of the Nizam and Mahrattas, as if to show discourtesy to the fallen, were late in their attendance. "At length, on their coming, the eldest prince receiving two of the copies of the treaty, returned to him by Lord Cornwallis, delivered a copy to each of the vakeels of the other powers, which he did with great manliness; but evidently with more constraint and dissatisfaction than he had performed the first part of the ceremony. One of the vakeels (the Mahratta) afterwards muttering something on the subject, the boy asked him at what he grumbled, and without giving him time to answer, said, 'they might well be silent, as certainly their masters had no reason to be displeased.' These may not be the precise words, but something passed to that effect, which did great honour to the boy's man- | liness and spirit. The princes having completed the ceremony and delivered this final testimony of their father's submission, took their leave and returned to their tents; and thus ended the last scene of this important war." * Nothing remained now but for the allied armies to begin each their homeward march, and leave Tippoo to brood over his disasters, and scheme *Major Dirom's Narrative. 309 out future vengeance. On the 26th of March, the British troops, having with them the hostage princes, who were not to be given up till Tippoo's obligations under the treaty were performed, commenced moving towards Bangalore, from whence they proceeded to the Pednaigdurgum Pass, where the Bengal troops were ordered to their own presidency. In the beginning of May, the army descended the Ghauts (a word applied indiscriminately in India, to a ford, a ferry, or a defile), arriving soon after at Vellore, where the commander-in-chief arranged the cantonments of the troops, and proceeded to Madras, for the purpose of destroying, by one bold stroke, the remains of French influence in the Carnatic-war having been declared against France at home. On his arrival there, he found, however, that the result he meditated had already been achieved; and that, throughout the whole of the vast peninsula of Hindostan, Britain alone, of all European nations, maintained an attitude of power. By the 11th of June, tidings had come of that war which was eventually to wrap all Europe in the flames of strife; and, already orders had been issued to take possession of Chandernagore, and all the French factories in the presidency of Bengal. These orders were obeyed with ease; but more trouble was anticipated at Madras, where Pondicherry had again been put in a state of complete defence; but before Cornwallis could reach the scene of operations, they were over. On the 11th of July, 1793, Colonel Floyd arrived before the fortress, and, to blockade it on the land side, encamped in a thick wood, where the tigers were so numerous, that the natives were afraid to venture into it; while Admiral Cornwallis environed the place by sea. Eventually the command of the troops devolved upon Colonel John Braithwaite, who had only opened fire from his first batteries for a few hours, when the insubordination and licentiousness of the garrison, already corrupted by the vilest principles of democracy and irreligion, compelled the governor, General Charmont, to hoist the white flag on the 22nd of August. Even after it was hoisted, they fired some shells and killed several of our soldiers. During the night they were guilty of every species of outrage. On the following morning, a number of them environed the house of General Charmont, and threatened to hang him before the door, when he made application to Colonel Braithwaite to save him from the Republicans. Rushing in, our soldiers bayoneted them on every hand, rescued the governor, and preserved the inhabitants from further outrage; so thus, once more was the British flag displayed on the walls of Pondicherry.* The Nabob of the Carnatic, whose dominions were held by our troops, had proved very irregular in his subsidies during the war with Mysore; and hence Cornwallis, acting precisely as Hastings would have done, appointed his own officers to collect the revenue, and paid it into the treasury of the Company, who, but for this measure, could not have carried on the war to its termination. "The course of events, and absolute necessity, had forced the pacifically disposed Lord Cornwallis into the war with Tippoo Sultan, and into a series of measures very contrary to the wishes, the policy, and the system of non-interference and nonaggrandisement, of the British Legislature and Government. But it had been well remarked, that this self-evident necessity was not followed by the conclusion, that the same causes might again produce the same effects; and that a general impression was made in England, that his lordship had placed the affairs of the Company on the true footing of security and strength, which had been so long desired that, for the future, nothing would be requisite, but mild, moderate, and conciliatory counsels in the Governor-General and the local authorities to secure the lasting tranquillity and prosperity of the British Empire in India." All the really great efforts of Cornwallis, says Sir John Malcolm, had ever been made with extraordinary success. Though some of the smaller reforms which he essayed were perhaps failures, he left behind him among the native population a good and honourable name. In the military and civil establishments he effected many radical reforms; but then he had that unity of power, and that literal control over all the presidencies alike—that absolute authority, which the less fortunate Hastings had never possessed. He devoted a few months to the settlement of certain civil affairs, in which the Nabob of the Carnatic and his creditors were concerned, after which, finding it necessary to return to Bengal, where Mr. (then Sir John) Shore had succeeded him as Governor-General, he set sail early in October, 1793, for England, quitting the shores of India, amid the regret of all ranks and classes of The reception that awaited him was fully commensurate with the great services he had performed to the Company and his country. He received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament, though the Opposition were never weary of extolling the virtues and deploring the misfortunes of the Tiger of Mysore. The king created him a marquis of Great Britain, and he was appointed MasterGeneral of the Ordnance. men. CHAPTER LXII. IR JOHN SHORE, AFTERWARDS LORD TEIGNMOUTH-SEA-FIGHT WITH FRENCH CRUISERS-MAHADAJEE SCINDIA DIES—INVASION OF THE DECCAN BY THE MAHRATTAS-BATTLE OF BEDER-REBELLIONS IN THE DECCAN, ETC. SIR JOHN SHORE, Bart. (afterwards Lord Teignmouth), the old friend of Warren Hastings, also the warm friend and future biographer of Sir William Jones, the learned and upright judge at Calcutta, was worthily chosen successor to the Marquis of Cornwallis as Governor-General of India. The appointment of the latter to that high office was the first in which a previous connection with the Company had been deemed unnecessary, and its success had gone far to confirm the idea, that all such appointments in future should be made upon the same principle: yet the king, in a letter to Mr. Henry Dundas on the 5th of "Rec. 52nd Foot." September, 1792, expressed his opinion that no He possessed abundant local knowledge of India, and was particularly skilled in the revenue of that country. He was by nature industrious, pacific, and conciliatory, and inspired by a very high sense of religion. "It was laid down to him as a rule, that the dictates of justice, no less than those of economy, prescribed to the Company a system of non-interference with the internal affairs, or mutual differences of the native states; unless when interference should be required by the paramount duty 1793.] SIR JOHN SHORE. 311 of preserving the tranquillity and integrity of the Warren Hastings; but amid the distracted state of Company's own dominions." Like his friend, Warren Hastings, Sir John Shore had sprung from an old family of Cavalier principles, and, like Daylesford, their lands had been lost in the great civil war. The name of Shore, which is of considerable antiquity in Derby, appears among the gentry of that shire in the reign of Henry VI., | and one represented Derby in Parliament so early as the time of Richard II.; but the immediate predecessor of the new Governor-General was John Shore of Snitterton, in the parish of Darley, near Matlock. "John Shore purchased of the Sacheverells, in the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth, the Manor of Snitterton, and several premises and lands in Snitterton, Wensley, and Darley,' and probably resided at Snitterton Hall, a venerable and moat-girt mansion at the foot of Oker." the presidency, Mr. Shore pursued an independent course, yet he was the firm friend of Hastings, was appointed second member of the Grand Council, and held the important post of acting chief of the Board of Revenue till his return to England in 1785. The critical state of India having, as we have elsewhere told, attracted the attention of Parliament, and produced Pitt's famous Bill for the Regulation of Affairs in that country, Mr. Shore, after suggesting, at home, many valuable reforms in the administration, was appointed member of the Supreme Council at Fort William, and, though but recently married, in his zeal for the service, he once more sailed for India in company with Lord Cornwallis; and there, amid all the bustle incident to the reforms made by the latter, and the warlike measures against Tippoo, he arranged the permanent settlement of the revenues, and "soothed the weary hours of sickness by commencing and completing a poem, entitled, 'The Wanderer;' the plan of which was suggested by the painful circumstances of his separation from his country and kindred.” † The year 1789 saw him once more in England, when he was examined at the trial of Warren Hastings; a baronetcy was offered him, but he declined it, until 1792, when he received his diploma, and was presented to the king on his appointment as Governor-General, in succession to the victorious Cornwallis. From a paragraph in Wilberforce's correspondence, it appears that, having retired with a fortune of £25,000, he was "with difficulty compelled to accept the splendid and lucrative post of Governor-General; which Government, so creditably to themselves, absolutely forced upon him. He was living in retirement, not even keeping a carriage, in Somersetshire, with a sweet wife and two children.” His son, Sir John Shore, who was knighted by Charles II., entered his pedigree and arms at the time of Dugdale's visitation, and died in 1680. His great-grandson John, son of Thomas Shore of Melton in Suffolk, was born in 1751 in London, and educated at Harrow, where, among his class-fellows were Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Nathaniel Halked, destined, like himself, for future fame; and with the latter he renewed his intercourse in after years, both at home and in India. We are told that his diligence and keen perception of the beauties of the classics soon recommended him to Dr. Sumner at Harrow, where he mastered Virgil and Homer, Cicero, Horace, and Sophocles. He also acquired with success the French and Portuguese languages; and, being early destined for the Indian Civil Service, after being placed in an academy at Hoxton, where he became versed in book-keeping and merchants' accounts, he sailed for the land of his labours at the age of seventeen, On the 10th of March, 1793, Sir John Shore and reached Madras on the 18th of May, 1769, reached Calcutta, where he was welcomed by all from whence he proceeded to Bengal, and was soon classes, and found himself surrounded by his old appointed assistant to the Council at Moorsheda- friends and former domestics. He was not inbad. To his other acquirements he now proceeded stalled in his office till the 28th of October, 1793, to add a knowledge of the Oriental languages, as Lord Cornwallis retained the reins of governand he gained that of Hindostan by colloquial in- ment till that time. Major-General Sir Robert tercourse. After having acted as Persian translator Abercromby received the appointment of comand secretary to the Provincial Board at Moorshe-mander-in-chief, for, as Sir John was not a military dabad, he was appointed fifth member of the man, the severance of the two offices became a Board at Calcutta in 1773, "and he at once ex- matter of necessity. changed the stillness and seclusion, in which his days had hitherto flowed peacefully along, for the angry contentions of the seat of unsettled and divided government." What these contentions were, we have already detailed in the history of the career of * "Life of Lord Teignmouth." Though the successes of Cornwallis in war had been great, and great, too, the moral impression they made on all the native princes, the treachery and selfishness of the latter were such, that Britain could rely on no treaty with them, or on the personal + Ibid. mond, into his army; and this at a time when the disturbances in Europe, consequent to the French Revolution, threatened seriously to affect our interests in India. About six months after Sir John Shore arrived in Calcutta, the Nabob of Bengalits nominal sovereign-Mobarek-ud-Dowlah, died, deemed a loss alike to India and to England, and to no one more than the Governor-General, who, in a letter to Lady Shore, of date the 27th April, wrote in touching terms of the death of his bosom friend. The Indian coast trade was now beginning to leaving behind him twelve sons and thirteen be seriously impeded by French cruisers, and no 1793.] ADMIRAL CORNWALLIS AT SEA. 313 effectual means were taken against them until commanded by Captains Edward Pakenham and considerable loss of life and property ensued; Samuel Osborne, when cruising off the Mauritius, THE GODDESS KALI, THE FAVOURITE DIVINITY OF THE PEOPLE OF CALCUTTA. Admiral Cornwallis taking to sea for that purpose. On the 5th of May, 1793, H.M.S. Orpheus, thirtytwo guns (Captain Newcome), in company with the Centurion (fifty), and Resistance (forty-four), fell in with La Guay Trouin, a French ship of thirty-four guns and 400 men, which was taken by the Orpheus, after a sharp conflict, in which the enemy had eighty-one killed and wounded, while |