Nor did the troops go unrewarded, for they were granted a medal, on which was represented a stockaded fort among the mountains of Nepaul, with a Persian inscription, to the effect that it was

given by "the Governor-General Bahadoor," for valour shown "during the victorious warfare among the hills of Nepaul, in the years of the Hegira, 1229 and 1230.”*

THE result of Ochterlony's victories was the cession of great territories to the Company. The magnificent provinces of Ghurwal and Kumaon, the former comprehending 9,000 square miles, the most fertile portion of which is Dehra Doon, and having within it the principal scenes of Hindoo mythology; and the latter most important as commanding some of the best passes across the Himalaya range, and containing mines of copper, and probably other metals. Kumaon comprehends the whole tract of country between the Alaknanda head-stream of the Ganges on the west, and the Kalee on the east, from the Tirai or swampy plains, to the highest pinnacles of the Himalayas, attaining there an altitude of 26,000 feet above the level of the sea.

At the same time when these provinces were added to the growing empire, several mountain rajahs-though left nominally independent-were placed under certain restrictions, which rendered all their military resources available for British purposes. The treaty with the Rajah of Sikhim was another excellent measure, as it interposed a barrier between Nepaul and the Bhotanese, thus rendering it next to impossible for these two states to go to war, as they ceased to be contiguous, and could not meet each other in battle without violating territory which belonged to the Company or its ally; and it is supposed that, but for this, the Ghoorkas would have compensated themselves for the loss of Ghurwal and Kumaon by subjugating the Bhotanese.

The war had been confined to the mountains of Nepaul; but the Ghoorkas had never abandoned the hope, while it lasted, of being joined by some powerful auxiliary. A correspondence between them and Scindia had been intercepted. The wild and lawless Pindarees were also applied to, and they sought to tempt the alliance of Runjeet Sing, by offering him, as a gift, the fort of Maloun, with

a large sum in treasure; and during the first petty reverses of our arms, owing to the incompetence of our leaders, the Ghoorkas were not without hopes of exciting a general rising of all Hindostan against Britain.

Their diplomatic ambition extended far beyond India, as they sent vakeels to the Emperor of China, and the Golden Foot at Ava, seeking to enlist them in the quarrel. They had, in a past time, been compelled to acknowledge themselves the vassals of the emperor; and on this ground, but still more on the false allegation that the British made war upon them because they had been refused a passage into the Chinese empire, did they seek assistance, either by money or arms.

The Chinese were, perhaps, better informed that we had no such intentions; but their suspicions were so far excited that they sent an army to the frontier, where it arrived to find that the fighting was over in Nepaul, and that the Ghoorkas had stated falsehoods. Had China actually taken up the Ghoorka quarrel, we might have had a longer war to record; for at this very time the Company was involved in a dispute with that vast country, or rather with the Viceroy at Canton and the Committee of Supercargoes, concerning an alleged violation of the neutral rights of the Chinese by H.M.S. Doris, and several other matters, which ultimately led to Lord Amherst's mission to China in the following year. But the Celestial army, after lying for some time on its own side of the Himalayas, marched back to Pekin.t

During our war with the Ghoorkas, the people of Cutch-an extensive district, bounded on the north by the sandy desert of Ajmere, on the west by Goojerat, on the east by the province of Scinde, and on the south by the sea-had committed

E. I. U. S. Journal, 1837.

+ H. T. Princep's "Narrative of British India."

depredations in the territories of our allies, the Peishwa and the Guicowar of Baroda. It was possessed by various independent chiefs, whose boast it was that they had never been conquered; for which, perhaps, they were more indebted to the sterility and strength of their woody country than native prowess, as the inhabitants were originally Hindoos; and those upon the sea-coast had long been addicted to piracy, and when they took a ship, generally massacred all on board.

Cutch, at this juncture, was nominally under a ruler who bore the title of Rao Raidhan; but had actually become the prey of two bold adventurers, the one named Hans Raj, a Hindoo merchant, the other, Futteh Mohammed, commander of a body of Arab mercenaries. In their contest for supremacy, they each sought the aid of the British Government, which interposed only so far as seemed requisite to protect the territories of the Guicowar from their raids and robberies.

The death of Hans Raj left his competitor in undisputed ascendency; but in 1813 the confusion in Cutch waxed greater. In that year, the Kao Raidhan and Futteh Mohammed both died, thus leaving behind them the usual curse of an Indian province-a disputed succession. The Rao had become Mohammedan, and, by a wife of that creed, left a son named Bharmalji, whose legitimacy the Jhaneja Rajpoots-of whom the deceased Rao was head-doubting, gave their allegiance to Lakpati, his nephew. The civil war which now ensued between the Hindoo and Moslem populations became of such a savage character that all order and government disappeared.

The chiefs of Cutch, being all in arms, were by no means disposed to limit their operations to the narrow space of their peninsula; and crossing, on foot, the extensive salt marsh known as the Runn of Cutch, and then the gulf in boats, they carried fire and sword into the territories of the Guicowar, burning the villages, murdering his people, and carrying off their cattle. As that prince was our ally, and under British protection, after remonstrances had failed, it became necessary to march a body of troops against Bhooj, the capital, which occupies rising ground about twenty-five miles distant from the seaport of Muddi, and where both the rivals for the throne resided. They had patched up their quarrel by a species of compromise, which left the sovereignty with Bharmalji; but the armed anarchy had become worse than ever, for he, so far from attempting to suppress the marauders, made common cause with them against every one, and even fomented disturbances in Goojerat, on the opposite

471

side of the Gulf of Cutch. He ordered the British Resident at Bhooj to withdraw; and having lured some of our people in Kattiwar into rebellion, was about to march a large body of Arabs to their assistance, when tidings came to him that the rising had been crushed. But this insolence and state of matters could no longer be tolerated.

Accordingly, Colonel East, with a body of troops, took the field in Cutch, and crossing the Runn in December, 1815, marched towards the fortress of Anjar, which was held by a son of the deceased Futteh Mohammed, who made friendly propositions to the colonel, while secretly ordering every well and tank along his route to be poisoned. To punish this act of genuine Oriental treachery, East got his guns into position against Anjar, and after breaching it, compelled the traitor to save his head by surrendering the fort, and ceding with it the port of Juner, on the Bay of Cutch, to Great Britain.

Deterred by this, the first event of the campaign which he had brought upon himself, the Rao agreed to give compensation for the damages done to our allies, and so far to yield to Britain, as to acknowledge himself a tributary prince, by the annual payment of a tribute of £7,000.

On the other hand, the British were solemnly bound not to outrage the religious feelings of his robber-subjects by killing bullocks, or eating the flesh of the sacred cow. The inevitable course of events, or the natural course of expansion, was gradually, yet quickly, pushing the Company's frontier towards the mouths of the mighty Indus. "In the year 1800, when Surat was assumed, it was stated and believed that the Tapti river would be our ne plus ultra in this direction; but now, in 1816, we got beyond the Gulf of Cutch, and close upon the Runn, by possessing ourselves of Anjar, which place was not more than two geographical degrees from the Koree, or most southern mouth. of the Indus.”

After making all quiet in Cutch, Colonel East returned to Kattiwar, in Goojerat, and there took most effectual means for repressing the odious piracy for which the Gulf of Cutch had been so long infamous, by dispossessing the whole of the chiefs along its southern coast, and reducing their harbours and forts to British rule. Among the places he captured on this service was Dwaraka, a town at the north-west extremity of the Kattiwar peninsula, situated on a flat shore, and possessing a famous temple, fabled as the abode of Krishna, at whose shrine some 15,000 pilgrims pay their devotions yearly. This place had long been the greatest nest of pirates in the gulf.

Among the minor events of this year was a dreadful riot at Berhampore, between the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers and a great part of the Hon. Company's European Regiment. Much jealousy and ill-will had, by some neans, been excited between the corps, and it had been arranged by the military authorities to separate them; but ere this could be done, a great force of the Royal Irish, armed with drawn bayonets, attacked their European comrades, and a deadly conflict ensued; and before the officers could separate them, sword in hand, many were dangerously wounded.

During the war with Nepaul there were some other matters which gave much trouble to the Government of the Marquis of Hastings; these were chiefly the opposition of the Hindoo population to a new species of taxation, and a revolt at Bareilly, which grew out of it.

The inhabitants of India dread nothing so much as innovation, and generally, wherever the Europeans went, they had plenty of it; but they resented nothing so much as taxation, especially when it came in a novel form; for the invariable extortions they had undergone from their native rulers made them sensitive and suspicious, as they knew, by old experience, how often a small assessment, imposed for some temporary purpose, had been converted into a permanent and grinding burden.

The land had usually been the chief source of revenue, and a share in the produce thereof, when demanded by the government, had rarely been opposed, as it was deemed a kind of tribute exacted by the law of nature and of nations; but with a new imposition the case was altogether different; and thus, when the Governor-General, in 1813, endeavoured to recruit the Company's exchequer by a house-tax, so resolute was the opposition, that nothing short of total repeal would allay the agitation. "At Benares, in particular, the inhabitants desisted from their ordinary employments, shut their shops, and encamping in the open fields at a short distance from the city, sent a petition to the magistrate, in which they declared that they would never return to their homes till the tax was removed. This passive resistance was more effectual than any outbreak could have been in convincing the government of the necessity of yielding, and the idea of increasing the revenue by a house-tax was abandoned."

Though defeated, the Marquis of Hastings shrunk from admitting it, and endeavoured to establish in the following year a tax upon the principle of the same house assessment, by confining it to police purposes, and giving it a kind of voluntary form by permitting the people of the

different districts to assess themselves, by means of committees of their own selection.

The attempt was first made with Patna, Moorshedabad, and Dacca; and so soon as the precedent seemed to have taken root, its sphere of operation was extended to the Lower Provinces, embracing, in addition to these, Benares and Bareilly. The former, though expressing great dissatisfaction, consented to pay its quota; but in the latter city, where the people were Mohammedans, and Rohilla Afghans, with strong leanings to their original predatory habits, the opposition was not so easily overcome.

Situated nearly in the centre of the Rohilla country, and containing among its inhabitants— who are, and were, chiefly, manufacturers of carpets, brocade, gold and silver work, arrows, saddlery, and porcelain-not a few families who had sunk from rank and wealth into insignificance, and who bitterly deduced their reverse of fortune from Warren Hastings' treaty with the Nabob of Oude, they were but too ready to grasp at any grievance, real or fanciful, as a plea for anger and revenge. The mayor, or kotwal, was obnoxious to the Mussulmans because he was a Hindoo, and was detested for his overbearing conduct, which keenly offended the high-born native families; hence the materials for a local flame were all at hand.

It was no novelty in Bareilly, a small police assessment for the protection of property, but the increase to it was strongly resented, especially by the reduced families alluded to; all the more that they had still contrived, on shorn means, to keep about them a great number of armed and useless retainers, to dismiss whom was degradation, and to support whom, under the increased taxation, became well-nigh impossible; and an insurrection followed in this manner.

The attempt to enforce the tax entirely failed; the kotwal threatened the upper classes with chains, and the lower with the stocks; the ferment spread, and a police peon amidst it wounded a woman. The populace, though neither chivalrous nor humane by nature, resolved to make the most of this. They placed her on a charpoy, or bed, and bore her through the streets to the Mufti Mohammed Arwaz, whose sanctity was venerated throughout all Rohilcund, and he advised that she should be taken to the house of the magistrate. Mobs now assembled in the streets, and the appearance they assumed about the abode of the mufti was so alarming, that to disperse them became necessary; and when the magistrate appeared at the head of some horse and foot, it was supposed

less on the panoply of his followers, who fled with him across the Jumna to Deeg, from whence they were compelled to seek refuge in the kingdom of Lahore. All the female part of his family had escaped in disguise at different periods. Prior to the bombardment of the fort and town, in which, altogether, 7,579 shot and shell were expended, an offer was made to allow them to pass unmolested, provided they carried no treasure or jewels; but to this he made no reply.

Of 1,450 men who were in the fort when our guns opened, 200, with eighty horses, perished in

of all he had undergone amid severe weather, "at the siege and capture of Hatrass."

After Dyaram's flight, his fortress was partly demolished, and this produced such an effect on the other talookdars, that they lost no time in making their submission to the Governor-General.

While all these events had been in progress, the Mahratta court at Poonah had been guilty of many violations of the Treaty of Bassein. The Peishwa had given his entire confidence to a man named Trimbukjee Danglia, who had commenced life as a "Journal of the Siege of the Kutterah and Fort of Hatrass."

*