1818.] THE LAST OF THE PEISHWAS. to give up that personage, who had a camp and an army of his own, and who was stronger than he, his master, was. "Then," said Malcolm, "I will attack him forthwith." "Success attend you!" replied the Peishwa. The events of this visit are thus described by Auber: *—" He appeared low and dejected, and retired for a private interview, when he said that he had been involved in a war he never intended; that he was treated as an enemy by the State which had supported his family for two generations, and was at that moment in a position that demanded consideration, and believed that he had a real friend in Sir John Malcolm. The latter replied that every moment of delay was one of danger, and that he should either throw himself upon the British Government or determine on further resistance. How can I resist now?' he exclaimed; 'I am surrounded!' Sir John Malcolm replied that he was, but he could not complain; that he still had the power of escape as much as ever, if he wished to become a freebooter and wanderer, and not accept the liberal provision designed for him. He replied, with the flattery of which he was master, 'I have found you, who are my only friend, and will never leave you; would a shipwrecked mariner, after having reached the port he desired, form a wish to leave it?' Still, upon the plea of a religious ceremony, and that it was an unlucky day, he wished to postpone till the next day surrendering himself up and accepting the propositions." General Malcolm, to quicken his decision, had recourse to the device of allowing one of his writers to give the vakeels of the two leading Mahratta chiefs still adhering to Bajee Rao, a copy of the preliminary treaty submitted to him, and by this means informed them of the consideration they should receive in the event of a quiet settlement. This quickened their zeal in the matter; while the main body of Malcolm's troops, advancing towards Khairee, the village where the important interview had taken place, was followed by the distinct intimation to Bajee Rao, that if he did not immediately accept the terms, his last chance would be lost. Thus, thoroughly intimidated-after trying one shuffle more he saw the futility of evasion. His troops began to move down the hill, slowly and reluctantly, towards the British camp, and at eleven o'clock on the morning of the 3rd of June, 1818, the Peishwa delivered himself up, with his family, and 5,000 horse and 3,000 infantry, 2,000 of whom were Arabs. The Supreme Government at Calcutta, taking a narrow and mercantile view of the matter, "Rise and Prog. Brit. Power in India." 525 thought that too much had been granted by Sir John Malcolm; but the latter, like most of his Indian military cotemporaries, was a man of a large and generous heart; and none knew better than he the demerits on the one hand, and the helplessness on the other, of the fallen Peishwa of the once great Mahratta Confederation. When Malcolm, taking with him the latter, began his march towards the Nerbudda, he remonstrated more than once with him on the imprudence of keeping together 8,000 armed men, the majority of whom were certain, from the turn his affairs had taken, to be discontented. However, all remained quiet for five days, when the 2,000 Arabs suddenly demanded their arrears of pay, urging that they had been enlisted by the irrepressible Trimbukjee Danglia, but had been only a short time with the Peishwa, who offered to pay them for that precise period; but they insisted upon having their arrears from the first day they had taken service under the favourite. A whole day passed in angry and unseemly discussions; and Bajee Rao, fearing. that his life was in danger among these fierce mercenaries, in his timidity and confusion, sent the most contradictory messages to Sir John Malcolm, calling for aid, and then urging it should not be sent, lest the first appearance of red-coats might prove the signal for his being cut to pieces. His terrors were not altogether groundless. The armed Arabs had environed his tents, and might, had they chosen, not only have destroyed him, but all his women and children; by the clever management of Sir John Malcolm, however, the disturbance was quelled, and an award pronounced which satisfied all; and after this alarm Bajee Rao gladly consented to his train being diminished to 700 horse and 200 foot; and, moreover, he complied in every other point with the wishes of Sir John Malcolm. It was while on this march that Sir John, no doubt to his annoyance, found that Government was dissatisfied with the terms given to his prisoner after he had been completely surrounded, and that his cause was hopeless. He "But, after all," says Sir John, in his account of this affair, "Bajee Rao was not in our power. had the means, by going into Aseerghur, of protracting the war for five or six months, and keeping all India disturbed and unsettled during that period." + Such being the case-and none could know the probabilities of it better than the acute Malcolm— the pension he offered, as a bribe to end the strife, was not an extravagant one; and that view was taken of it by the Court of Directors at home. "Political History of India." They thought it possible that Bajee Rao "might into the verandah, which serves as a guard-room; have been compelled to surrender unconditionally, in other respects he is well treated, has two large had no terms been offered to him; but it does and very airy apartments, a small building fitted up appear to us," they added, "that he still had some as a pagoda, and a little garden shaded by peepul chance of escape, and that by throwing himself into trees, which he has planted very prettily with Aseerghur he might, at all events for a consider- balsams and other flowers. Four of his own able period of time, have deprived us of the servants are allowed to attend him, but they are important advantages which resulted from his early always searched before they quit or return to surrender; and in this view of the subject, we are the fort, and must be always there at night. He is disposed to think that these advantages justified the a little, lively, irritable-looking man, dressed when terms which were granted him." I saw him in a dirty cotton mantle, with a broad red border, thrown carelessly over his head and shoulders. I was introduced to him by Colonel Alexander, and he received me courteously, observing that he himself was a priest, and in token of his brotherly regard, plucking some of his prettiest flowers. He has now The Marquis of Hastings fixed the residence of the ex-Peishwa at Bithoor, on the right bank of the Ganges, a sacred spot, where Brahma is supposed to have completed the act of creating the world and all therein by the sacrifice of a horse; but rendered more familiar to us, in later years, as the abode of the atrocious Nana Sahib. His progress through Rajpootana and the Doab to the scene of his exile excited scarcely any sensation among the people. When settled at Bithoor, he resigned himself to spending his £80,000 per annum in a life of luxury. He bathed daily in the waters of the Ganges, indulged in the highest living of a Brahmin, maintained three sets of dancing-girls, and troops of low buffoons and parasites. The great rallying-point of the Mahratta Confederacy-the banner of the Peishwa -had sunk for ever in the dust; but it was not so easy to change the character of that singular people, or to introduce peaceful habits among them; yet their power of working military mischief, if not quite crushed, was greatly reduced. been, I believe, five years in prison, and seems likely to remain there during life, or till the death of his patron and tool, the Peishwa, may lessen his power of doing mischief. He has often offered to give security to any amount for his good behaviour, and to become a warmer friend to the Company than he has ever been their enemy, but his applications have been made in vain. He attributes their failure to Mr. Elphinstone, the Governor of Bombay, who is, he says, 'his best friend and worst enemy,' the faithful trustee of his estate, treating his children with parental kindness, and interesting himself, in the first instance, to save his life, but resolutely fixed on keeping him in prison, and urging the Supreme Court to distrust all his protestations. His life must now be dismally monotonous and wearisome. Though a Brahmin of high caste, so long a minister of state and the commander of armies, he can neither write nor read, and his whole amusement consists in the ceremony of his idolatry, his garden, and the gossip which his servants pick up for him in the town of Chunar. After his surrender, the most leading of his adherents sought to make terms for themselves; among them, Cheetoo the Pindaree, and Trimbukjee Danglia. The tragic fate of the former we have already related; the latter concealed himself for some time in the neighbourhood of Nassick, in Aurungabad, where he fell into the hands of Mountstuart Elphinstone, being taken prisoner passion. by Major Swanston.* He was first remanded to Tannah, the place of his former imprisonment; but ultimately, for greater security, was sent round to Bengal, and lodged in the mountain fortress of Chunar, which we have described in a former chapter; and there he was visited by Bishop Heber, on the 11th September, 1824, and the prelate's account of that noted disturber of the peace is very interesting. "He is confined with great strictness, having a European as well as a sepoy guard, and never being trusted out of sight of the sentries. Even his bed-chamber has three grated windows opening * Auber. Avarice seems at present his ruling He is a very severe inspector of his weekly accounts, and one day set the whole garrison in an uproar about some ghee, which he accused his khansaman, or steward, of embezzling; in short, he seems less interested with the favourable reports which he from time to time receives of his family than by the banking accounts by which they are accompanied. Much as he is said to have deserved his fate, as a murderer, an extortioner, and a grossly perjured man, I hope," adds the good bishop, "that I may be allowed to pity him."+ But from this period Trimbukjee Danglia passes out of Indian history. + "Narrative of a Journey," &c., vol. i. 1818.] THE HILL-TRIBES. 527 CHAPTER XCVII. OF THE BHEELS AND GONDS, ETC.-APA SAHIB AGAIN IN ARMS-HIS FLIGHT. WHILE the Peishwa was being conducted to his prison at Bithoor, Apa Sahib, the ex-Rajah of Nagpore, was safe with the Gonds, among the Mahadeo Hills, where he was harboured and concealed by that singular race, who have—unlike other natives of India-broad flat noses, thick lips, and not unfrequently woolly hair, like the people of Africa; yet they are supposed to be a portion of the aboriginal race of the country, who, long before the irruption of the Hindoo hordes, made great advances in civilisation; and to this race, of which so little is known, are attributed the remains of many works of art, fortified buildings, and monuments, in every part of India; and thus the Hindoos themselves refer the erection of vast temples, and the excavation of wonderfully carved caverns, to the vague period of the aboriginal kings. General Briggs-who, when a captain, prosecuted with success the settlements of the Bheels in Candeish-in his lectures, asserts that this race must have entered India at a very remote period, occupying it-as mankind spread elsewhere in successive hordes-under different leaders; and one portion, he conceives, must have preceded the other "because, in the first place, there always has been, and still continues, an inveterate hostility between two branches of the same race; and because the latter certainly occupied and cleared the land, and established principalities; while the former mainly subsisted on the chase, and followed a much less civilised life." The more barbarous tribes of India, supposed to be descendants of the aboriginal natives who fled from the plains before their Brahminical conquerors, are to be found among those two mountain ranges which are on both sides of the Nerbudda, and lie nearly parallel with its course-the Satpoora on the south, and the Vindhya on the north. Towards the east and west they form, at each extremity, a vast mountain barrier, all but impenetrable from jungles and primeval forests. Towards the western extremity, where these mountains separate Malwa from Candeish, the inhabitants are designated Bheels, who, according to Bishop Heber, were unquestionably the original inhabitants of Rajpootana, who had been driven to these fastnesses, and to a desperate mode of existence; but who, wherever they have come from, profess the religion of Brahma. This the Rajpoots themselves allow, by admitting in their traditional history that most of their principal cities and fortresses were founded by Bheel chiefs, "and conquered from them by the Children of the Sun." * Professor Wilson states that the Bheels, and other hill-tribes, are constantly accused by Sanscrit writers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, of being addicted to the sanguinary worship of Aghori, which required human sacrifices. † The Bheels excite the horror of the high-class Hindoos by eating not only the flesh of buffaloes, but of cows, an abomination which places them only above the shoemakers, who feed on dead carcases, and must dwell without the precincts of the villages. Sir John Malcolm divides the Bheels into three distinct classes. “The first of these consists of a few who, from chance or ancient residence, have become dwellers in the villages on the plains though usually near the hills-of which they are the watchmen, and incorporated as a portion of the community; the agricultural Bheels are those who have continued their peaceful avocations after their leaders were destroyed, or forced by invaders to become freebooters; while the wild, or mountain Bheels, comprise all that portion of the tribe who, preferring savage freedom to order and industry, have lived by lawless plunder." ‡ The Bheels, though prompt enough to shed blood, without the smallest scruple, in the way of regular feud or foray, are neither vindictive nor inhospitable; and thus British officers have frequently fished and hunted safely in their country, and without other guide or escort than these poor mountaineers have themselves furnished cheerfully for a bottle of brandy. At all times formidable, the Bheels became the terror of Central India under Nadir Sing. Their chiefs exercised absolute power, and their orders to commit the most atrocious crimes were rigidly executed; but on the banishment of Nadir Sing for a murder of more than ordinary cruelty, his son, who had been carefully educated at the head-quarters of Sir John Malcolm, on succeeding to his authority established such * "Narrative of a Journey," &c. "Asiatic Researches," vol. xvii. "Memoir of Central India." order, that there was soon after no part of the country where life and property were safer than among the once-dreaded Bheels. Bishop Heber describes their district as being like what "Rob Roy's country" was in the last century, but adds that "these poor Bheels are far less formidable enemies than the old MacGregors." This ancient race are expert in the use of the bow, and have a curious mode of shooting from the long grass, among which they lie concealed, holding the bow with their feet. Besides their prey on the earth and in the air, they use the bow and arrow against fish in the rivers, and shoot them with great to his camp, where their shrill calls from one to another were heard all night. The name of Bheel is now no longer confined to the original race, but, in consequence of their intermarriages, and the adoption of many of their usages and modes of life by other classes of the community, is applied to all plunderers dwelling in the mountains, and in the woody parts of Western India. During a period when we ceased to interfere with them, the Bheels of the plains lost the little civilisation they had attained, and joined those of the same race in the mountains in their depredations; but, in the suppression of these, dexterity. Their bows are formed of split bamboo; the arrows are of the same, with a barbed iron head. Those used against fish have a long line attached to them, exactly on the principle of the harpoon. As Heber advanced into the country infested by the Bheels, he met caravans of Brinjarries, a wandering race, who spend their whole lives in the conveyance of grain, escorted by armed Bheels, paid for the purpose. The bishop had a strong escort of Bheels, who led him safely through a most perilous country, abounding with ravines and rugged spots, overgrown with jungle (the most favourable of places for the spring of a tiger, or the poisoned arrows of an ambush; where, shortly before, a man had been carried off from an artillery-train on the march); but they conducted him across the rapid Mhye, and on his arrival at Wasnud, acted as watchmen successful efforts were made by Captain (afterwards General) Briggs, our political agent in Candeish, and by Sir John Malcolm, in Malwa, who raised a corps of Bheels, disciplined and commanded by British officers and by their own chiefs; "and before these robbers had been a month in the service," says the latter, "I placed them as a guard over treasure, which had a surprising effect, both in elevating them in their own minds, and in those of other parts of the community." Sir John did more; to inspire greater confidence, and exalt these bold and hardy men in their own estimation, he actually took, as his personal attendants, some of the most desperate of the plundering chiefs. Elsewhere, towards the eastern extremity of the mountain ranges referred to, and where the ranges that separate Bengal and Orissa from Berar attain their greatest height, are various ancient and |