as purchasing the names of young writers in the company's service, and, under this sanction, as guilty of extortion towards the natives in the provinces. He says, many a young writer made one thousand five hundred pounds and two thousand pounds a-year by this selling of his name. Hastings, then a subordinate officer, says: "The evil is not confined to our dependents alone, but is practised all over the country by people assuming the habit of our sepoys, or calling themselves our gomastahs." In going up the country, he says, the very sight of sepoys "caused most of the petty India, or, perhaps, any other country! It is in vain for our essayists and historians to endeavour to convert such men as Clive and Hastings into models of moderation and humanity. If they simply would be content to say that they were great and successful men, as far as their talents went, and that this country owes them much for the territory they won, and the power they established in India, every one must admit it. But the less said of the means by which they achieved this the better, for the whole annals of India, as drawn from the archives of Leadenhall-street, and towns and serais to be deserted at our approach, and the shops shut up, from the apprehension of the same treatment from us!" Such was the state of the country as witnessed by Hastings; such it was when Clive arrived. And Clive, who so forcibly described it to the directors-what did he do? He aggravated it; enriched himself enormously by the very system, and so left it. Such it continued till Mr. Hastings -this Mr. Hastings, who so feelingly wrote his views to the president, Vansittart, came into supreme power; and what did the wise and benevolent Mr. Hastings? I became the Aaron's-rod of gift-takers, the prince of exactors, and the most relentless oppressor of the natives that ever visited as stamped on the pages of all eminent writers who had lived in the country, is a revolting chronicle of the foulest rapacity, the most unchristian oppressions. We may admit that Clive wonderfully restored order by this short sojourn in India, made some invaluable treaties, and, compared with some who came after him, showed great wisdom and moderation; but his health could no longer endure the climate, and, in January, 1766, after a residence of only nine months, he left again for England, Mr. Verelst, a man of mere ordinary ability, occupying his post till a successor should be sent out. He conclu led his farewell speech in council with the words:-"I leave the country in peace; I leave the civil and military departments under discipline and subordination; it is incumbent on you to keep them so." He arrived in England in July, and was received by the court of directors with acclamations; he had, indeed, in a few months, made them the avowed masters of a great empire. He was received also by the king and queen with the most cordial marks of esteem. Though he would accept no presents from the nabob of Oude for himself, he had accepted most valuable ones for their majesties: a diamond of immense value, and a sword set with diamonds for the king; a splendid pearl necklace, and other ornaments for the queen, &c. Having delivered these, Clive sought, with his family, the waters of Bath, to disperse, if possible, that nervous malady which haunted him with strange horrors of imagination, and under the influence of which he eventually put an end to his life. Before that event, however, we shall see him called upon to defend himself against charges in his administration of the countries which he won for this kingdom. throne, had till recently been hostile to the English. He had invaded the Carnatic, and made war on our ally, Mohammed Ali, with great ferocity; but colonel Campbell marching against him, and severely chastising him, he had made peace with the English, and confirmed to them the possession of the Northern Circars, on condition that they paid him a small tribute, and held a certain force ready to assist him when needed. This being agreed upon, it required little further to induce the English to join the nizam and the Mahrattas in an endeavour to check the career of Hyder Ali, of whose subtle and bold genius the English as yet were ignorant. But Hyder soon showed them a sample of his diplomatic adroitness. There are writers who have adorned him with all the attributes of a hero of romance. The truth is that he was a clever, unprincipled adventurer, cruel and ferocious, and never lacking a wily word or scheme to accomplish his ends. A good example of his finesse occurred in his treatment of a brahmin, Khonde Row, who had been greatly in his confidence, but who took up arms against him. When he was besieged by him, he was entreated by the ladies to give him favourable terms of surrender. "I will not only spare his life," replied Hyder, “but I will cherish him like a parroquet." As parroquets are greatly petted in the East, this was enough; Row surrendered himself, and was shut up for life in an iron cage! Whilst Clive had been reducing our enemies in Bengal and Oude, a more powerful antagonist than any one whom we had yet encountered in India was every day growing more formidable in Mysore, and combining several of the petty chiefs of the different states of Madras as his allies against us. He was now far more considerable than when he had appeared against us as the ally of the French general, Lally, in the neighbourhood of Pondicherry. Hyder Ali was a self-made man. He was originally the grandson of a wandering fakir, or Mohammedan monk; became fond of wild field sports, then the captain of banditti, then at the head of an army composed of freebooters; continually growing in the number of his followers, and in the wealth procured by plunder, he at length became commander-in-chief of the rajah of Mysore. Soon rising in his ambition, he seized the rajah, his master, pensioned him off with three lacs of rupees, and declared himself the real rajah. In 1761 he was become firmly established on the throne of Mysore, but this distinction did not satisfy him. He determined to be the founder of Mysore as a great kingdom, and attacking by turns the rajahs of Sera, Belapoor, Gooty, Harponelli, Chitteldroog, and other districts, he reduced them under his dominion. He next, on pretence of supporting the claims of an adventurer in the district of Bednore, seized on the region for himself, with immense wealth in it, and after-Smith instantly separated from the nizam, and hastened to wards overran Srenda, on the north of Bednore, and extended his power to near the banks of the Kistna. There he was met and repulsed by Madhoo Row, the peishwa of the Mahrattas, who crossed the Kistna, defeated him repeatedly, seized some of his newly-acquired territory, and levied on him thirty-two lacs of rupees. Hyder returned to Seringapatam, which he had made his capital, and had strongly fortified, and he thence conducted an expedition against Malabar, which he conquered, and put the chiefs to death to make his hold of it the more secure. It was whilst thus engaged that the news reached him of new and formidable combinations against him. His victorious neighbours, the Mahrattas, had joined the English and the nizam of the Deccan, and were preparing an invasion of his kingdom. This coalition was scarcely to have been expected, for the nizam, who had murdered his brother reigning subahdar, Salibut Jung, and seized his Colonel Smith having agreed to invade Mysore with the nizam and the Mahrattas in the spring of 1767, the Mahrattas advanced first into the high table lands of that country with their cavalry; colonel Smith followed with his own little army, consisting of about one thousand five hundred Europeans and nine thousand sepoys, and accompanied by the large, disorderly host of the nizam. But Smith was soon struck with dismay by the intelligence that Hyder had succeeded in winning over the peishwa of the Mahrattas by the payment of thirty-five lacs of rupees, and that for this sum the Mahratta chief had engaged to break with the English and quit the country. This was speedily followed by the more alarming discovery that the nizam, too, was in treaty with Hyder to desert the English, and unite with him and the Mahrattas in driving the English from every district on the Coromandel coast. secure the passes into the Carnatic, the first object of Hyder's attack. He obtained some reinforcements from Mohammed Ali, but he speedily found himself not merely deserted, but combined against. The Mahrattas and the nizam were coming against him in league with Hyder Ali, and colonel Smith endeavoured to retreat to Changama, but, before he could reach that place, this huge united force was upon him. He turned and stood his ground, eventually beating off his numerous assailants, but with the loss of his stores of rice for his sepoys, which the Mahratta cavalry made themselves masters of. To avoid famine, and being surrounded by overwhelming hosts, Smith made a rapid march, day and night, for Trincomalee, a well-fortified and provisioned town on a hill. The enemy pursued at his heels, laying waste the whole country as they came. No sooner did colonel Smith reach Trincomalee and refresh his army, than he again sallied A.D. 1768.] OPERATIONS AGAINST HYDER ALI. forth and endeavoured to put a stop to the ravaging of the country. Being almost destitute of cavalry, he found it difficult to do this, as the Mahrattas, with their cavalry, could sweep over the whole district. To cause him greater embarrassment, and cut off any reinforcements, Hyder dispatched his son, Tippoo Sahib, with five thousand horse to beat up the neighbourhood of Madras. Tippoo executed this command with so much secrecy and expedition, that he was very nearly seizing the president and councillors, with the richest merchants of Madras, in their country houses round the town. There was a rush of the inhabitants to secure themselves in the fortress, and Tippoo plundered and ransacked the town, the black town, the magazines, and warehouses, collecting a princely booty. He burnt and laid all waste, and then retreated as fast as he came. This was a terrible blow, and reduced the English and their dependents at Madras to great misery. But colonel Smith did not leave the outrage long unavenged. He drew out his little army of about ten thousand against the combined host, said to amount to nearly seventy thousand men. The nizam professed desperate courage on entering into the battle, but he very soon turned and fled at full speed, his troops following him as fast. The only instance of courage in his army was said to have been one of his ladies, who called out from her howdah, "This elephant has not been taught to turn in this manner; he only follows the standard." Nor would she allow the elephant to be turned till she saw the standard in full flight. The troops of Hyder and the Mahrattas fought bravely, but they were utterly routed. The nizam was quite satisfied with war. He drew off his forces from Hyder and the peishwa, and left them to take care of themselves. They again took the field with a strong force; but colonel Smith met them in the month of December, near Amboor, a town in the Carnatic, about one hundred and eight miles from Madras, and gave them a more decisive defeat than at Trincomalee. This decided the nizam, who had waited the event before making up his mind. He made peace on condition that the English recognised his title as subahdar or nizam, and agreed to assist him in emergency with two battalions of sepoys and six cannon. He, on his part, confirmed the company's title to the Northern Circars, and to grant the dewannee of Balaghaut, a country in possession of Hyder, to the English on payment of certain tribute. He also lowered the tribute for the Circars. This confederacy being broken up, and the Mahrattas having withdrawn, the presidency of Madras thought it a good opportunity to punish Hyder Ali, and reduce his power. These traders were little aware of the real vigour of character of Hyder. They might have had him for a friend, but they despised him as an adventurer, and too late discovered their mistake. He was no common enemy. Ever full of resources, and restrained by no principle but that of his own interest, he had raised himself from nothing to be the head of a great kingdom, and commander of a hundred thousand troops. He would willingly be the ally of the English; he must have their support, or that of the Mahrattas. The English rejected his overtures; threw him into the arms of the Mahrattas, and he and his son, Tippoo, became the mortal and implacable enemies of the English 345 race and name. By the aid of the Mahrattas and the French he was enabled to maintain himself against them, and to inflict on them the most serious injuries. The Madras council now determined to carry the war into the very heart of Hyder's kingdom of Mysore; but, instead of allowing colonel Smith, who had shown himself so capable of conducting an Indian campaign, to act upon his own plans, they adopted the fatal one of prescribing the course of action for him. Nothing but disaster could result from this absurd system; and it speedily came. Colonel Smith. proposed to invade first the frontier and fertile districts of Mysore; but these tradesmen directors ordered him to push forward into the barren region near Bangalore, where he assured them he should not be able to provide for his army. To weaken his operations, colonel Wood was commanded to take part of his troops and operate on the frontiers. This was bad enough, but they did worse. They adopted the Dutch plan, which had so hampered and irritated Marlborough, till he broke through it, and sent two field deputies to act in concert with them at the presidency, and thus reduce the nominal commander to a mere machine. The result was, what it must be under such circumstances. Colonel Smith refused to follow the orders of the field deputies; the whole of the officers and the army shared his spirit, and nothing succeeded. To co-operate with this movement, the Bombay presidency sent an expedition to attack Hyder's recent conquests on the coast of Malabar. The fleet reduced his seaport of Mangalore, took Onore and other places. Hyder, leaving a force to cope with colonel Smith, made a rapid transit to Mangalore, appeared before it in May, when least expected; and the English were glad to re-embark as fast as possible, leaving two hundred sick and wounded in Hyder's hands. Meantime, Smith reached Bangalore, and Wood had ravaged the frontier districts; but Hyder hastened back to Bangalore, and there made overtures of peace, which the field deputies rejected. But Smith, under the thraldom of the deputies, could not take the strong city of Bengalore, and the presidency recalled him, and sent colonel Wood in his place. If Smith could not act under the absurd directions of the traders on their sofas in Madras, and the paralysing incubus of the field deputies, Wood was not likely to do it. He was speedily compelled by Hyder to fall back, was surprised, beaten, and lost all his baggage. The presidency superseded Wood by major Fitzgerald, and arrested Wood and sent him to Madras. But Fitzgerald succeeded no better; Hyder drove him out of all his territories, and then fell again on the Carnatic, laid waste the provinces of Madura and Tinnevelly, and penetrated into Pondicherry, where he was warmly welcomed by the French officers, who gave him the advice, to avoid all pitched battles with the English, but to scour their territories with flying detachments of cavalry; to come by surprise on districts where they had no horse to cope with and pursue him, and to burn, destroy, and plunder everywhere, and especially the Carnatic, or the country whence they drew their supplies. This was counsel exactly after Hyder's head and genius. The French sent able officers to assist him, and he executed this plan of operations with such success that the council of Madras were glad to replace colonel Smith and to recall their deputies. Smith could not restore the army to an effective condition all at once, but he exerted himself strenuously to that end, and soon produced so much effect that Hyder began to wish for peace. But he was too sagacious to make any move for this purpose till he could do it to great advantage. Therefore, after once more consulting his French friends at Pondicherry, he, by an artful feint, drew the English army, in the spring of 1769, a hundred and forty miles to the south of Madras. Then, by a rapid march, he suddenly appeared, with a body of five thousand horse, on the heights of St. Thomas, overlooking Madras. The whole of the city and vicinity, except the port of St. George itself, lay at his feet and at his mercy. The town, the black-town, the warehouses, the country villas, and villages all round, were open to his plunder and burning, as they had been to the fury of his son Tippoo before. The terrified council, in all haste, offered most advantageous terms of peace, which it was the very object of Hyder to accept, and that, too, before colonel Smith could arrive, and intercept his retreat. Hyder gladly consented to the terms, which were those of mutual restitution, and of alliance and mutual defence. The last, a condition which, with Hyder's disposition to aggrandisement, was sure to bring the English into fresh trouble. This was immediately made evident. The treaty was concluded on the 4th of April, 1769, and the first news was that Hyder had quarrelled with the Mahrattas, and called on the presidency of Madras to furnish the stipulated aid. But the presidency replied that he had himself sought this war, and therefore it was not a defensive but an offensive war. The peishwa of the Mahrattas invaded Mysore, and drove Hyder to the very walls of Seringapatam, dreadfully laying waste his territory. Hyder then sent piteous appeals to his allies, the English, offering large sums of money; but they still remained deaf. At another time, they were solicited by the Mahratta chief to make an alliance with him, but they determined to remain neutral, and left Hyder and the peishwa to fight out their quarrels. In 1771 the Mahrattas invaded the Carnatic, but were soon driven out; and in 1772 the Mahrattas and Hyder made peace through the mediation of the nabob of the Carnatic, or of Arcot, as he was more frequently called. Hyder had lost a considerable portion of Mysore, and had to pay besides fifteen lacs of rupees, with the promise of fifteen more. The refusal of the English to assist him did not fail to render him more deeply hostile than ever to them. The During this period from 1769 to 1772-Warren Hastings had been second in the council at Madras; but in the latter year he was promoted to the head of the council in Bengal. During this period, too, the English had been brought into hostilities with the rajah of Tanjore. history of these proceedings is amongst the very blackest of the innumerable black proceedings of the East India Company. The rajah of Tanjore was in alliance with the company. In 1762 they had guaranteed to him the security of his throne; but now their great ally, Mohammed Ali, the nabob of the Carnatic, called for help to the English against the rajah. He asserted that the rajah of Tanjore had seized some territory which belonged to him, or was claimed by him. The conduct of honourable men who bore the name of Christians would have been to offer themselves as mediators, and so settle the business; but not by such means was the whole of India to be won from the native princes. The rajah of the Carnatic offered to purchase the territory of Tanjore from the English for a large sum. Let it be remembered that the territory was none of theirs ; that they had no more right to it than John Smith has to the estate of his neighbour, John Brown. On the contrary, they had guaranteed the defence of these territories to the rajah of Tanjore by express treaty. No matter, they closed the bargain with the rajah of the Carnatic; they agreed to seize Tanjore, and make it over to Mohammed Ali. An army assembled at Trichinopoly on the 12th of September, 1771, but it was found that Mohammed's second son, who was to have prepared the provisions for the troops, had betrayed his trust, and that no such supplies were to be found. When, after collecting provisions with great difficulty, the army sate down before Vellum, and the English were ready to enter a breach and take the city, it was found that Mohammed's eldest son had made a secret treaty with the rajah of Tanjore, on payment of a large sum. The council refused to assent to this treacherous peace, and the rajah of Tanjore was obliged to cede to them two districts adjoining Madura. But the following spring, spite of this fresh treaty with the rajah, the English marched into the Marawars, by another bargain with Mohammed, and again they had Mohammed's eldest son, Omdut-ul-Omrah, with them, but under bond not to make any clandestine treaties. He was, however, to have the plundering of the towns on condition of paying a fixed sum to the troops. Thus the English were to escape the odium of plundering, but were to have the fruits of it. Early in April, they took Ramanadporam, the capital of the greater Marawar, with its polygar, a boy of twelve years old, with his mother, and his treasury. When the English had conquered the whole of the polygars, in the course of which the polygar of the lesser Marawar was betrayed and killed, and the people most barbarously treated both by the English and the troops of the nabob, the whole was handed over to the nabob of the Carnatic. Before this iniquitous business was completed, the nabob had informed the English that the rajah of Tanjore had broken his engagements by not paying a certain sum of money, and by endeavouring to engage Hyder and the Mahrattas to aid him. He offered the English another large sum, ten lacs of pagodas, and other advantages, the plunder being reserved to himself, and they accepted this disgraceful bargain, invaded Tanjore, seized the rajah and his family, and invested the whole of Tanjore in the name of the nabob of the Carnatic. When these infamous doings were known in England, a feeling of horror and indignation ran through the country. Never had the English name been so trodden into the dust of villany. The French were ready to proclaim our venal barbarity to the whole world. The opposition in parliament made the walls of St. Stephen's ring with their outcries. The East India Company was compelled to send out lord Pigot to Madras to do what Clive had so vigorously done in Bengal-control and reverse the acts of the council. Pigot most honourably acquitted himself; liberated the outraged nabob of Tanjore and his family, and restored them. But Pigot had not the same overawing name as Clive. The |