Part 6 (1/2)

Much eloquent indignation has been vented by Macaulay and Mill on the subject of the accession to this campaign of the British Governor, Mr. Hastings. As I am not writing a history of British administration, I shall only observe that the Emperor, whose servants the British professed themselves, had conferred the authority usurped by Rahmat Khan upon the Vazir, with whom they had been for some years in alliance. As allies of both parties they were clearly at liberty to throw in their help against the common enemies of both, especially when these chanced to be their own enemies also. The Mahrattas were the foes of all rulers on that side of India; and the Rohillas were either in collusion with the Mahrattas or unable to oppose them. It was essential, if not to the safety of the possessions of the Vazir-Viceroy, at least to British interests in Bengal, that a band of faithless usurpers should not be allowed to hold a country which they could not, or would not, prevent from affording a high road for the Mahrattas at all seasons of the year. That view, perhaps, commended itself to the House of Lords when they finally acquitted Mr. Hastings, after a protracted trial, in which some of the ablest of the Whig orators had been engaged against the accused. It is easy for historians, writing long after the pa.s.sions, the temptations, the necessities of the moment have ceased to press, to criticize the acts of the past by the ”dry light” of pure reason and abstract morality. But the claims of necessity should not be ignored in delivering what is intended to form a sort of judicial award.

It is perhaps a mark of the good sense and justice of the English nation that, when they had considered the matter calmly, they should have come to the conclusion that to condemn Hastings would be to condemn their own existence in India. Such a conclusion would logically require their retirement from the country _ a step they did not feel at all called upon to take. This appears the moral of the acquittal. Even Macaulay, who objects to the decision of the Peers acquitting Hastings as inadmissible at the bar of history nevertheless confesses that it was generally approved by the nation. At all events, this particular affair was dropped out of the charges even before the impeachment began.

But, however important to the existence of the British in India might be the possession of this frontier territory by the strongest ally they could secure, the conduct of the Emperor (or rather of Mirza Najaf, in whose hands he was not quite a free agent) remains the special subject of inquiry in this place. I think, however, that both the minister and his master were quite justified in wis.h.i.+ng to transfer the province of Rohilkand from the hands of Rahmat to those of the Vazir. It has been already seen that the Pathan usurpers of that province had always been foes of the Moghul power, since the first rebellion of Ali Mohammad, with the solitary exception of the campaign of 1761, when they joined their Abdali kinsman at Panipat. It has also been seen that the fords by which the Ganges could be crossed in the cold weather were in their country, but that they could never hold them; and that, lastly, they were known to have been lately in treaty with the Mahrattas, without reference to the interests of the Empire. Eastern politicians are not usually or especially scrupulous; but, when it is remembered that the Rohillas were feudatories who had neither the will nor the power to be faithful, it must follow that here were substantial considerations of vital importance to the Dehli Government, sufficient to give them a fair inducement to sanction the enterprise of one who was their chief minister and most powerful supporter.

Of Shujaa's own motives there is not so much palliation to offer.

He had often received aid from the Rohillas, and was under personal obligations to them, which ought to have obliterated all earlier memories of a hostile character; and, whatever grounds the Emperor may have had for consenting to an attack upon the Pathans, or the British for aiding the same, none such are likely to have seriously actuated the Vazir in his individual character.

If he thought the Rohillas were inclined to negotiate with the Mahrattas, he must have seen how those negotiations had been broken off the instant he came to their a.s.sistance; and if he wished to command the movements of the Mahrattas, he might first have endeavoured to strengthen the hands of the Imperial Government, and to cordially carry out his share of the treaty of 1772.

It must, however, be added - although the Vazir's character was not such as to render him altogether ent.i.tled to such justifications - that the latter of those engagements had been better fulfilled by himself than by the Pathans. For while, on the one hand, he had driven the Mahrattas out of the country, the Protector Rahmat Khan, on his part, had neither collected the wage of that service from the other chiefs, nor paid it himself.

Moreover, the Vazir's proceedings were only directed against the usurping Protector and his actual adherents; and he was joined by Zabita and some Rohilla chiefs, while others, among whom were the sons of the late Dundi Khan, held aloof altogether, and Faizula Khan, the son of the first founder of the Rohilla power, Ali Mohammad, and in every way the most respectable of the clan, though he would not desert an old friend in his hour of need, yet strongly disapproved of his proceedings, and urged him to fulfil his compact and pay the Vazir's claim. The bribe by which Zabita had been detached from the confederacy, was an a.s.signment of the district in the neighbourhood of Meerut, which had cleared itself of Mahratta occupation under the late Vazir's rule.

1774. - In October, 1773, the fort of Etawa fell, and the last Mahratta forces were driven from the Doab. The next two or three months were occupied in vain negotiations on the part of the Vazir with the Rohillas; and in more serious combinations with the Imperial Government, and with the British. And in January, 1774, the allied armies moved forward. On the 12th of April the British entered Rohilkand; the Protector, when finally summoned to pay what he owed, having replied by a levee en ma.s.se of all who would obey his summons. At the same time, the Emperor ordered out a column which he accompanied for a few marches; and issued patents confirming the Vazir Shujaa-ud-daula in his Doab conquests, as also in the grant already made by the British of Korah and Allahabad. This latter circ.u.mstance removes all ground for calling in question the cession of those provinces by their temporary masters, and shows that the Emperor was conscious of his own inability to hold them, or to grant them to enemies of Audh and of England.

On the 23rd of the same month (April) the British army completely surprised the camp of the Protector, who was defeated and slain, after a brave but brief resistance at Kattra. Faizula was pardoned and maintained in his own patrimonial fief of Rampur (still held by his descendants), while the rest of the province was occupied, with but little further trouble, by the Vazir, in strict conformity to an Imperial firman to that effect.

The army of the Empire, under Mirza Najaf Khan, the Deputy Vazir, had not arrived in time to partic.i.p.ate actively in this brief campaign; but the Vazir acknowledged the importance of the moral support that he had received from the Empire by remitting to court a handsome fine, on his invest.i.ture with the administration of the conquered territory. He also gave the Mirza some reinforcement, to aid him in his pending operations against the Jats of Bhartpur. Zabita Khan was at the same time expelled from his lately acquired fief at Meerut, but was again put in charge next year; a proof, were proof required, of the weakness of the Home administration of Majad-ud-daulah, who (it need hardly be said) received a bribe on the occasion.

Antic.i.p.ating a little, we may notice that the Viceroy of Audh, at the very climax of his good fortune, met the only enemy whom neither force can subdue nor policy deceive. Shujaa-ud-daulah died in January, 1775; and as it was not possible for so conspicuous a public character to pa.s.s away without exciting popular notice, the following explanation of the affair was circulated at the time; which, whether a fact or a fiction, deserves to be mentioned as the sort of ending which was considered in his case probable and appropriate. It was believed that, the family of Rahmat Khan having fallen into his hands, Shujaa-ud-daulah sent for one of the fallen chief's daughters, and that the young lady, in the course of the interview, avenged the death of her father by stabbing his conqueror with a poisoned knife. ”Although,” says the author of the Siar-ul-Mutakharin, who is the authority for the story, ”there may be no foundation of truth in this account, yet it was at the time as universally believed as that G.o.d is our Refuge.”

The editor of the Calcutta translation of 1789 a.s.serts that he had satisfactory proof of the truth of this story. The Viceroy died of a cancer in the groin; and the women of his Zanana, who were let out on the occasion, and with one of whom he (the translator) was acquainted, had made a song upon the subject.

They gave full particulars of the affair, and stated that the young lady - she was only seventeen - had been put to death on the day the Viceroy received the wound. (S. U. M., III. 268.)

The death of the Viceroy-Vazir, however occasioned, was a serious blow to the reduced Empire of Dehli, which was just then beginning to enjoy a gleam of suns.h.i.+ne such as had not visited it since the day when Mir Mannu and the eldest son of Mohammad Shah defeated the Abdali, in 1743. Had the career of Shujaa-ud-daulah been prolonged a few years, it is possible that his ambitious energy, supported by British skill and valour, and kept within bounds by Mirza Najaf Khan's loyal and upright character, would have effectually strengthened the Empire against the Mahrattas, and altered the whole subsequent course of Indian history.

But Shujaa's son and successor was a weak voluptuary, who never left his own provinces; and although the Mirza, his deputy in the Vazirs.h.i.+p and real loc.u.m tenens, received for his lifetime the reward of his merits, yet he was unable of himself to give a permanent consolidation to the tottering fabric.

It has been seen that he was meditating a campaign against the Jats, whom Zabita's recent fall had again thrown into discontent, when summoned to Rohilkand, in 1774. In fact, he had already wrested from them the fort of Agra, and occupied it with a garrison of his own, under a Moghul officer, Mohammad Beg, of Hamadan. Not daunted by this reverse, Ranjit Singh, the then ruler of that bold tribe the Jats, advanced upon the capital, and occupied Sikandrabad with 10,000 horse. The forces left in Dehli consisted of but 5,000 horse and two battalions of sepoys; but they sufficed to expel the intruder. He shortly afterwards, however, returned, reinforced by the regulars and guns under Sumroo; but by this time the Mirza was returned from Rohilkand, and after the rains of 1774, marched against them, aided by a chief from Hariana, named after himself Najaf Kuli Khan, who brought into the field some 10,000 troops. This man, who was a good soldier and a faithful follower of the minister, was a converted Hindu, of the Rathur tribe; a native of the Bikanir country bordering on Rajputana Proper to the south, and to the north on Hariana and other states immediately surrounding the metropolis. Having been in service at Allahabad, under the father of Mohammad Kuli, the connection and early patron of the Mirza, he became a Mohammadan under the sponsors.h.i.+p of the latter, and ever after continued a member of his household. At the time of which I write, he had been appointed to the charge of districts returning twenty lakhs a year, with the t.i.tle of Saif-ud-daulah.

The departure of the Mirza for this campaign was extremely agreeable to the Diwan, Majad-ud-daulah, for he never lost an opportunity of prejudicing the Emperor's mind against this powerful rival, in whose recent appointment to the office of Naib Vazir, moreover, he had found a special disappointment. Indeed, Shah Alam, between these two ministers, was like the hero of medival legend between his good and evil angels; only differing in this, that in his case the good influence was also, to a great extent, the most powerful. What the wily Kashmirian might have done in the way of supplanting the Mirza, if the latter had been signally worsted, and he himself had been otherwise fortunate, cannot now be certainly conjectured, for a fresh revolt of Zabita's summoned the Diwan to the northward, whilst his rival was successfully engaged with the Jats. In this expedition Majad-ud-daulah displayed a great want of spirit and of skill, so that Zabita became once more extremely formidable. Fortunately at this crisis Dehli was visited by an envoy, soliciting invest.i.ture for the new Viceroy of Audh, Asaf-ud-daulah. Accompanying the emba.s.sy was a force of 5,000 good troops, with a train of artillery, the whole under command of the deceased Shujaa's favourite general, Latafat Khan. This timely reinforcement saved the metropolis, and allowed of a settlement being made with the incorrigible Zabita, which preserved, to some extent at least, the dignity of the Government (Vide next chapter).

Meanwhile the Imperialists had found the Jats, under their chieftain, intrenched near Hodal, a town sixty miles from Dehli, on the Mathra road. Dislodged from this, they fell back a few miles, and again took up a position in a fortified village called Kotban, where the Mirza endeavoured to blockade them. After amusing him with skirmishes for about a fortnight, they again fell back on Dig, a stronghold, to become the scene of still more important events a few years later. Dig - the name is perhaps a corruption of some such word as Dirajgarh - is a strong fort, with a beautiful palace and pleasure-grounds adjoining, on the sh.o.r.es of an artificial lake, fed by the drainage of part of the Alwar Highlands. Observing that the sallies of the Jats had ceased, the Mirza left their camp at Dig in his rear, and marched to Barsana, where a pitched battle was fought.

1775. - The van of the Imperialists was commanded by Najaf Kuli.

In the centre of the main line was the Mirza himself, with battalions of sepoys and artillery, under officers trained by the English in Bengal, on the two wings. In the rear was the Moghul cavalry. The enemy's regular infantry - 5,000 strong, and led by Sumroo - advanced to the attack, covered by clouds of Jat skirmishers, and supported by a heavy cannonade, to which the Mirza's artillery briskly replied, but from which he lost several of his best officers and himself received a wound. A momentary confusion ensued; but the Mirza, fervently invoking the G.o.d of Islam, presently charged the Jats at the head of the Moghul horse, who were, it will be remembered, his personal followers.

Najaf Kuli, accompanied by the regular infantry, following at the double, the Jats were broken; and the resistance of Sumroo's battalions only sufficed to cover the rout of the rest of the army, and preserve some appearance of order as he too retreated, though in somewhat better order, towards Dig. An immense quant.i.ty of plunder fell into the hands of the victors, who soon reduced the open country, and closely invested the beaten army. Such, however, was the store of grain in the Fort of Dig, that the strictest blockade proved fruitless for a twelvemonth; nor was the Fort finally reduced till the end of March, 1776, when the garrison found means - not improbably by connivance - to escape to the neighbouring castle of k.u.mbhair with portable property on elephants. The rest of the Thakur's wealth was seized by the victors - his silver plate, his stately equipages and paraphernalia, and his military chest, containing six lakhs of rupees - which may perhaps be regarded as not very inferior, in relative value, to a quarter of a million sterling of our modern money.

In the midst of these successes, and whilst he was occupied in settling the conquered country, the Mirza received intelligence from Court that Zabita Khan, emboldened by his easy triumph over the Diwan, Majad-ud-daulah (Abdul Ahid Khan), had taken into his pay a large body of Sikhs, with whom he was about to march upon the metropolis.

The enterprising minister returned at once to Dehli, where he was received with high outward honour. He was, on this occasion, attended by the condottiere Sumroo, who, in his usual fas.h.i.+on, had transferred his battalions to the strongest side soon after the battle of Barsana. Sumroo's original patron, Mir Kasim, died about the same time, in the neighbourhood of Dehli, where he had settled, after years of skulking and misery, in the vain hope of obtaining employment in the Imperial service. The date of his death is given by Broome (Hist. of Beng. Army, p. 467) as 6th dune, 1777: it is added that his last shawl was sold to pay for a winding-sheet, and that his family were plundered of the last wreck of their possessions. But the detail of this year's events and their consequences requires a fresh chapter.

NOTE-The following is the text of the supplemental treaty of 1772, as given by Captain Hamilton. (The former portion having provided in general terms for an alliance, offensive and defensive.) ”The Vuzeer of the Empire shall establish the Rohillas, obliging the Mahrattas to retire, either by peace or war. If at any time they shall enter the country, their expulsion is the business of the Vuzeer. The Rohilla Sirdars, in consequence of the above to agree to pay to the Vuzeer forty lakhs of rupees, in manner following - viz., ten lakhs, in specie, and the remaining thirty lakhs in three years from the beginning of the year 1180 Fussulee.” Only redundant or unimportant phrases have been omitted: there is not a word of payment to the Mahrattas. The contention that the Vazir of Oudh was only surety for the payment to the Mahrattas is not very pertinent. For the Mahrattas did not quit Rohilcand till the Vazir expelled them, and the money was not paid. But, as we have seen, the gloss is unsupported. Besides Hamilton, Tarikh-i-Mozafari and Francklin's ”Shah Alum” have been the chief authorities for this chapter.

CHAPTER IV.