Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

[1824-1826 A.D.] Ava." This important place was taken possession of almost without striking a blow; but the hope of the governor-general that from thence he should be able to dictate the terms of a moderate and therefore lasting peace, was not very quickly realised. The British had to deal with the most warlike of their neighbours. The king of Ava called his people to arms. During the rainy season they had abundant time for preparation; and Sir Archibald Campbell, who occupied Rangoon, felt the immediate necessity of fortifying it against the probable attack of a bold and persevering enemy. An enormous pagoda, more than three hundred feet high, became a citadel, garrisoned by a battalion of European troops, and the smaller Buddhist temples assumed the character of fortresses. During June and July the Burmese made repeated attacks upon the British positions, but were as constantly repelled. On the night of the 30th of August, when the astrologers had decided that an attack upon this sacred place would free the country from the impious strangers, a body of troops called Invulnerables advanced to the northern gateway. A terrible cannonade was opened upon these dense masses, and they fled at once to the neighbouring jungle.

The Burmese were more successful in their offensive operations in Bengal. Under the command of an officer called Maha Bandoola, the Arakan army advanced to Ramoo, and completely routed a detachment of native infantry. The alarm was so great in Calcutta that the native merchants were with difficulty persuaded to remain with their families, and the peasants almost universally fled from their villages. The Burmese, however, did not advance. The British had taken some important places of the Burman territory, and Maha Bandoola was recalled by the lord of the White Elephant for the defence of his Golden Empire. In December Maha Bandoola brought sixty thousand fighting men to make one overwhelming attack upon Rangoon. For seven days there was severe fighting. The Burmese troops were repeatedly driven from their stockades, and at last, when they advanced on the 7th of December for a grand attack on the great pagoda, they were driven back into their intrenchments, and after severe fighting were chased into the jungle.

In February, 1825, Sir Archibald Campbell began to move up the Irawadi into the interior of the Burman Empire. As part of his force advanced to attack the formidable works of Donabew, they were repulsed, and the retreat was so precipitate that the wounded men were not carried off. The barbarity in warfare of the Burmese was notorious. These unfortunate men were all crucified, and their bodies sent floating down the river upon rafts. On the 25th of March Sir Archibald Campbell undertook the siege of Donabew. For a week there had been an incessant fire from the British mortars and rockets, and the breaching batteries were about to be opened, when two Lascars, who had been taken prisoners, came to the camp, and said that the chiefs and all the Burmese army had fled, since Maha Bandoola had been killed the day before by one of the British shells. By the possession of Donabew the navigation of the Irawadi became wholly under British command.

The army continued to advance, and Prome was occupied at the end of April. The rainy monsoon now set in, and there was a suspension of operations. In the middle of November and beginning of December there were two great battles, in the latter of which the Burmese were thoroughly discomfited. Overtures of peace were now made, but their object was only to gain time. At the beginning of 1826 there was severe fighting as the British advanced towards Ava. Repeated defeats and the approach of a conquering army compelled the king really to sue for peace when the British had reached Yandabu, only forty-five miles from the capital. The vigorous operations of Sir Archi

[1826 A.D.] bald Campbell, who had defeated a large army styled "the retrievers of the king's glory," had finally compelled the Treaty of Yandabu, which was signed on the 24th of February. By this treaty the king of Ava agreed to renounce all claims upon the principality of Assam and its dependencies; to cede in perpetuity the conquered provinces of Arakan, of Yea, of Tavoy, of Mergui, and of Tenasserim; and to pay the sum of one crore of rupees towards the expenses of the war. He further agreed that accredited British ministers should be allowed to reside at Ava; that an accredited Burmese minister should reside at Calcutta; and that free trade to British subjects should be allowed in the Burmese dominions.

The fierce conflict of two years on the banks of the Irawadi presented a memorable example of that courage and endurance which eventually overcomes dangers and difficulties apparently insuperable. It has been truly said by Lieutenant-Colonel Tulloch, an officer engaged in this war, "Perhaps there are few instances on record in the history of any nation of a mere handful of men, with constitutions broken down by many months of previous disease and privation, forcing their way in the face of such difficulties, and through a wilderness hitherto untrodden by Europeans, to the distance of five hundred miles from the spot where they originally disembarked, and ultimately dictating a peace within three days' march of the enemy's capital." During these land operations, with all this bravery and fortitude of the little army, it would have been impossible to succeed without the active co-operation of a flotilla on the rivers. The naval assistance thus rendered is memorable for "the employment of a power then for the first time introduced into war steam. The steam-vessel had been very useful, not merely in carrying on communications with despatch but in overcoming formidable resistance."

During the last year of the Burmese War the East India Company became engaged in a new conflict, for the purpose of protecting a native prince, with whom it was in alliance, against an usurper. The rajah of Bhartpur (Bhurtpore), before his death at the beginning of 1825, had declared his son to be his successor, and had included him in the treaty of alliance with the company. The nephew of the deceased prince raised a revolt against this succession. Many of the native princes looked on anxiously to see if the British, with the Burmese War on their hands would put forth any strength to maintain one of their devoted adherents. In the streets of Delhi the populace had shouted, "The rule of the company is at an end." The prince who had been expelled had been assured by Sir David Ochterlony that he should be supported. Lord Amherst was at first for non-interference. He knew that Bhartpur had been deemed impregnable; and he might fear that, now occupied with an enormous force by the usurping rajah, the same ill fortune might befall an attack upon the place as had befallen Lord Lake in 1805, when he was beaten from the city by the Jats, who had ever since regarded themselves as invincible. The commander-in-chief in India, Lord Combermere, in his Peninsular experience as Sir Stapleton Cotton, had seen what war was in its most difficult operations, and he could not despair of taking an Indian fortress when he recollected the terrible sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. He had just come to India to succeed Sir Edward Paget in the chief command. Lord Combermere, upon his arrival before Bhartpur, addressed a letter to the usurper, requesting him to send out the women and children, who should have safe-conduct. This humane request was not acceded to. On the 23rd of November the bombardment commenced. On the morning of the 18th of January the assault began at the signal given by the explosion of a mine, which utterly destroyed the whole of the salient angle of the fortress. The British troops

[1828-1835 A.D.] rushed in at the breaches. In two hours the whole rampart, though obstinately defended, was in their possession, and early in the afternoon the citadel surrendered. The formidable works of Bhartpur were destroyed; the rightful prince was reinstated; and the people returned to their allegiance.

REFORMS OF LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK

The next governor-general was Lord William Bentinck, who had been governor of Madras twenty years earlier at the time of the mutiny of Vellore. His seven years' rule (from 1828 to 1835) is not signalised by any of those victories or extensions of territory by which chroniclers delight to measure the growth of empire. But it forms an epoch in administrative reform, and in the slow process by which the hearts of a subject population are won over to venerate as well as dread their alien rulers. The modern history of the British in India, as benevolent administrators ruling the country with a single eye to the good of the natives, may be said to begin with Lord William Bentinck. According to the inscription upon his statue at Calcutta, from the pen of Macaulay, "He abolished cruel rites; he effaced humiliating distinctions; he gave liberty to the expression of public opinion; his constant study it was to elevate the intellectual and moral character of the nations committed to his charge." His first care on arrival in India was to restore equilibrium to the finances, which were tottering under the burden imposed upon them by the Burmese War. This he effected by reductions in permanent expenditure, amounting in the aggregate to one and a half millions sterling, as well as by augmenting the revenue from land and from the opium of Malwa.

His two most memorable acts are the abolition of sati (suttee) and the suppression of the thags (thugs). At this distance of time it is difficult to realise the degree to which these two barbarous practices had corrupted the social system of the Hindus. European research has clearly proved that the text in the Vedas adduced to authorise the immolation of widows was a wilful mistranslation. But the practice had been ingrained in Hindu opinion by the authority of centuries, and had acquired the sanctity of a religious rite. The emperor Akbar is said to have prohibited it by law, but the early English rulers did not dare so far to violate the traditions of religious toleration. In the year 1817 no less than seven hundred widows are said to have been burned alive in the Bengal presidency alone. To this day the most holy spots of Hindu pilgrimage are thickly dotted with little white pillars, each commemorating a sati. In the teeth of strenuous opposition, both from Europeans and natives, Lord William carried the regulation in council on December 4th, 1829, by which all who abetted sati were declared guilty of "culpable homicide." The honour of suppressing thagi must be shared between Lord William and Captain Sleeman. Thagi was an abnormal excrescence upon Hinduism, in so far as the bands of secret assassins were sworn together by an oath based on the rites of the bloody goddess Kali. Between 1826 and 1835 as many as 1562 thags were apprehended in different parts of British India, and by the evidence of approvers the moral plague spot was gradually stamped out.

Two other historical events are connected with the administration of Lord William Bentinck. In 1833 the charter of the East India Company was renewed for twenty years, but only upon the terms that it should abandon its trade and permit Europeans to settle freely in the country. At the same time a legal or fourth member was added to the governor-general's council, who might not be a servant of the company, and a commission was appointed to revise and codify the law. Macaulay was the first legal member of the

[1828-1835 A.D.] council, and the first president of the law commission. In 1830 it was found necessary to take the state of Mysore under British administration, where it has continued up to the present time, and in 1834 the frantic misrule of the rajah of Coorg brought on a short and sharp war. The rajah was permitted to retire to Benares, and the brave and proud inhabitants of that mountainous little territory decided to place themselves under the rule of the company; so that the only annexation effected by Lord William Bentinck was "in consideration of the unanimous wish of the people."

Sir Charles (afterwards Lord) Metcalfe succeeded Lord William as senior member of council. His short term of office is memorable for the measure which his predecessor had initiated, but which he willingly carried into execution, for giving entire liberty to the press. Public opinion in India, as well as the express wish of the court of directors at home, pointed to Metcalfe as the most fit person to carry out the policy of Bentinck, not provisionally, but as governor-general for a full term. Party exigencies, however, led to the appointment of Lord Auckland. From that date commences a new era of war and conquest, which may be said to have lasted for twenty years. All looked peaceful until Lord Auckland, prompted by his evil genius, attempted to place Shah Shuja upon the throne of Cabul, an attempt which ended in the gross mismanagement and annihilation of the garrison placed in that city. The disaster in Afghanistan was quickly followed by the conquest of Sind, the two wars in the Punjab, the second Burmese War, and last of all the Mutiny. Names like Gough and Napier and Colin Campbell take the places of Malcolm and Metcalfe and Elphinstone."

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small]
[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]

In 1835, Lord William Bentinck resigned the government of India, and Lord Auckland was appointed to succeed him, but did not arrive at Calcutta until the following year. In the meantime, the administration was conducted by Sir Charles Metcalfe, who distinguished himself by abolishing the strict censorship to which the press had till then been subjected.

Hindustan had never been in a more tranquil state than at the time when Lord Auckland arrived at Calcutta, in 1836, invested with the high functions of governor-general of the British eastern empire. All then appeared to promise a continuance of peace, and the uninterrupted progress of those improvements so steadily and effectually pursued by his predecessor; but the calm was not of long duration, and the attention of the government was soon engrossed by the affairs of Kabul, which led the British armies for the first time across the Indus.b

THE AFGHAN WAR OF 1838-1842

On the 10th of September, 1838, Lord Auckland proclaimed in general orders his intention to employ a force beyond the northwest frontier. On the 1st of October he published a declaration of the causes and objects of the war. The ostensible object was to replace Shah Shuja on the throne of Kabul, the troubles and revolutions of Afghanistan having placed the capital and a large part of the country under the sway of Dost Muhammed Khan. Shah Shuja, driven from his dominions, had become a pensioner of the East India Company, and resided in the British cantonment of Ludhiana. Dost Muhammed had in May, 1836, addressed a letter to Lord Auckland, which conveyed his desire to secure the friendship of the British government. He was desirous

« ElőzőTovább »