India Through the Ages Part 46

He was a man who had travelled all over Central Asia, who was in every way qualified for his task. Unfortunately, or fortunately, he was too well qualified for carrying out the simple commercial instructions with which the English Government had tentatively, perhaps timidly, entrusted him. But the discovery of Russian intrigues in full swing at the Kabul court sent commerce to the right-about. Burnes was in the thick of diplomacy without delay, and ere long formal questioning and reply was going on between Russian and English amba.s.sadors regarding the former's influence on the Indian borderland, which elicited a categorical denial of any ulterior object on the part of Russia.

But Dost-Mahomed for all that refused to accede to England's somewhat impertinent request, that he should dismiss the Russian agent from his court. And so began a quarrel which is barely settled to-day.

Sir Alexander Burnes left Kabul in dudgeon, and almost immediately after his departure matters came to a crisis by the Persians--avowed allies of Russia--besieging Herat. Now, Herat was considered by diplomatists and the military alike the key of India, and in 1838, after many _pour parlers_, manifestoes, and embroglios, the combined armies of the tripart.i.te alliance, that is to say, the British, the Sikhs, and Shah-Sujah, marched on the Punjab to reinstate the latter on his long-vacated throne in Kabul. In all the long history of India no more unwarrantable invasion was ever undertaken, though half a hundred good reasons were given for it at the time, and could be found for its defence even now by those who fail to see that Dost-Mahomed was, as Eastern potentates go, quite a decent ruler. There is but one possible excuse. England chose her career deliberately, thinking not at all of Afghanistan, but of Russia.

After a halt at Ferozepore, where the allies a.s.sembled and where festivities were held, Runjeet-Singh, an old man now, blind of one eye, desperately marked with smallpox, and inconceivably ugly, tripped over a carpet, to the horror of his court (who considered it an evil omen), and fell flat on his nose at the feet of a big English gun he was examining; and where, also, Henry Havelock, one of the new school of the Church-Militant, exclaimed in horror at "the ladies of a British Governor-General 'watching' choral and dancing prost.i.tutes"

(surely a somewhat over high-toned description of that deadliest of dull and decorous entertainments, an Indian _nautch_). After all this a fairly-triumphant march was made through Scinde (where the Ameer of that country, after a distinct promise that no riverside forts should be touched, was fairly diddled out of the one at Bukkhur, on the shameless plea that it stood on an island), through Quetta to Kandahar and Ghuzni (which made a good resistance); so to Kabul, which was entered on the 7th August 1839, when Shah-Sujah ran about the pa.s.sages of the Bala-Hissar palace like a child, clapping his hands with delight at finding himself back again after thirty years' absence.

So far good. But, meanwhile, Runjeet-Singh had died, and our rear was endangered by the almost open enmity of his successor. Thus a limited garrison, only, had to be left in Kabul; and in addition, Dost-Mahomed's first flight had proved to be but a prelude to desperate resistance. Still, armed occupation was held of the town of Kabul, cantonments were built for the British regiments and sepoys which formed the garrison, in which the troops pa.s.sed the winter and summer of 1841 in comfort. Then came disaster.

What caused the outbreak is a mystery. So far as one can judge, it began in private revenge upon Sir Alexander Burnes. His house was the first attacked on the 2nd November 1841 by a mob thirsting for blood and plunder. He attempted to calm them by harangue. He offered large sums for his own and his brother's escape, but they were both cut down, every sepoy murdered, every man, woman, or child on the premises brutally killed.

And here follows _in petto_ an antic.i.p.ation of what occurred some fifteen years later, when a like ma.s.sacre broke out at Meerut in 1857.

A general paralysis seems to have attacked those in authority. Here, there, everywhere, in isolated posts, Englishman and sepoy fought together and fell together bravely; but at headquarters decision disappeared, and Brigadier Shelton finally settled, weakly, to hold the cantonments, instead of retiring on the fortified and almost impregnable Bala-Hissar, where there was a plentiful store of provision. The mistake was fatal. Within a month a treaty had to be signed which was practically unconditional surrender. Dost-Mahomed was to be reinstated; Shah-Sujah allowed to follow his friends back to India. "The terms secured," writes Sir William McNaghten, "were the best obtainable." At any rate, at the time, it was hoped that they would save the lives of some fifteen thousand human beings. But fate was against it. Sir William McNaghten, failing in a side-intrigue which, even had it succeeded, would have been barely possible with honour, was foully murdered, and on the 6th of January about four thousand five hundred fighting-men and twelve thousand camp followers, men, women, and children, were driven out into the inclement winter cold to find their way, as best they could, over peak and pa.s.s back to Hindustan.

The horrors of that terrible march will scarcely bear telling. Over three thousand found freedom at once by being ma.s.sacred, wantonly ma.s.sacred by mountain tribes in the first pa.s.s; the rest, without food, without fuel, without tents, pressed on, fighting fiercely as they forced their way eastwards.

It was on the 13th of January that the English garrison at Jellalabad, looking out up the pa.s.ses, saw one man swaying in his saddle, scarce able to keep his seat, urging his jaded, outworn pony eastward, still eastward!

It was Dr Bryden, the only man who came through. But he brought the welcome news that some women and children, and a few men, were prisoners, and so far safe.

Naturally, there was no more question now as to the rights or wrongs of war. These captives had to be rescued, and punishment meted out to many murderers. Both objects were accomplished within the year, but not by Lord Auckland; for Lord Ellenborough succeeded him at the time of the Kabul disaster, when matters were at their worst. There was some difficulty in finding a candidate for the throne. Shah-Sujah himself had in the interval been shot through the head, and his son, whom the mob of Kabul had first set up as a puppet-king and then imprisoned, had no stomach for further sovereignty. A younger member of the family was, however, eventually found willing to face a.s.sa.s.sination for the sake of a doubtful crown.

His kingship, which only lasted till the British forces were withdrawn, at least secured the preservation of the Bala-Hissar, which otherwise, as a punishment to Kabul, would have been razed to the ground; as it was, the Great Bazaar, a building entirely devoted to commerce, was destroyed instead, possibly because Sir William McNaghten's body had been exposed upon it.

Thus, in 1843, the first Afghan war came to an end with the absurd incident of the Gates of Somnath. These were supposed to be still hung at the entrance of Mahomed-the-Despoiler's tomb at Ghuzni. So, with an odd mixture of sham Orientalism and latter-day romanticism, they were taken down, carried back to India to form the subject of a most marvellous effusion addressed to the chiefs and peoples of India, which goes by the name of "Ellenborough's Song of Triumph," in which these gates, "so long the memorial of your national humiliation," are said to have "become the proudest record of your national glory!"

And after all, they were _not_ the Gates of Somnath!

Almost immediately after this the relations with Scinde became strained. The Ameer had, in truth, just cause of complaint in a breach of treaty regarding the pa.s.sage of troops across the Indus, and after much discussion the sword became the only possible arbiter. So Sir Charles Napier commenced the war which, conducted by consummate skill throughout, ended virtually with the victory of Miani and the annexation of Scinde.

It was towards the end of the next little war, this time with Scindiah, that Lord Ellenborough was recalled, and Sir Henry Hardinge, being sent to govern in his stead, found himself instantly plunged in a war of far greater magnitude with the Sikhs, with whom, after the death of old Runjeet-Singh, friendly relations had ceased. In truth, the kingdom was in a state of tumult. The army, which consisted of almost the whole nation (since every Sikh is by birth and faith a fighter), realising that the whole power was virtually in its hands, clamoured for new conquests. Dhuleep-Singh, the heir, was a minor; his mother, nominally guardian, had no influence, and finally, forced by circ.u.mstances, gave her consent to an invasion of British territory.

It was an unprovoked, and yet not altogether unwelcome a.s.sault, and it met with instant and overpowering reply. On the 13th December 1845 the Sikh army crossed the Sutlej in force, and on the very same day a British proclamation was issued, formally declaring that all possessions of Maharajah Dhuleep-Singh, on the British bank of the river, were annexed. Swift battle followed. At Moodki on the 18th December, on the 22nd at Ferozeshah, on the 20th January at Aliwal; finally, the 10th February saw the last stand made at Sobraon, a village which stood then on the eastern bank of the sliding river. It stands now on the western, for the Sutlej has shifted.

Swift, and short, and sure, was the campaign, curiously enough leaving little of rancour behind it amongst the tall, upstanding Sikhs. "You were so much better than we were," said an old Sikh worthy, who had gone through the four defeats, as he showed an infinitesimal slice of his little finger tip; "just so much--no more! but you were better led." And the keen old eyes ranged cheerfully over the wide wheat plain, intersected by silver-shining streaks of sliding river, that had once been the battle-field of Sobraon, and the old voice went on exultingly over the tale of how he had knelt to receive the British cavalry at Aliwal, and knelt on, through three consecutive charges, until he had fallen unconscious amongst his dead comrades.

A treaty of peace was signed at Lah.o.r.e twelve days after Sobraon, which stipulated for the formal cession of the whole Cis-Sutlej country and an indemnity of 1,500,000, 500,000 of which was to be paid immediately, and the remaining 1,000,000 to be discharged by the cession of Kashmir and Hazara.

This practically ended Lord Hardinge's Governor-Generalship, and late in 1847 Lord Dalhousie took up the office.

The whole of the next year was taken up with a war in Scinde which spread to the northern half of the Punjab beyond Lah.o.r.e, which--despite the cession of Hazara--still remained practically unsubdued. After the taking of Multan and the defeat of Mulraj's troops, Lord Gough marched northwards against Shere-Singh, defeated him at Ramnuggar, fought an indecisive battle against him at Chillianwala, and finally, on the 21st February 1849, at Gujerat, completely annihilated the Sikh army, taking all their guns.

Resistance was thus at an end, and the Punjab as far as Peshawar was coloured red in the map of India.

The proclamation of the Governor-General in announcing the fact is worthy of quotation as a finish to the long history of English dealings with Hindustan.

"The Government of India formerly declared that it decreed no further conquest, and it proved by its acts the sincerity of its profession.

The Government of India has no desire for conquest now; but it is bound in its duty to provide fully for its own security and to guard the interests of those committed to its charge. To that end, and as the only sure mode of protecting the state from the perpetual recurrence of unprovoked and wasting wars, the Governor-General is compelled to resolve upon the entire subjection of a people whom their own Government has long been unable to control, and whom (as events have now shown) no punishment can deter from violence, no act of friendship can conciliate to peace."

The question arises, how much of this admirable effusion is strictly true? In the case of the Punjab there can be no doubt that the Sikhs began the struggle by wanton and unprovoked a.s.sault. But was this always so? Certainly not always. Yet once begun, there was no possibility of turning back in England's career of annexation. She had put her hand to the plough, she was driving a Western furrow over the uncultivated wilds of the East, and as she sowed and scattered seed, the necessity for protecting the crop-scanty though it was at first--arose immediate and insistent.

People say England has brought poverty to India. Perhaps she has.

Poverty is the handmaid of so-called civilisation. But she has also brought peace--and population!

MANNERS, MORALS, AND MISSIONARIES

A.D. 1850 TO A.D. 1857

Beyond the second Burmese war and the annexation of Oude there is little to be recorded in this short period of seven years. The former pa.s.sed on, as did every war, to annexation; yet once again there seems little doubt that this was brought about by obstinate refusal to keep the treaty which ensured "the utmost protection and security" to British ships trading to Burmese ports.

The question of the annexation of Oude, however, falls into another category, and is so often cited as one of the chief causes of the Great Mutiny of 1857, that it is best discussed among the many other reasons for resentment and rebellion which undoubtedly existed in India at this time. One of these was the change of manners in the ruling white-faced race.

In the old days of a good year's voyaging and sea-sickness round the Cape few women had been found to face it; and so the Englishmen in India had formed irregular connections with native women, often of very good birth. These connections, though, of course, contrary to our marriage laws, were not exactly immoral; they were, indeed, often as regular as the differing codes of Christianity, Hinduism, and Mahomedanism would allow. And, naturally, they greatly bridged over the gulf between the rulers and the ruled.

The short sea-pa.s.sage changed all this. English ladies came out in crowds, and seeing themselves surrounded by native sister-subjects who thought differently to what they did on almost every conceivable social subject, held up holy hands of horror at everything they saw, oblivious, apparently, of the obvious fact, that if the native sister appeared a bogey to them, they also must have been a bogey to the native sister.

She, however, by her very seclusion, was prevented from airing her opinion. Not so the Englishwomen and young girls who began to come to live amongst those who were generally called the heathen. There is no more charitable and kindly soul than the average British matron, and in the days before '57 she was beyond measure romantic. This was the time when, escaping from the stern rule of papa and mama, who had been ready with bread and water for "miss" if she refused an eligible _parti_, the English girl looked on Love with a big L, as something only a trifle less divine than the G.o.d whom she worshipped. She was not, therefore, likely to find anything but militant pity and charity for a social system which began by ignoring love as synonymous with pa.s.sion. Thus the Englishwoman was no factor for peace in the new order of things. Then the changes inaugurated by the inclusion of the "introduction of religious and moral improvement" as a licensable trade had borne much fruit. One has only to read missionary reports to find out how enormously organised effort to convert the people of India had increased since 1813, and still more from 1833. In the year 1840 Dr Duff's Christian college at Calcutta numbered over six hundred pupils, and in 1845 came the added interest to the cause of Missions brought by the great Evangelical movement, not only in the Church of England, but throughout all Europe. This wave of religiosity left no Christian sect untouched, and part of its result was the introduction into India of a race of Church-Militant officials, admirable in character, in work, who, despite their faithful performance of duties to Caesar which demanded absolute impartiality, could not divest themselves absolutely of their other duty (as they held it) to G.o.d; that is to say, to influence the natives for good--in other words, to Christianity. Without attempting praise or blame, it is impossible to deny that the example of such strong and militant Christians as the Lawrences, as Havelock, as half a hundred other well-known names, to say nothing of the hundreds of lesser-known ones who in civil stations and cantonments were encouraging mission work with all their might and main, must inevitably have attracted the attention of _pandits_ and _moulvies_, whose profession, whose bare living, was bound up in so-called heathendom.

Then, ever since the days of Lord William Bentinck, legislation had favoured the new faith. It will be remembered that he was mixed up with the mutiny at Vellore--a mutiny, if ever there was one, caused by abject fear of enforced conversion. His abolition of _suttee_, his tinkering with Indian law so as to free Hindu converts to Christianity from disabilities in succession (or as it has been put, "to free them from the trammels of their former superst.i.tions and secure them in the full possession of Christian freedom"), had pa.s.sed muster at the time, but as their effects became palpable, their interference in matters of custom and religion was resented. The very inauguration of female education was an offence, and as the years went on, bringing ever more and more missionary effort, and, above all, more support to that effort on the part of the ruling race, fear of wholesale conversion sprang up amongst the ignorant people, and was carefully fostered by the priests and preachers who had all to gain and nothing to lose by revolt.

And behind all this lay slumbering a great resentment. Say what folk would, be the excuse what it might, the fact remained that the last hundred years had seen every Indian prince reduced to the position of a pensioner, his land annexed. And the years between 1850 and 1857 produced a large crop of such annexations and usurpations. To begin with the petty state of Sattarah. When Pertap-Singh the ruler (given his chiefship by the British who hunted him up, prisoned, poverty-stricken) had to be deposed childless, England forebore to annex, and placed a brother on the cushion of State; but when that brother, also childless, adopted a son but a few hours before his death, she refused to recognise his right to do so in regard to the succession. Such a son was legal heir to personal property, but Sattarah, being a dependency, could not by Indian law pa.s.s by adoption without the permission of the lord-paramount, which in this case had not been asked. Legally, she was right; but the sting of annexation rankled.

Then the case of Kerowli occurred, in which adoption was made without permission; but here the Governor-General's order was over-ruled by the Directors, who held that though "Sattarah had been originally a gift and creation of the British Government, Kerowli was one of the oldest Rajput states, and merited different treatment." Annexation was not, therefore, carried out; but the very considerateness of the decision intensified feeling in the other case.

Following this came the Jhansi case, involving an area of about 2,000 square miles. Here, again, no issue--almost no collateral relationships--was the cause of an unauthorised adoption which, because the chiefship was, again, a creation of the English, was held inadmissible.

Then, as if these three almost forced annexations, occurring in 1849,1852, and 1853 respectively, were not enough to d.a.m.n British policy in the eyes of disaffection, yet another case came up for settlement in 1853; for on the 11th of December died Ragoji-Bonsla, the Rajah of Berar. He left neither issue nor collateral heir, neither had he attempted to supply their place by adoption; thus the question of the state lapsing to the Crown arose in its simplest and clearest form. The decision was, naturally, that by the Rajah's "death _without any heir whatever_, the possession of his territories has reverted to the British Government which gave them"; a decision without any doubt legal.

Now, ere pa.s.sing on to the annexation of Oude, which stands on a totally different footing, it is as well to notice the drift of what may be read between the lines of this long record of princ.i.p.alities pa.s.sing by lack of heirs of the body to the lord-paramount. What does it mean? Doubtless, it points first to degeneracy, to the fading away of families which is due to dissolute life. But this life in high places was no new thing; the English had found it rampant when they came. Therefore some other reason for the necessity of State interference must be found. What was this?

Plainly, on the very face of things, the answer is to be found. It was the order, the law, the freedom from conspiracy, a.s.sa.s.sination, self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, which English protection had ensured. In the old times an heirless rajah of past fifty would have been the centre of a s.n.a.t.c.hing crowd of n.o.bles, and the strongest would have a.s.serted his right, and possibly hurried on the death of the dying king, or ever the lord-paramount had time to interfere; and then a payment in gold would have satisfied authority! So degeneracy did not matter; a new family always took the place of the dead one.

Now there was a hard and fast law which had to be obeyed by king and subject alike; a bitter lesson for any Oriental to learn, whose very idea of kingship is its superiority to order.

The trouble in Oude began--when did it not begin!

In 1760 Sujah-ud-daula, its hereditary wazir, well beaten by the Company for aggression on Bengal, ceded Allahabad and Korah, but was left undisputed master of the rest of his territories. In 1768, again in consequence of defeat, he was bound over to reduce his army. In 1773 he once more bound himself to further dependence in return for troops. In 1775 Sujah-ud-daula died, and his son Asaf-ud-daula, in return for "good consideration," ceded territory as perpetual payment of the said troops, and afterwards, by various treaties, promised, in return for the guarantee of the possession, protection, and administration of Oude, to govern "in such a manner as would be conducive to the prosperity of his subjects"; also, to act on the advice of the British Government. Sa'adut-Ali, his successor, ratified these treaties, and showed, by the mere fact of his ama.s.sing treasure to the amount of 14,000,000 during his reign of fifteen years, that they were not, at least, pecuniarily hard. Ghazi-ud-din, the next Nawab or wazir, regained a certain independence, not by treaty, but by loaning out his father's millions to the Company. The sop of being allowed to a.s.sert his independence of Delhi and call himself King was thrown to him; but he was no ruler, and the aid of British troops being refused him, "except in support of just and legitimate demands,"

he defied the treaty which limited his own army, and kept sixty thousand native troops, two-thirds of whom were entirely without discipline, living naturally by rapine and robbery. His son Nasir-ud-din, hopeless debauchee, continued and increased these evils, drawing down on himself the solemn warning of Lord William Bentinck in 1829, that deposition must surely follow on such misrule.

Unfortunately, however, advice how to rule was refused, and on Nasir-ud-din's death--of course without issue--advantage was taken of the accession of the old man--almost in his dotage--Nasir-ud-daula, to obtain a fresh and still more stringent treaty, by which, if misrule continued, the British Government reserved the '_right to administer, rendering account to the Nawab_,' and so far as possible maintaining existing forms so as to '_facilitate the future restoration of power to its rightful owner_.' In other words the Nawab was, if contumacious, to be put under trustees for the time. This was in 1837.

At Nasir-ud-daula's death in 1842 his son succeeded, and in 1847 another son rose to the throne by his brother's death--of course without issue. Now Wajid-Ali-Shah, the last Nawab or King of Oude, was utterly worthless. One has but to read the journal of the Resident, General Sleeman, to recognise how hopeless was the problem of peace, prosperity, or progress, under his rule. Surrounded by fiddlers, prost.i.tutes, poetasters, eunuchs, he wasted half the revenues on these creatures, by whom he was led about, a silly imbecile, with drugged brain and diseased body.

"There is not, I believe," writes General Sleeman--a man of infinite knowledge of the native, infinite sympathy with them--"another Government in India so entirely opposed to the best interests and most earnest wishes of the people as that of Oude now is. People of all cla.s.ses have become utterly weary of it."