ble prowess, were attributed the inaction of the army which had been sent. The truth, which lay in heavy continuous rain, bad food, and a country which became a flooded morass, was credited by none. The English, who had crushed Mahrattas, Patáns, and Pindhárees in a single campaign, lay, it was actually believed, helpless before an enemy who slew their soldiers by Absurd incantation, or prevented them from 'raising their feet,' credulity. and so confined them to a narrow strip of coast, where all must inevitably perish. No reports on this subject, however absurd, were too gross for credence, and by them many hopes were awakened among the military classes, now unemployed, with whom war and rapine had been the hereditary occupation of centuries. The English would, no doubt, persevere in the Burmese war; but they would sacrifice their army, and then-the old flags would be raised, and the result would not a second time be doubtful. Many strange crises of native feelings had from time to time arisen in India; but it is questionable whether any more universally experienced, or in which the truth was more hopelessly obscured and denied, was ever before encountered. There is always, however, a culminating point in such periods of excitement, and in this instance it appeared at Bhurtpoor. peace Doorjun Sal State. Sir David proceedings. No disaffection had been manifested by the Játs since Lord Lake's with them in 1805; but their rajah was Affairs of dead, his son had succeeded, and his heir, a boy of Bhurtpoor, tender age, had been recognised by the government of India at his special request, and a political officer had assisted at the ceremony. Hardly a year had elapsed before the boy succeeded his father; but Doorjun Sál, his cousin, set him usurps the aside, and confined him, placing himself at the head of the troops, and proclaiming his own succession. Sir David Ochterlony-who held the office of political agent to the governor-general in Northern India, was perfectly Ochterlony s aware of the existing feeling among the native military classes, and saw that any successful adventurer would draw tens of thousands of idle men to his standard for another struggle for dominion. He was prompt in action. He ordered an army of 16,000 men and 100 guns to support the nomination of the British Government, and would have attacked Bhurtpoor forthwith, but Lord Amherst prevented him. He was peremptorily ordered to recall the troops and the proclamation he had issued; and the veteran soldier and diplomatist, perceiving the animus of the order he had received, resigned his office, after writing an able protest, and retired to Meerut. He never recovered the indignity he had suffered, and died two months afterwards, as he said, of a broken heart. Sir Charles Metcalfe had been R R Death of Sir David summoned from Hyderabad in anticipation of Sir David's resignation, and eventually took charge of political affairs. There can be no doubt that Sir David Ochterlony's policy was the true one, and his sacrifice to satisfy a Calcutta party was an act of weakness on the part of the governor-general which was welcomed with avidity by the disaffected. There ensued only one comment on the transaction throughout India, the English are afraid to attack Bhurtpoor. Doorjun Sál, who would have yielded to a real show of force, would have submitted; the Ját chiefs would have rallied round their lawful prince; and the disaffected would have been overawed. As it was, they were encouraged; and in Native opinion in regard to English inaction; Sir Charles its results. a short time 25,000 men had engaged themselves, 'to fight the company behind the walls which had defied Lord Lake, the conqueror of Hindostan.' And not only this, but the whole of the north-west, with its seething crowds of petty chiefs and military adventurers, the lawless chieftains of Bundelkhund and Malwah, the Mahrattas of Sindia and Holkar, were, it was evident on the best grounds, prepared to support the rising should any chance of success appear. Lord Amherst and his council were dismayed; nor was it till the arrival of Sir Charles Metcalfe from Hyderabad that the effects of the panic minute. were redeemed. His minute on the subject is one of the finest of his state papers. He recorded that not only the interest, but the duty of the British Government to the people it had already rescued from anarchy, required the exercise of a bold, prompt, and uncompromising policy in regard to Bhurtpoor; and finally the governor-general and his council confirmed the opinion. There was no delay; 20,000 troops of all arms, with 100 pieces of artillery, took the field and marched upon Bhurtpoor, for the siege under the command of Lord Combermere, the comof Bhurtpoor. mander-in-chief. The army arrived on December 10, 1826, and the siege commenced. Sir Charles Metcalfe, who had joined Lord Combermere, again attempted to convince Doorjun Sál and the insurgents of their folly; but he could make no impression, they were too deeply compromised by intrigues at every native court in India to recede, and the siege operations progressed in earnest. Bhurtpoor had been much strengthened since the previous siege, which had exposed the weakness of some of the defences, and was impregnable before any ordinary attack. The heaviest artillery made no impression upon its immense walls and bastions, which were constructed of tenacious clay only and at length mining was resorted to-a course advised from the first by Lieutenant Forbes, of the Engineers, but previously rejected. On January 18, a great mine containing 10,000 pounds Preparations : Strength of the fort. and taken. of gunpowder, laid under the principal bastion and counterscarp of the ditch, was exploded, and the fort was stormed and Bhurtpoor captured in a few hours; 6,000 of the enemy perished is stormed in its defence, but the loss of the British did not exceed 1,000 of all ranks. Doorjun Sál was apprehended in an attempt to escape, and the boy rajah was placed upon his throne on January 20, 1826, by Sir Charles Metcalfe and the commander-in-chief. The fortifications were thrown down into the ditch, and the whole levelled with the adjacent ground. seized as So far the proceedings of the army had been glorious; but the public wealth and property of the family were seized Private as prize money by the forces, and, in the words of Sir property Charles Metcalfe, 'our plundering, under the name of prize-money. prize, has been very disgraceful, and has tarnished our well-earned honour.' The only alternative to save the property of the State would have been to grant a substantial donation to the troops as an equivalent; but this was not adopted, owing to the effects of severe financial pressure, and the 'prize money' of Bhurtpoor was subsequently divided among its captors. It is impossible Effects of to over-estimate the effect of the capture of Bhurtpoor the capture combined with the destruction of its fortifications; and with this victory, and the conclusion of the Burmese war, the open disaffection of the armed classes of India passed away. Since Doorjun Sál, now a prisoner at Benares, had failed, no one else remained to lead a desperate enterprise: and the real power of the English, their inexhaustible resources, and their unfailing ikbal' or prestige, became perhaps more fully impressed upon the native mind than before. of Bhurtpoor. LordAmherst earl. Lord Amherst had been created an earl for his services, and had received the thanks of the Courts of Directors and Proprietors. His health had been indifferent in India, created an and he proceeded on a tour in the north-west provinces at the close of 1826, visiting the principal cities, receiving the homage of the chiefs, and finally retiring to Simlah in the Himalayas, for the hot weather, the first time it had been Simlah used as a vice-regal sanatorium. During his absence, established the Council at Calcutta again signalised itself by an regal attack upon the press, one editor being summarily deported for a harmless squib; but during his residence in Calcutta, Lord Amherst had supported the press liberally, and relaxed many restrictions now re-imposed. The governor- Beneficial general's progress through the provinces of Upper effects of the India was attended with excellent effect. He visited general's Lukhnow, where the Nawáb, now king, then in infirm health, died in the month of October 1827, and was succeeded by as a vice residence. tour. his son, Solimán Jáh. In a visit to the ex-emperor of Dehly, his future position was pointed out to him; and at Simlah, visits from agents of Runjeet Singh, Sindia, Holkar, and the princes of Rajpootana, with the various questions relating to each, fully occupied his lordship's attention. In March of 1827, the great Dowlut Ráo Sindia died of a chronic disease with which he had long been afflicted. He left no issue, male or female; but his wife, Báiza Bye, was allowed to adopt a successor, and a boy of eleven years old, Junkojee, was selected from among his relatives, and recognised by the governorgeneral. An old prediction exists in this family, that reigning Sindias leave no male heirs, which, up to the present day, has been strangely fulfilled. The Rajah of his majority. The only other political event of importance which deserves record, is the attainment of his majority by the Rajah Berar attains of Nagpoor: when his territories, which had been managed with admirable skill by Mr. Jenkins, from the period of his election to the sovereignty, in 1818, were delivered over to his charge. Material prosperity, and cultivation, had increased to an extent never before known in Berar; but the prosperity of the people only served to incite exaction, and in a comparatively short period the last memorials of Mr. Jenkins' benevolent administration had been utterly eradicated. Lord Amherst's departure from India was accelerated by the Lord Amherst intelligence of the dangerous illness of his daughter, leaves India. and he left Calcutta in February 1828, having some time before sent home his resignation. For the present he was succeeded by Mr. Butterworth Bayley, the senior member of Council; but Lord William Bentinck had obtained the appointment of governor-general in 1827, and he arrived in Calcutta on July 4, 1828. Death of Lord William succeeds. CHAPTER VIII. PROGRESS IN MADRAS AND BOMBAY, 1813 TO 1828. Sir Thomas SINCE the termination of the war with Tippoo Sooltan, the progress of events in the southern presidency, Madras, had been very uneventful. No enemies remained to be overcome, and Munro's land the whole of the ceded and conquered provinces resettlements. mained tranquil. There was some difficulty, however, in establishing the demand for land revenue on an uniform basis, and it was not till Sir Thomas, then Colonel, Munro, who had system. Zemindars. Local been placed in charge of the ceded districts, struck out a plan for general settlements, that any decided measures were adopted. Like all parts of India in which the Mahomedans had Native not interfered with the original Hindoo system, it existed all over the new districts: not, perhaps, in so perfect a form as in the Deccan, but still sufficiently intact to preserve its distinctive existence, and to form a foundation for regular proceedings. The first attempts at settlement were made in Settlements imitation of Bengal with the few Zemindars, or landed with proprietors, who were found to exist; but these classes were in no wise analogous to the Zemindars of Bengal. There the land had ceased to belong to the people. Their original rights, whatever they had been, had ceased to exist, and the land had passed into the possession of the Zemindars. In the Madras provinces, on the contrary, the land, according tenures. to immemorial custom, belonged to the people in right of occupancy, subject to the payment of the rulers' taxes; and the individual tenures were Meras, which involved hereditary occupation on payment of a fixed rent-with tenancies at will, in regard to lands which had originally been Meras, but had lapsed into the general village stock, and could be rented from year to year by payment in money, or by a proportion of the crop in kind. The so-called Zemindars, therefore, were not, in general, proprietors of the soil, though they possessed individual Meras rights; they were, with the exception of those who were hereditary princes or nobles of formerly existent Hindoo or Mahomedan dynasties, for the most part district or village officers: some of revenue, some of police, who held their position by hereditary rights Fallure of the of great antiquity. Any settlements with parties in settlement such positions necessarily failed; and the people resented Zemindars. them, as conferring new rights upon the Zemindars, to which they were not entitled by ancient usage. The so-called Zemindars, therefore, became no more in fact than farmers of the revenue, which gave rise to many abuses, and was extremely unpopular. with Ryotwary These questions led Colonel Munro to consider the propriety and possibility of making settlements with the people themselves, or Ryots, as they are usually termed; and his settlement. measures, which had a semblance of possibility and even improvement upon the old native system, were put in operation. Means The lands of every village were surveyed after a rough adopted. fashion, and assessed; and a demand, equal to one-third of the produce of each crop or field, instituted. In the first place, the demand was too high, as the old Hindoo rate was from a seventh to a fifth: and, in the second, the proprietary rights of the people were not considered. It was a vast aggregation of tenants at will, |