once threw into the river the spare cartridges and the nipples of the muskets, thus reducing that element of danger to a minimum; the rest of the treasure was at the same time taken to Benares by a river-steamer. On the 9th the British denizens of Mirzapur became alarmed by sinister rumours, and fled to the neighbouring fortress of Chunár, leaving Mr. St. G. Tucker to bear the brunt alone. On the 10th he availed himself of the arrival of an exceptional body of sepoys (belonging to the 50th Native Infantry, who had brought in a prisoner from Nagode) to march out a few miles and chastise some marauders who had plundered the property of the East India Railway Company. On the 13th a party of the 1st Madras Fusiliers (Neill's Regiment) arrived, and accompanied a detachment of the 47th in a punitive expedition against an offending village on the right bank of the Ganges, near the border of the Allahabad district. The inhabitants of this village (called Gaura) had been peculiarly daring in their misconduct, and prepared for resistance; but the men of the 47th were well handled, and while the white soldiers attacked the rebels in front, crossed the river with the view of taking them in the rear. Some of the leaders were captured, but the surrounding had been incomplete, and the bulk of the rebels made their escape. The right bank of the river was pacified by this step, and by an almost simultaneous movement under Mr. P. Walker, an uncovenanted" deputy magistrate; but the left bank required more serious exertions. Here a number of townships that had fallen into the possession of the Rája of Benares were still the homes of the dispossessed Rájput clan, to whom they had originally belonged; and their chief proclaimed himself Rája of the Hundred of Bhadüi, and appointed two agents for the collection of the revenue. Not content with this display of independence, he then enrolled a force, with the aid of which he plundered his weaker neighbours, and closed the Grand Trunk Road leading from Calcutta to the North-West. The management of the Raja of Benares's estates was at that time in charge of

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Mr. Moore, C.S., the Joint-Magistrate of Mirzapur; and this officer offended the people by doing his duty and vindicating the rights of the Rája. A native agent contrived to obtain possession of the persons of the rebel chief and one of his agents; and the pair, being tried and condemned by a courtmartial, were promptly hanged. Sentence of death was at once passed in return upon Moore by the popular Vehm; and measures were taken to carry it into effect. On the 4th July this officer arrived at the Indigo Factory of Páli, bringing with him another set of brigands whom he had taken captive. The house was presently surrounded by the followers of the late chief of Bhadui; and Moore and the two managers of the factory, being captured in a sortie, were forthwith put to the sword. Moore's head was cut off and carried to the chief's widow, who had offered three hundred rupees for it; Lieut. Woodhouse and a party of H. M. 64th, who came too late for rescue, had only the moderate satisfaction of burying the bodies. Next day they were joined by Mr. Tucker with some of the 47th Native Infantry, and a planter named Chapman came up from another direction. All was in vain, the murderers could not be surrounded; and they escaped, for the time at least. Their flight, however, accelerated the pacification of the district, which was not again disturbed for more than a month. But on the 11th August disturbance was renewed by the irruption of the Dinapore mutineers escaping from their defeat at Arrah by Vincent Eyre. They remained in the neighbourhood, subsisting by plunder, till the 20th, when they set their faces in the direction of Mirzapur, some fifteen hundred strong. About seventeen miles from the town, they were encountered by three hundred men of Her Majesty's 5th (now the Northumberland) Fusiliers, and were ingloriously routed at the first fire. They fled into the Allahabad district. On the 14th of the same month another part of the district was invaded by a party of mutineers from Hazáribágh, and on the 8th September the redoubted Kunwar Singh also visited its confines. Both parties, however, passed through into indepen

dent principalities without doing much damage. Charge of the southern part of the district was then made over to Mr. Mayne, the energetic officer already mentioned in connection with the Banda district, and his exertions were successful in maintaining safe transit on the Grand Trunk Road. October went by tranquilly; an "unpassed" young officer, named Elliott, conducted a successful attack to the north-west, in which, with some Sikhs and the Benares police-levy, he chastised the people of two notorious villages there; the guns and stores that had been collected at Mirzápur were consigned to the fortress of Chunár. Rebel bands traversed the district; but the popular mind had now righted, and they met with no sympathy. On the 16th December some policemen were murdered on the Rewa border by some villagers who escaped. The magistrate then proceeded to attack the Chandels of Bijaigarh, who had broken out in furtherance of a family feud. A claimant to the chiefship had proclaimed himself "Rájah"; and had driven away the Tahsildár (native sub-collector) who had attempted to serve him with a summons to appear and answer for his presumption at Mirzápur. On Mr. Tucker's approach, the pretender fled into the forest, where he was attacked on the morning of the 9th January 1858, after a long night-march. Several of the rebels were killed on the spot, others were taken and brought to justice, a quantity of stolen property was recovered, and the residue of the offenders fled across the river Sone. Soon after this it became apparent to Mr. Tucker that the Rájah of Singraoli was giving them countenance, and preparing to defend the fort of Gahrwár, in which some of them were probably harboured; and a messenger was sent to warn him of the probable consequences. But the proclamation of the amnesty stayed further proceedings; and thus the story of Mirzápur in revolt comes to an abrupt termination. Besides Mr. St. G. Tucker and his assistants Elliott and Walker, the Commissioner's report makes favourable mention of the Rája of Kantit and his brother.

CHAPTER IX.

ROHILCUND.

THE province of Rohelkhand, or Rohilcund, as more commonly spelt, was (in the North-Western Provinces) the one in which British power was most completely overthrown. It will not, therefore, present materials for the treatment hitherto pursued. Instead of the narratives of administration more or less maintained, and expedients, often successful, to cope with the disorganisation consequent on the evil deeds of the sepoys and the temporary paralysis of lawful authority, we have now to deal with reports of disaster unretrieved, murder unavenged, attempts at flight, hiding, escape, or-at most-successful adventure.

This sub-province-bounded on the west and south by the Ganges, on the north by the sub-Himalayan range, on the east by Oude constituted a civil division containing six districts, besides the protected state of Rámpur; it comprised over eleven thousand square miles, and the population was over five millions, of whom the majority were Hindus, a considerable minority being Muhamadans, mostly Pathans descended from Afghan military colonists. The past history of the country is peculiar, and has been more prominently brought before the general reader than that of most parts of India. In the decay of the great Mughul empire of the middle ages it was occupied by Afghan military adventurers, who subdued, without exterminating, the Hindu population, and established a semi-inde

pendent principality under a dynasty of their own. In the last half of the eighteenth century, this family being represented by a minor, power devolved upon his guardian, Rahmat Khán— known by his title of "Háfiz," or Protector. The land, being fertile and lying on the borders of Audh (or Oude), attracted the attention of its neighbours. In 1773, when the Mahrattas had been for the time expelled from Hindustan, the Nawab of Oude, who was titular Vazir of the empire, obtained from the Court of Dehli sanction to chastise the Rohillas, who had been intriguing with the Mahrattas, and to occupy the country. The English ruler, Warren Hastings, agreed to assist, a proceeding for which he was severely censured; his conduct formed part of the Parliamentary impeachment of which Mr. Hastings was afterwards the object, but the count was not sustained. In another work* I have attempted to show that the verdict was a just one, in spite of the unfavourable opinion so strongly expressed by Macaulay in his famous Essay. Be that as it may, the resistance of the Rohillas was overcome at the battle of Kattra† (23rd April 1774), where the Protector was slain. After the conquest under Lake, Rohilcund fell, with the rest of Hindustan, into the hands of the British, and became part of what are now called the North-West Provinces.

In 1857 Rohilcund was (as it is still, indeed) a Division, or Commissionership, consisting of six districts, which were called, respectively, Philibhit, Morádábád, Bijnaur, Bareli (or Bareilly), Badaon, and Shahjahanpur. [There was a small enclave of independent territory held by the Nuwáb of Rámpur, a descendant of the old reigning family of Rohillas.] The first was a forest tract at the foot of the Kamaon hills, and the events there call for no particular remark. Bijnaur was held for a time, and then perforce abandoned, by the magistrate of the district, Mr. A. Shakespear (vide Malleson, vol. iii. p. 400 ff., for an interesting

* Fall of the Mughul Empire, 111 ff.

† Or, Miranpur Kattra, the scene of another action in 1857, where his grandson was defeated.