Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/380

366 English, were left to the fierce vengeance of Tippoo. The English who had been his prisoners gave such accounts of his treatment of them as excited an intense indignation throughout British India; and the horrors which he inflicted in the disaffected districts can only be paralleled by other recitals of Eastern tyranny. He visited Calicut and the neighbouring states of Malabar, perpetrated, it is said, the most vindictive atrocities on the people, men, women, and children, destroyed their pagodas, and compelled some thousands to submit to circumcision and eat flesh, the most dreadful of impieties in a Hindoo.



Such are the accounts, derived, however, be it observed, from his enemies; and it is only due to this prince, who was eventually borne down by the English, and his kingdom divided amongst themselves and their allies, to quote the opinion of Mill, the historian of the India House itself. "That the accounts which we have received from our countrymen, who hated and feared him," he says, "are marked with exaggeration, is proved by this circumstance, that his servants adhered to him with a fidelity which those of few princes in any age or country have displayed. Of his cruelty we have heard the more, because our countrymen were amongst the victims of it. But it is to be observed that, unless in certain instances, the proof of which cannot be regarded as better than doubtful, their sufferings, however intense, were only the sufferings of a very rigorous imprisonment, of which, considering the manner in which it is lavished upon them by their own laws, the English ought not to be very forward to complain. At that very time, in the dungeons of Madras or Calcutta, it is probable that unhappy sufferers were enduring calamities for debts of one hundred pounds, not less atrocious than those which Tippoo, a prince, born and educated in a barbarous country, and ruling over a barbarous people, inflicted upon imprisoned enemies, part of a nation, who, by the evils they had brought upon him, exasperated him almost to frenzy, and whom he regarded as the enemies of both God and man. Besides, there is among the papers relating to the intercourse of Tippoo with the French a remarkable proof of his humanity, which, when these papers are ransacked for matters to criminate him, ought not to be suppressed. In a draught of conditions, on which he desired to form a treaty with them, these are the words of a distinct article:—"I demand that male and female prisoners, as well English as Portuguese, who shall be taken by the French troops, or by mine, shall be treated with humanity; and, with regard to their persons, that they shall (their property becoming the right of the allies) be transported, at our joint expense, out of India, to places far distant from the territory of the allies."