Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/382

368 Another feature in the character of Tippoo was his religion, with a sense of which his mind was deeply impressed. He spent a considerable part of every day in prayer. He gave to his kingdom a particular religious title,, or God-given, and he lived under a peculiarly strong and operative conviction of the superintendence of a divine Providence. To one of his French advisers, who urged him zealously to obtain the support of the Mahrattas, he replied, "I rely solely on Providence, expecting that I shall be alone and unsupported; but God and my courage will accomplish everything."

"He had the discernment to perceive, what is so generally hid from the eyes of rulers in a more enlightened state of society, that it is the prosperity of those who labour with their hands which constitutes the principle and cause of the prosperity of states. He therefore made it his business to protect them against the intermediate orders of the community by whom it is so difficult to prevent their being oppressed. His country was, accordingly, at least during the first and better part of his reign, the best cultivated, and his population the most flourishing in India; while under the English and their pageants, the population of the Carnatic and Oude, degenerating into the state of deserts, was the most wretched upon the face of the earth; and even Bengal itself, under the operation of laws ill adapted to their circumstances, was suffering almost all the evils which the worst of governments could inflict. For an Eastern prince, he was full of knowledge. His mind was active, acute, and ingenious. But in the value which he set upon objects, whether as means or as an end, he was almost perpetually deceived. Besides, a conviction appears to have been rooted in his mind, that the English had formed a resolution to deprive him of his kingdom, and that it was useless to negotiate, because no submission to which he could reconcile his mind would restrain them in the gratification of their ambitious designs."

Tippoo was right. The great design of the English, from their first secure footing in India, was to establish their control over the whole peninsula, and we shall soon see that, in prosecuting that object, no cruelties of Tippoo could exceed theirs.

Warren Hastings had saved Madras and the Carnatic, but only at a cost of crime and extortion, which have scarcely any parallel in the history of the earth. To obtain the necessary money, he began a system of robbery and coercion on the different princes of Bengal and Oude, who were in the power of the British government, which was truly astonishing. The first experiment was made on Cheyte Sing, the rajah of Benares, who had been allowed to remain as a tributary prince, when that province was made over to the British by the nabob of Oude. The tribute had been paid with a regularity unexampled in the history of India; but when the war broke out with France, Hastings suddenly demanded an extraordinary addition of fifty thousand pounds a-year, and as it was not immediately paid, the rajah was heavily fined into the bargain. This was rendered still more stringent in 1780, when the difficulties in Madras began. Cheyte Sing sent a confidential agent to Calcutta, to assure Hastings that it was not in his power to pay so heavy a sum, and he sent him two lacs of rupees, twenty thousand pounds, as a private present to conciliate him. Hastings accepted the money; but no doubt feeling the absolute need of large sums for the public treasury, he, after awhile, paid this into the treasury, and then said to Cheyte Sing that he must pay the contribution all the same. In fact, Hastings could not afford to be bribed; he must have every possible farthing that he could force from the rajahs for the public needs. He compelled the rajah to pay the annual sum of fifty thousand pounds, and ten thousand pounds more as a fine, and then demanded two thousand cavalry. After some bargaining and protesting, Cheyte Sing sent five hundred horsemen and five hundred foot. Hastings made no acknowledgment of these, but began to muster troop, threatening to take vengeance on the rajah. In terror, Cheyte Sing then sent, in one round sum, twenty lacs of rupees, two hundred thousand pounds, for the service of the state; but the only answer he obtained for the munificent offering was, that he must send thirty lacs more, that is, altogether, half a million.

Following his words by acts, he set off himself, attended only by a few score sepoys, for Benares. He appeared so confident of his safety, that he took Mrs. Hastings with him as far as Monghir. Cheyte Sing came out as far as Buxar to meet the offended governor, and paid him the utmost homage. Hastings received it with the stern silence of an incensed master. The rajah expressed his sorrow at Hastings' displeasure, declared the whole zemindary at his command, and, as a sign of the most decided submission, laid his turban on the governor's knee. Nothing moved the man who wanted the last farthing that the rajah had, and was determined to come at it. He continued his journey with the rajah in his train, and entered the rajah's capital, the great Mecca of India, the famed city of Benares, on the 14th of August, 1781. He then made more enormous demands than before; and the compliance of the rajah not being immediate, he ordered Mr. Markham, his own-appointed resident at Benares, to arrest the rajah in his palace. Cheyte Sing was a timid man, yet the act of arresting him in the midst of his own subjects, and in a place so sacred, and crowded with pilgrims from every part of the East, was a most daring deed. The effect was instantaneous. The people rose in fury, and pouring headlong to the palace with arms in their hands, they cut to pieces Markham and his sepoys. Two other companies were dispatched to their aid, but these were cut to pieces in the streets. Had Cheyte Sing had the spirit of his people in him, Hastings and his little party would have been butchered in half an hour. Hastings says this himself, that he and the thirty English gentlemen with him must have perished at once.

But Cheyte Sing only thought of his own safety. He got across the Ganges, and whole troops of his subjects flocked after him. Thence he sent protestations of his innocence of the emente, and of his readiness to make any conditions. Hastings, though surrounded and besieged in his quarters by a furious mob, deigned no answer to the suppliant rajah, but busied himself in collecting all the sepoys in the place. Before night, he had assembled four hundred, and had sent messengers to Mirzapore, on the other side of the Ganges, to another small knot of sepoys, to