Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/269

 following he was gazetted agent to the governor-general in Baluchistán, and he held that post for the rest of his life. In July 1879, when holding the rank of major, he was made K.C.S.I.

During the Afghan war of 1879–80 the fidelity of the Baluchis under Sandeman's control was severely tested when the news of the disaster at Maiwand (27 July 1880) spread through the country. Some tribes rose, attacked the outposts, and blocked the roads; but Sandeman, trusting the people, made over his stores in out-stations, and those posts themselves, to the charge of the village headmen, and was thus set free to assist the troops who were in evil plight at Kandahár. Order was soon restored by his good management, and the zeal and energy displayed were brought to the notice of the queen. In September 1880 General Sir Frederick (afterwards Lord) Roberts, when on his way to the scene of war, stayed with Sandeman at Quetta, and Sandeman effectively aided Sir Frederick Roberts in the transport service to Quetta and Kandahar. ‘He was,’ Lord Roberts wrote of Sandeman, ‘intimately acquainted with every leading man [of the native tribes], and there was not a village, however out of the way, which he had not visited’ (, Forty-one Years in India, ii. 372–3). ‘After the war he was instrumental in adding to the empire a new province, of much strategic importance, commanding the passes into South Afghanistan, and access to three trade-routes between Persia, Kandahár, and British India. … Outside the limits of the new province, in the mountain region westward of the Sulimáns, between the Gumal river and the Marrí hills, he opened out hundreds of miles of highway, through territories till then unknown, and, in concert with the surrounding Patán tribes, made them as safe as the highways of British India. … But perhaps the most important of his achievements was this—that he succeeded in revolutionising the attitude of the government of India towards the frontier tribes, and made our “sphere of influence” on the western border no longer a mere diplomatic expression, but a reality’.

Sandeman's last days were spent at Lus Beyla, the capital of a small state on the Sind frontier about 120 miles north-west of Kurráchi. He had gone thither in hope of healing a misunderstanding between the chief and his eldest son, and to arrange for carrying on the affairs of the state. After a short illness he died there on 29 Jan. 1892, and over his grave the jám or chief caused a handsome dome to be erected. The governor-general, Lord Lansdowne, issued a notification in the ‘Gazette’ of India, dated 6 Feb., in which testimony was borne to Sandeman's good qualities, and his death was lamented as a public misfortune.

He married, first, in 1864, Catherine, daughter of John Allen, esq., of Kirkby Lonsdale; and secondly, on 17 Jan. 1882, Helen Kate, daughter of Lieutenant-colonel John William Gaisford of Clonee, co. Meath. There is an excellent portrait of Sir Robert Sandeman, by the Hon. John Collier, which is reproduced in his biography.

[Colonel Sir Robert Sandeman, by Thomas Henry Thornton, C.S.I., D.C.L., 1895; Athenæum, 20 July 1895; personal knowledge.]  SANDERS. [See also .]

SANDERS alias, FRANCIS (1648–1710), jesuit, born in Worcestershire in 1648, pursued his humanity studies in the college at St. Omer, and went through his higher course in the English College, Rome, which he entered as a convictor or boarder on 6 Nov. 1667. He took the college oath on 27 Jan. 1668–9, and was ordained as a secular priest on 16 April 1672. He was admitted into the Society of Jesus at Rome, by the father-general, Oliva, on 4 Jan. 1673–1674, and left for Watten to make his noviceship on 5 April or 4 June 1674. He was professed of the four vows on 15 Aug. 1684. A catalogue of the members of the society, drawn up in 1693, states that he took the degree of D.D. at Cologne, and had been prefect of studies and vice-rector of the college at Liège, and of the ‘College of St. Ignatius, London.’ He was appointed confessor to the exiled king, James II, at Saint-Germain, and attended that monarch during his last illness (, Life of James II, ii. 593). He died at Saint-Germain on 19 Feb. 1709–10.

The jesuit father, François Bretonneau, published ‘Abrégé de la Vie de Jacques II, Roy de la Grande Bretagne, &c. Tiré d'un écrit Anglois du R. P. François Sanders, de la Compagnie de Jesus, Confesseur de Sa Majesté,’ Paris, 1703, 12mo. This appeared in English, under the title of: ‘An Abridgment of the Life of James II … extracted from an English Manuscript of the Reverend Father Francis Sanders … done out of French from the Paris edition,’ London, 1704. An Italian translation was published at Milan in 1703, and at Ferrara in 1704; and a Spanish translation, by Francesco de Medyana y Vargas, appeared at Cadiz in 1707, 4to.

Sanders translated from the French ver-