Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/829

805 HISTORY.] INDIA 805 Baillie s force by Hyder Ali. The repulse of Lake in person at the siege of Bhartpur (Bhurtpore) is memorable as an instance of a British army in India having to turn back with its object unaccomplished. The ambitious policy and the continuous wars of Lord &quot;VVellesley exhausted the patience of the court of directors at home. In 1 804 Lord Cornwallis was sent out as governor- general a second time, with instructions to bring about peace at any price, while Holkar was still unsubdued, and Sindhia was threatening a fresh war. But Cornwallis was now an old man and broken down in health. Travel ling up to the north-west during the rainy season, he sank and died at Ghazfpur, before he had been ten weeks in I..GW. the country. His immediate successor was Sir George Barlow, a civil servant of the Company, who, as a locum tenens, had no alternative but to carry out faithfully the orders of his employers. He is charged with being, under these orders, the only governor-general who diminished the area of British territory, and with violating engage ments by abandoning the Rajput chiefs to the tender mercies of Holkar and Sindhia. During his administra tion also occurred the mutiny of the Madras sepoys at Vellore, which, though promptly suppressed, sent a shock of insecurity throughout the empire. I.. to. Lord Minto, governor-general from 1807 to 1813, con solidated the conquests which Wellesley had acquired. His only military exploits were the occupation of the island of Mauritius, and the conquest of Java by an ex pedition which he accompanied in person. The condition of Central India continued to be disturbed, but Minto suc ceeded in preventing any violent outbreaks without himself having recourse to the sword. The Company had ordered him to follow a policy of non-intervention, and he managed to obey his orders without injuring the prestige of the British name. In his time the Indian Government first opened relations with a new set of foreign powers, by sending embassies to the Punjab, to Afghanistan, and to Persia. The ambassadors were all trained in the school of Wellesley, and formed perhaps the most illustrious trio of &quot; politicals &quot; that the Indian service has produced. Metcal fe was the envoy to the court of Ranjit Sinh at Lahore ; Elphinstone met the shah of Afghanistan at Peshawar ; and Malcolm was despatched to Persia. If it cannot be said that any of these missions were fruitful in permanent results, at least they introduced the English to a new set of diplomatic relations, arid widened the sphere of their influence. ~ rquis The successor of Lord Minto was Lord Moira, better known &amp;lt; &amp;gt; last- as the marquis of Hastings, who governed India for the long period of nine years, from 1814 to 1823. This period was marked by two wars of the first magnitude, the campaigns against the Gurkhas (Goorkhas) of Nepal, and the third rkha and last Marhatta war. The Gurkhas, the present ruling race in Nepal, are Hindu immigrants who claim a Rajput origin. The indigenous inhabitants, called Newars, belong to the Indo-Tibetan stock, and profess Buddhism. The sovereignty of the Gurkhas dates only from 1767, in which year they overran the valley of Khatmandu, and gradually extendcd their power over all the hills and valleys of Nepal. Organized upon a sort of military and feudal basis, they soon became a terror to all their neighbours, marching east into Sikkim, west into Kumaun, and south into the Gangetic plains. In the last quarter their victims were British subjects, and at last it became imperatively neces sary to check their advance. Sir George Barlow and Lord Minto had remonstrated in vain, and nothing was left to Lord Moira but to take up arms. The campaign of 1814 was little short of disastrous. After overcoming the natural difficulties of a malarious climate and precipitous hills, the sepoys were on several occasions fairly worsted by the unexpected bravery of the little Gurkhas, whose heavy knives or kukris dealt terrible execution. But in 1815 General Ochterlony, who commanded the army operating by way of the Sutlej, stormed one by one the hill forts which still stud the Himalayan states, now under the Punjab government, and compelled the Nepal darbdr to sue for peace. In the following year the same general advanced from Patna into the valley of Khatmandu, and finally dictated the terms which had before been rejected, within a few miles of the capital. By the treaty of Segauli, which defines the English relations with Nepal to the present day, the Gurkhas withdrew on the one hand from Sikkim, and on the other from those lower ranges of the western Himalayas which have supplied the health-giving stations of Nairn Tal, Massuri, and Simla. Meanwhile the condition of Central India was every year becoming more unsatisfac tory. Though the great Marhatta chiefs were learning to live rather as peaceful princes than as leaders of predatory bands, the example of lawlessness they had set was being followed, and bettered in the following, by a new set of Piud- f reebooters, known as the Pindharis. As opposed to the hdrls. Marhattas, who were at least a nationality bound by some traditions of a united government, the Pindharis were merely irregular soldiers, corresponding most nearly to the free companies of mediaeval Europe. Of no common race and of no common religion, they welcomed to their ranks the outlaws and broken tribes of all India, Afghans, Marhattas, or Jats. Their headquarters were in Malwa, but their depredations were not confined to Central India. In bands, sometimes numbering a few hundreds, sometimes many thousands, they rode out on their forays as far as Malabar and the Coromandel coast. The most powerful of the Pindhari captains, Amir Khan, had an organized army of many regiments, and several batteries of cannon. Two other leaders, known as Chitu and Karim, at one time paid a ransom to Sindhia of 100,000. To suppress the Pindhari hordes, who were supported by the sympathy, more or less open, of all theMarhattd chiefs, Lord Hastings (1817) collected the strongest British army that had been seen i India, numbering nearly 120,000 men, half to operate from the north, half from the south. Sindhia was overawed, and remained quiet. Amir Khan consented to disband his army, on condition of being guaranteed the possession of what is now the principality of Tank. The remaining bodies of Pindharis were attacked in their homes, sur rounded, and cut to pieces. Karim threw himself upon the mercy of the conquerors. Chitu fled to the jungles, and was killed by a tiger. In the same year (1317) as Third that in which the Pindharis were crushed, and almost in the Marhatti same month (November), the three great Marhatta powers at Poona, Nagpur, and Inclore rose against the English. The peshwd, Baji Rao, had long been chafing under the terms imposed by the treaty of Bassein (1802), and the subsequent treaty of Poona (1817), which riveted yet closer the chains of dependence upon the paramount power. Elphin stone, then resident at his court, foresaw what was coming and withdrew to Kirkee, whither he had ordered up a European regiment. The next day the residency was burned down, and Kirkee was attacked by the whole army of the peshwa. The attack was bravely repulsed, and the peshwa immediately fled from his capital. Almost the same plot was enacted at Nagpur, where the honour of the British name was saved by the sepoys, who defended the hill of Sftdbaldi against enormous odds. The army of Holkar was defeated in the following month at the pitched battle of Mehidpur. All open resistance was now at an end. Nothing remained but to follow up the fugitives, and deter mine the conditions of the general pacification. In both these duties Sir John Malcolm played a prominent part. The dominions of the peshwa were annexed to the Bombay