Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/831

807 HISTORY.] INDIA 807 administration of Lord William Bentinck. In 1833 the charter of the East India Company was renewed for twenty years, but only upon the terms that it should abandon its trade and permit Europeans to settle freely in the country. At the same time a legal or fourth member was added to the governor-general s council, who might not be a servant of the Company, and a commission was appointed to revise and codify the law. Macaulay was the first legal member of council, and the first president of the law com mission. In 1830 it was found necessary to take the state of Mysore under British administration, where it has continued to the present ysar (1881), and in 1834 the frantic misrule of the raja of Coorg brought on a short and sharp war. The raja was permitted to retire to Benares, and the brave and proud inhabitants of that mountainous little territory decided to place themselves under the rule of the Company; so that the only annexation effected by Lord William Bentinck was &quot; in consideration of the unanimous wish of the people.&quot; Sicalfe. Sir Charles (afterwards Lord) Metcalfe succeeded Lord William as senior member of council. His short term of office is memorable for the measure which his predecessor had initiated, but which he willingly carried into execution, for giving entire liberty to the press. Public opinion in India, as well as the express wish of the court of directors at home, pointed to Metcalfe as the most fit person to carry out the policy of Bentinck, not provisionally, but as -; k- governor-general for a full term. Party exigencies, how ever, led to the appointment of Lord Auckland. From that date commences a new era of war and conquest, which may be said to have lasted for twenty years. All looked peaceful until Lord Auckland, prompted by his evil genius, attempted to place Shah Shuja upon the throne of Cabul, an attempt which ended in the gross mismanagement and annihilation of the garrison placed in that city. The disaster in Afghanistan was quickly followed by the con quest of Sind, the two wars in the Punjab, the second Burmese war, and last of all the Mutiny. Names like Gough and Napier and Colin Campbell take the places of Malcolm and Metcalfe and Elphinstone. han For the first time since the days of the sultans of Ghazni &quot; irs - and Ghor, Afghanistan had obtained a national king in 1747 in the person of the Ahmad Shah Durani, who found his opportunity in the confusion that followed on the death of the Persian conqueror, Nadir Shah. Before his death in 1773 Ahmad Shah had conquered a wide empire, from Herat to Peshawar and from Kashmir to Sind. His intervention on the field of Panipat (1761) turned back the tide of Marhatta conquest, and replaced a Mughal emperor on the throne of Delhi. But Ahmad Shah never cared to settle down in India, and kept alternate state at his two national capitals of Cabul and Kandahar. The Durani kings were prolific in children, who fought with one another for the succession to the death. At last, in 1826, Dost Muhammad, head of the powerful Barakzai family, succeeded in establishing himself as ruler of Cabul, with the subordinate title of amir (ameer), while two fugi tive brothers of the Durani line were living under British protection at Ludhiana, on the frontier of the Punjab. The attention of the English Government had been directed to Afghan affairs ever since the time of Lord Wellesley, who feared that Zaman Shah, then holding his court at Lahore, might follow in the path of Nadir Shah, and overrun Hindustan. The growth of the powerful Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Sinh effectually dispelled any such alarms for the future. Subsequently, in 1809, while a French invasion of India was still a possibility to be guarded against, Elphinstone was s?nt by Lord Minto on a mission to Shah Shuja to form a defensive alliance. Before the year was out, Shdh Shuja had been driven into exile, and a third brother, Mahmud Shah, was on the throne. In 1837, when the curtain rises upon the drama of English interference in Afghanistan, the usurper Dost Muhammad Barakzai was firmly established at Cabul. His great ambition was to recover Peshawar from the Sikhs ; and when Captain Alexander Burnes arrived on a mission from Lord Auckland, with the ostensible object of opening trade, the Dost was willing to promise everything, if only he could get Peshawar. But Lord Auckland had another and more important object in view. At this time the Russians were advancing rapidly in Central Asia, and a Persian army, not without Russian support, was besieging Herat, the traditional bulwark of Afghanistan on the east. A Russian envoy was at Cabul at the same time as Burnes. The latter was unable to satisfy the demands of Dost Muhammad in the matter of Peshawar, and returned to India unsuccessful. Lord Auckland forthwith resolved upon the hazardous plan of placing a more subservient ruler upon the throne of Cabul. Shah Shuja, one of the two exiles at Ludhiana, was selected for the purpose. At this time both the Punjab and Sind were independent kingdoms. Sind was the less powerful of the two, and First therefore a British army escorting Shah Shuja made its Afghan way by that route to enter Afghanistan through the Bolau war Pass. Kandahar surrendered, Ghazni was taken by storm, Dost Muhammad fled across the Hindu Kush, and Shall Shuja was triumphantly led into the Bala Hissar at Cabul in August 1839. During the two years that followed Afghanistan remained in the military occupation of the British. The catastrophe occurred in November 1841, when Sir Alexander Burnes was assassinated in the city of Cabul. The troops in the cantonments were then under the command of General Elphinstone (not to be confounded with the civilian Mountstuart Elphinstone), with Sir William Macnaghten as chief political adviser. Elphinstone was an old man, unequal to the responsibilities of the position. Macnaghten was treacherously murdered at an interview with the Afghan chief, Akbar Khan, eldest son of Dost Muhammad. After lingering in their cantonments for two months, the British army set off in the depth of winter to find its way back to India through the passes. When they started they numbered 4000 fighting men, with 12,000 camp followers. A single survivor, Dr Brydon, reached the friendly walls of Jalalabad, where Sale was gallantly holding out. The rest perished in the defiles of Khurd, Cabul, and Jagdalak, either from the knives and matchlocks of the Afghans or from the effects of cold. A few prisoners, mostly women, children, and officers, were considerately treated by the orders of Akbar Khan. Within a month after the news reached Calcutta, Lord Ellen- Auckland had been superseded by Lord Ellenborough, Borough, whose first impulse was to be satisfied with drawing off in safety the garrisons from Kandahar and Jalalabad. But bolder counsels prevailed. Pollock, who was marching straight through the Punjab to relieve Sale, was ordered, to penetrate to Cabul, while Nott was only too glad not to be forbidden to retire from Kandahar through Cabul. After a good deal of fighting, the two English forces met at their common destination in September 1842. The great bazar at Cabul was blown up with gunpowder, to fix a stigma upon the city ; the prisoners were recovered ; and all marched back to India, leaving Dost Muhammad to take undisputed possession of his throne. The drama closed with a bombastic proclamation from Lord Ellen- borough, who had caused the gates from the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazni to be carried back as a memorial of &quot;Somnath revenged.&quot; Lord Ellenborough, who loved military display, had his tastes gratified by two more wars. In 1843 the Mahometan rulers -of Sind, known as the &quot; meers &quot; or amirs, whose only