Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/832

808 808 INDIA [HISTORY. Con- fault was that they would not surrender their independence, quest of were crushed by Sir Charles Napier. The victory of Miani, incL in which 3000 British troops defeated 20,000 Baluchfa, is perhaps the most brilliant feat of arms in Indian history ; but an honest excuse can scarcely be found for the annex ation of the country. In the same year a disputed succes sion at Gwalior, fomented by feminine intrigue, resulted in an outbreak of the overgrown army which the Sindhia family had been allowed to maintain. Peace was restored by the battles of Maharajpur and Punneah, at the former of which Lord Ellenborough was present in person. Hard- In 1844 Lord Ellenborough was recalled by the court ia g e&amp;gt; of directors, who differed from him on many points of administration, and distrusted his erratic genius. He was succeeded by Sir Henry (afterwards Lord) Hardinge, who had served through the Peninsular War and had lost a hand at Ligny. It was felt on all sides that a trial of strength between the British and the Sikhs was at hand. Rise of The Sikhs were not a nationality like the Marhattds, but a Sikhs. religious sect bound together by the additional tie of military dis cipline. They trace their origin to one Nanak, an excellent and successful preacher, who was born in the neighbourhood of Lahore in the latter half of the 15th century, before the arrival of either Mughals or Portuguese in India. Nanak was a religious reformer, like others that arose in the country about that time, who preached the abolition of caste, the unity of the Godhead, and the obligation of leading a pure life. From Nanak ten gurus or apostles are traced down to Govind Sinh in 1708, with whom the succession stopped. Suffering continual persecution from the ruling Mahomet ans, which culminated in the reign of Aurangzeb, the Sikh religion maintained itself with extraordinary tenacity. At last the down fall of the Mughal empire transformed it into a territorial power, which possessed the only organization remaining in the Punjab. Even before the rise of Ranjit Sinh, offshoots from the Sikh misls or confederacies, each led by its elected sarddr, had carved out for themselves feudal principalities along the banks of the Sutlej, some of which have endured to the present day. Ranjit Sinh, the founder of the Sikh kingdom, was born in 1780. In his twentieth year he obtained the appointment of governor of Lahore from the Afghan emperor, and from that time he set himself to the task of basing a personal despotism upon the religious fanaticism of the Sikhs, -lliekhdlsd or &quot; the liberated&quot; were organized into an army under European officers, which for steadiness and religious fervour has had no parallel since the &quot;ironsides&quot; of Cromwell. From Lahore as his capital he extended his conquests south to Multan, west to Peshawar, and north to Kashmir. On the east side alone he was hemmed in by the Sutlej, np to which river the authority of the British Government was advanced in 1804. Till his death in 1839 Ranjit Sinh was ever loyal to the engagements which he had entered into with Metcalfe in 1809. But he left no son capable of wielding his sceptre. Lahore was torn by dissensions between rival generals, ministers, and queens. The only strong power was the army of the khdlsd, which since the disaster in Afghanistan burned to measure its strength with the British sepoys. The French generals, Avitable and Court, were foolishly ousted, and the supreme military command was vested in a series of panchdyats or elective committees of live. Sikh In 1845 the Sikh army, numbering 60,000 men with cam- 150 guns, crossed the Sutlej and invaded British territory, paign. g| r [ U g| 1 Gough^ the commander-in-chief, together with the governor-general, hurried up to the frontier. Within three weeks four pitched battles were fought, at Moodkee, Ferozshah, Aliwal, and Sobraon. The British loss on each occasion was heavy ; but by the last victory the Sikhs were fairly driven into and across the Sutlej, and Lahore surrendered to the British. By the terms of peace then dictated the infant son of Ranjit, Dhulip Sinh, was recog nized as raja ; the Jalandhar Doab, or tract between the Sutlej and the Ravi, was annexed ; the Sikh army was limited to a specified number ; Major Henry Lawrence was appointed to be resident at Lahore ; and a British force was detailed to garrison the Punjab for a period of eight years. Sir II. Hardinge received a peerage, and returned to England in 1848. Dal- Lord Dalhousie succeeded, whose eight years adminis- housie tration (from 1848 to 1856) was more pregnant of results than that of any governor-general since Clive. Though professedly a man of peace, he was compelled to fight two wars, in the Punjab and in Burmah. These both ended in large acquisitions of territory, while Nagpur, Oudh, and several minor states also came under British rule. But Dalhousie s own special interest lay in the advancement of the moral and material condition of the country. The system of administration carried out in the conquered Punjab by the two Lawrences and their assistants is probably the most successful piece of difficult work ever accomplished by Englishmen. British Buruiah has pro spered under their rule scarcely less than the Punjab. In both cases Lord Dalhousie deserves a large share of the credit. No branch of the administration escaped his reforming hand. He founded the public works department, to pay special attention to roads and canals. He opened the Ganges Canal, still the largest work of the kind in the country, and he turned the sod of the first Indian railway. He promoted steam communication with England via the Red Sea, and introduced cheap postage and the electric telegraph. It is Lord Dalhousie s misfortune that these benefits are too often forgotten in the vivid recollections of the Mutiny, which avenged his policy of annexation. Lord Dalhousie had not been six months in India before Sea the second Sikh war broke out. Two British officers were sik treacherously assassinated at Multan. Unfortunately ^ Henry Lawrence was at home on sick leave. The British t j 01. army was not ready to act in the hot weather, and, despite Pvu the single-handed exertions of Lieutenant (afterwards Sir Herbert) Edwardes, this outbreak of fanaticism led to a general rising. The khdlsd army again came together, and once more fought on even terms with the British. On the fatal field of Chilianwala, which patriotism prefers to call a drawn battle, the British lost 2400 officers and men, besides four guns and the colours of three regiments. Before reinforcements could come out from England, with Sir Charles Napier as commander-in-chief, Lord Gough had restored his own reputation by the crowning victory of Guzerat, which absolutely destroyed the Sikh army. Multan had previously fallen ; and the Afghan horse under Dust Muhammad, who had forgotten their hereditary anti pathy to the Sikhs in their greater hatred of the British name, were chased back with ignominy to their native hills. The Punjab henceforth became a British province, supplying a virgin field for the administrative talents of Dalhousie and the two Lawrences. Raj;l Dhulip Sinh received an allowance of 50,000 a year, on which he retired as a country gentleman to Norfolk in England. The first step in the pacification of the Punjab was a general disarmament, which resulted in the delivery of no less than 120,000 weapons of various kinds. Then followed a settlement of the land tax, village by village, at an assessment much below that to which it had been raised by Sikh exactions, and the introduction of a loose but equitable code of civil and criminal procedure. Roads and canals were laid out by Colonel Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala) ; and the security of British peace and the personal influence of British officers were felt to the furthest corners of the province. Thus it happened that, when the Mutiny broke out in 1857, the Punjab remained not only quiet but loyal, after only eight years experience of English rule; while the North -Western Provinces, which had been British territory for more than half a century, rose in rebellion. The second Seco Burmese war of 1852 was caused by the ill-treatment of Bun European merchants at Rangoon, and the insolence offered Wi to the captain of a frigate who had been sent to remonstrate. The whole valley of the Irawadi, from Rangoon to Prome, was occupied in a few months, and, as the king of Ava refused to treat, it was annexed, under the name of Pegu, to the provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, which had been acquired in 1826. Since annexation the inhabitants of