Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/83

 U D U D 73 tobacco, spices, and chemicals. The imports from Nepal, which considerably exceed the exports in value, consist chiefly of rice, oil-seeds, ghi or clarified butter, metal-wares, timber, spices, drugs, and cattle. No province of India is more destitute of wholesale manufac tures than Oudh. Almost all manufactured articles of any nicety require to be imported. The only specialties are gold and silver lace-work, silver chasing, and rich embroidery, all confined to Lucknow, and the weaving of a peculiar class of cotton goods, which still flourishes at Tanda. Communication. The Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway forms the great trunk of communications. A branch runs from Lucknow through Unao to Cawnpur ; and another diverges at Bara Baiiki for Bahramghat on the Gogra. The whole railway forms a loop- line between the East Indian and the Sind, Punjab, and Delhi systems. Good roads connect all the principal towns, and much traffic passes along the rivers. Administration. The administration belongs to the non-regu lation system, under which a single officer discharges both fiscal and judicial functions. The province contains twelve districts, each under a deputy-commissioner. The chief-commissionership is now amalgamated with the governorship of the North- Western Provinces. The high court, presided over by the judicial com missioner, forms the ultimate court of appeal. The principal items of revenue consist of the land revenue, which stands at about 1,400,000 ; stamps, 116,770 ; excise, 100,411 ; forests, 31,114 ; and cesses over 101,000. In 1881 the total police force numbered 7634 officers and men, maintained at a cost of 95,815. History. At the dawn of history Oudh appears as a nourishing kingdom, ruled over from Sravasti by a powerful sovereign. In its capital Sakya Muni (Buddha) began his labours, and the city long remained a seat of learning for Buddhist disciples. For six centuries Sravasti maintained a high position among the states of northern India, but in the 1st century of our era the Buddhist monarch of Kashmir was defeated by the Brahmanical king of Ujjain, who restored the fanes and holy places of Ajodhya, the Hindu sacred city, which had fallen into decay. A long struggle between Buddhism and Brahmanism followed, and when the Chinese pilgrim Fa Hian (c. 400 A.D.) visited Sravasti, as one of the most famous historical places of his religion, he found the once populous city still marked by lofty walls, enclosing the ruins of numerous temples and palaces, but inhabited only by a few destitute monks and devotees. In the 7th century the desolation was complete. According to local tradition, about the 8th or 9th century the Tharus, an aboriginal tribe, descended from the hills and began to clear the jungle which had overgrown the deserted kingdom, as far as the sacred city of Ajodhya. To the present day these aborigines are the only people who can withstand the influence of malaria, and so become the pioneers of civilization in the jungle tracts. About a century later, a family of Sombansi lineage, from the north-west, subjected the wild settlers to their sway. The new dynasty belonged to the Jain faith, and still ruled at or near the ruins of Sravasti at the time of the invasion of Mahmud s famous general, Sayyid Salar. Towards the close of the llth century Oudh was added to the kingdom of Kanauj by conquest. After its downfall Shahab-ud-din Ghori, or his lieutenant, overran Oudh in 1194. Mohammed Bakhtiyar Khilji was the first Mohammedan to organize the administration, and establish in Oudh a base for his military operations, which extended to the banks of the Brahmaputra. On the death of Kutb-ud-dln he refused allegiance to Altamsh as a slave, and his son Ghiyas-ud-din established an hereditary governorship of Bengal. Oudh, however, was wrested from the Bengal dynasty, and remained an outlying province of Delhi. Although nominally ruled in the name of the Delhi empire by great Mohammedan vassals from Bahraich or Manikpur, Oudh continued to be a congeries of Rajput principalities and baronies, which made war, collected revenues, and administered justice within their territories at their own pleasure. During the early days of Mohammedan supremacy the Hindu chiefs of southern Oadh were engaged in a desultory warfare with the receding Bhars, an aboriginal tribe who had obtained a tem porary ascendency after the first Moslem invasions. Upon their subjection the Mohammedan kingdom of Jaunpur arose in the valley of the Ganges. Ibrahim Shah Sharki, the ablest of the Jaunpur rulers, turned his attention to the fruitful province which lay in the direct path between his capital and Delhi. He attempted thoroughly to reduce Oudh to the condition of a Moslem country, and, as long as he lived, the people sullenly acquiesced. But on his death the national spirit successfully reasserted itself under the leadership of Raja Tilok Chand, probably a descendant of the Kanauj sovereigns ; and for a hundred years the land had peace. During the troubled times which followed the death of Babar, the first Mughal emperor of Delhi, Oudh became a focus of dis affection against the reigning house. After the final defeat of the Afghan dynasty at Panipat, and the firm establishment of Akbar s rule, the province settled down into one of the most important among the imperial viceroyalties. Under the Mughal dynasty in its flourishing days, the Hindu chieftains accepted their position without difficulty. But when the rise of the Mahratta power broke down the decaying empire of Aurangzeb, the chieftains of Oudh again acquired an almost complete independence. About 1732 Saadat All Khan, a Persian merchant, received the appointment of governor of Oudh, and founded the Mohammedan dynasty which ruled over Oudh down to our own days. Before his death, in 1743, Oudh had become practically an independent kingdom, the rulers retaining the title of nawab wazir, or chief minister of the empire. Saadat Khan was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Safdar Jang, under whose wise rule the country enjoyed internal prosperity, although exposed to constant attacks from the Rohillas on one side and the Mahrattas on the other. The next nawab, Shuja-ud-daula, who succeeded his father Safdar Jang in 1753, attempted to take advantage of the war in Bengal between the British and Mir Kasim to acquire for himself the rich province of Behar. He therefore advanced upon Patna, taking with him the fugitive emperor Shah Alain and the exiled nawab of Bengal. The enter prise proved a failure, and Shuja-ud-daula retired to Baxar, where, in October 1764, Major Munro won a decisive victory, which laid the whole of upper India at the feet of the Company. The nawab fled to Bareli (Bareilly), while the unfortunate emperor joined the British camp. By the treaty of 1765 Korah and Allahabad, which had hitherto formed part of the Oudh viceroyalty, were made over to the emperor for the support of his dignity and expenses, all the remain ing territories being restored to Shuja-ud-daula, who had thrown himself upon the generosity of the British. A few years later, in 1771, the titular Mughal emperor, Shah Alam, was a virtual prisoner in the hands of the Mahrattas, who extorted from him the cession of Korah and Allahabad. This was considered to be contrary to the terms of the treaty of 1765, and, as the emperor had abandoned possession of them, the British sold them to the Oudh nawab. Saadat Ali Khan, threatened by Sindhia on the advance of Zaman Shah to the Indus, concluded a new treaty with the British in 1801, by which he gave up half his territories in return for increased means of protection. Rohilkhand thus passed tmder British rule, and the nawab became still more absolute within his restricted dominions. Saadat s son, Ghazi-ud-diu Haidar (1814), was the first to obtain the title of king. In 1847 Wajid Ali Shah, the last king, ascended the throne. The condi tion of the province had long attracted the attention of the British Government. The king s army, receiving insufficient pay, recouped itself by constant depredations upon the people. The Hindu chiefs, each isolated in his petty fort, had turned the surrounding country into a jungle as a means of resisting the demands of the court and its soldiery. Before 1855 the chronic anarchy and oppression had reduced the people of Oudh to extreme misery. A treaty was proposed to the king in 1856, which provided that the sole civil and military government of Oudh should be vested in the British Government for ever, and that the title of king of Oudh should be continued to him and his heirs male, with certain privi leges and allowances. He refused to sign the treaty, and on the 18th February 1856 the British Government assumed the admin istration of the province, Oudh thus becoming an integral part of the British empire. A provision of 12 lakhs a year was made to the king, who resides in a palace at Garden Reach, a few miles south of Calcutta. Wajid Ali Shah has been allowed to retain the title of king of Oudh, but on his death the title will cease absolutely, and the allowance will not be continued on its present scale. Immediately after annexation in 1856, Oudh was constituted into a chief-commissionership, and organized on the ordinary British model. In March 1857 Sir Henry Lawrence assumed the admin istration at Lucknow ; and on the 30th of May five of the native regiments broke into mutiny. The remainder of the events con nected with the siege and recovery of the capital have been narrated in the article on LUCKNOW. Since 1858 the province has been administered without further vicissitudes. On the 17th of January 1877 Oudh was partially amalgamated with the North- Western Provinces by the unification of the two offices of chief- commissioner and lieutenant-governor. OUDINOT, CHARLES NICOLAS (1767-1847), duke of Reggio, one of the most distinguished of Napoleon s marshals, came of a good bourgeois family in Lorraine, and was born at Bar-le-duc on April 25, 1767. From his youth he had a passion for a military career, and served in the regiment of Medoc from 1784 to 1787, when he retired with the rank of sergeant, and the knowledge that as a bourgeois he could never obtain a commission. The Revolution changed his fortunes, and in 1792, on the out break of war, he was elected lieutenant-colonel of the 3d battalion of the volunteers of the Meuse. His gallant defence of the little fort of Bitche in the Vosges in 1792 xvn r. 10