Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/159

Rh The massacre then commenced. The troops under Jang Bahádúr fired on the chiefs, the Rání exclaiming, 'Kill and destroy my enemies.'

Jang Bahádúr was then invested with the office of Minister. The Mahárájá reproached him with the massacre; while the Rání broke out into loud lamentations, declaring that unless the heir-apparent were at once put to death, in order to open the succession to her own son, 'more bloodshed would follow.' Jang Bahádúr laid his turban at the feet of the Mahárájá, and begged that he might have full powers to 'remove' the enemies of the heir-apparent. He forthwith killed in cold blood the chiefs who had espoused the cause of the Rání. She was then informed that she must quit Khatmandu, together with her sons, while the Mahárájá was also persuaded to accompany her to Benares.

The Governor-General had no right by Treaty to interfere in the internal affairs of Nepál, which then, as now, ranked as an independent state, outside the sphere of British suzerainty. All he could do was to write a letter to the Resident to the following effect: — That the previous acts of atrocity committed by the Minister, in first ordering the massacre of thirty-five chiefs in the Hall of Audience, and next in putting to death twenty-six influential chiefs, the adherents of the Rání, and thus by terror preventing the Mahárájá from returning to his capital, were reasons which induced him to be in no haste to recognise the son who, under guidance of this Minister, had supplanted his