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 CHAPTER XI

Benares and Oudh

1781-1783

The year 1781 had opened for Hastings over a troubled sea of danger, distress, and difficulty. Haidar Alí was raging about the Karnatic; Goddard and Carnac were fighting the Maráthás, and French fleets were cruising in the Bay of Bengal. When he had sent Carnac to look after Sindhia, shipped off Coote's soldiers for Madras, started Pearse's brigade on its march southward, and completed his bargain with the Rájá of Berár, the Governor-General found his treasury running very low indeed. Money had to be raised somehow, if British India was to be saved. In his letter to Scott, he refers briefly to the need of doing something at Benares on his way up to Lucknow. What he presently did at Benares furnished his enemies with fresh matter for the great impeachment which befel him after his return home.

Chait Singh, Rájá of Benares, was the grandson of an adventurer who had ousted his own patron from the lands he held as Zamíndár under the Mughal rule. The adventurer's son, Balwant Singh, the first Rájá