A.D. 1826. an attempt was made to renew the negotiations, by employing as deputies for that purpose Mr. Price, an American missionary resident at Ava, and Mr. Snodgrass, the surgeon of the Royals, who had been taken prisoner. New tactics of the Prince of Sunset. Negotiations renewed. The British army, continuing its advance, arrived on the 8th of February within five miles of Pagahm, an ancient city, which boasted of having been the capital of the Burman empire during the period of its greatest prosperity. Behind its brick wall, though ruinous, the Prince of Sunset might have found good cover, had he not disdained all tactics that savoured of timidity. Instead of entrenching himself within stockades, according to the Burmese mode of fighting, he had drawn up his army in the open field, and along the sides of a pathway leading through a thicket of prickly jungle. Indeed, what had he to fear if he was the consummate warrior he believed himself to be, while his force was at least tenfold more numerous than that opposed to him? Owing to the absence of two regiments employed in foraging, Sir Archibald Campbell could not muster more than 1300 fighting men. With this small body he moved to the attack on the morning of the 9th of February, and with very little difficulty cleared the field. Nuring Phuring hastened off with such rapidity that he was the first to bear to Ava the tidings of his own defeat. The object of all this haste was to solicit a new army, with which he would at once return and expel the invaders, but the court had had enough of him, and not satisfied with driving him contumeliously from the presence, put him to death that very evening. The employment of the Prince of Sunset had been the last effort of despair, and it soon became evident that the resources of the Burmese empire were insufficient to prevent a mere handful of British soldiers from penetrating 500 miles into the interior of the country, and compelling the capital to surrender to them at discretion. After halting five days at Pagahm, Sir Archibald Campbell resumed his march, and had arrived at Yandaboo, within sixty miles of Ava, when negotiators arrived in the persons of two Burmese ministers and the two American missionaries, Messrs. Price and Judson. As a proof of the sincerity of the court they were accompanied by a number of liberated prisoners, and brought with them twenty-five lacs of rupees (£250,000) as the first pecuniary instalment. The terms having been previously arranged, nothing remained Conclusion but to give effect to them by a regular treaty. This was concluded, without giving rise to the least discussion, on the 24th of February, and ratified without any unnecessary delay. The treaty consisted of eleven articles, but after the incidental notice already taken of them, a full recapitulation would be superfluous. Aracan and the Tenasserim provinces were ceded in perpetuity to the British government, and the King of Ava renounced all right to interfere with Assam, Jyntra, and Kachar. The crore of rupees, declared to be not merely in indemnification of the expenses of the war, but "in proof of the sincere disposition of the Burmese government to maintain the relations of peace and amity of treaty. between the two nations," was to be paid by four equal instalments-the first A.D. 1826. immediately, the second in a hundred days, the third at the end of a year, and the fourth at the expiry of two years. On the first payment the British army Peace conwas to retire to Rangoon, and on the second to quit the Burmese dominions. Each state was to receive an accredited minister from the other, and a commercial treaty was to be framed on principles of reciprocal advantage. cluded. the Bur The Burmese war was never cordially sanctioned by the home authorities. Review of The expense at which it was carried on was enormous, and the acquisitions of mese war. territory secured by it, though they have proved far more valuable than was at one time anticipated, must still be considered a dear purchase. The propriety of the war cannot be determined merely by counting the cost, and balancing the profit and loss. The Burmese were certainly bent on war, and every concession that could have been made to them would have been followed by some new demand. In point of fact they did ultimately lay claim to districts lying within the ancient recognized limits of Bengal, and nothing but the series of severe lessons which they received after hostilities commenced, sufficed to convince them that they were not the invincible warriors whom they had vainly imagined themselves to be. A Burmese war, therefore, however little to be desired on its own account, was sooner or later inevitable, and the Indian government which undertook it have a sufficient vindication in the fact that they only yielded to a necessity which was laid upon them. For the mode of conducting the war they and the commander to whom they intrusted it were strictly responsible, and it is here that the blame lies. They carried it on without any regular plan, committed gross blunders, from which careful inquiry, previously made, would have saved them, and incurred enormous expense and loss of life from scattering their forces instead of concentrating them, and engaging in wild expeditions without any reasonable prospect of an adequate result. CHAPTER VI. Tranquillity not perfectly established-Disturbances in various quarters-Proceedings at Kittoor and sources of in India. I T was scarcely to be expected that when the predatory system was suppressed, India would at once subside into a state of complete tranquillity. The multitudes who had pursued rapine as a trade, though unable any longer to practise it in large and regularly organized bands, were ready to avail themselves of every source of disturbance; A.D. 1824. and not a few of the native princes, while they were pleased with the security which they enjoyed under British protection, were dissatisfied with the sacriVarious fices of independence at which it had been purchased. To the larger states the disturbance loss of territory and the humiliation which they had suffered were still more galling, and nothing but the fear of subjecting themselves to more fatal disasters deterred them from once more hazarding a contest. British supremacy was thus recognized and submitted to from necessity, not choice; and any events which seemed to promise an opportunity of subverting it were hailed with delight. The Burmese war gave full scope for the indulgence of these feelings. The natives of India entertained the most extravagant ideas of the strength and prowess of the Burmese. Not only were they known to be capable of bringing powerful armies into the field, but they were also supposed to be in possession of magical arts by which they could render themselves invulnerable. The effect of these notions on the sepoys has already been seen. order to prepare for marching to the seat of war became the signal for wholesale desertion, and in one case was followed by a mutiny, which, if it had not been speedily suppressed by force, would probably have spread over the whole of the native army of Bengal. It is hence easy to understand how a general feeling of restlessness and discontent gradually displayed itself in proportion as the country began to be bared of troops, in order to meet the demands of a foreign war, and how every rumour of disaster confirmed the belief that the British, in encountering the Burmese, were rushing blindly on their own destruction. Altogether apart from the Burmese war there were many causes of disturbance at work, and when to these this war was added, the only wonder is that the overt acts to which they led were not more numerous and of a more formidable description. Some of these which interrupted the internal tranquillity of India during Earl Amherst's administration will now be mentioned. The In the north-west, among the protected Sikh states, a religious mendicant A.D. 1824. announced his advent as Kali, the last of the Hindoo avatars, for the purpose at Saharan poor, Cal of putting an end to the reign of foreigners. The supposed desirableness of the Outbreaks event sufficed to produce a general expectation of it; and though the precaution had been taken to arrest the mendicant, and he was paying the penalty of his pee, &c. imposture in prison when the day appointed for the advent arrived, a riotous multitude assembled, and were not dispersed till military force was employed. In the same quarter a predatory leader having assembled a large band of followers made himself master of the fort of Kunjawa, at no great distance from Saharanpoor, assumed the title of rajah, and began to levy contributions on the surrounding districts. Numbers flocked to him from all quarters, and the insurrection was assuming a regularly organized form, when a body of troops, collected with some difficulty, marched against his stronghold, and succeeded in dislodging him after 150 of his followers had been slain. At some distance to the south-west, on the borders of Rajpootana, and even in the vicinity of Delhi, the Mewattees and Bhattees, and other bands of plunderers, taking advantage of the withdrawal of the troops which had overawed them, resumed their depredations, and carried them on to such an extent that for a short time the communication with Delhi was interrupted, and order was not restored till an increase of military force had been obtained. At Calpee on the Jumna, about fifty miles south-west of Cawnpoor, a refractory jaghirdar of the Rajah of Jaloun suddenly appeared with a considerable body of horse and foot, and after an unsuccessful attempt to seize the fort, containing an amount of public treasure, plundered and set fire to the town. In Malwah various sinister rumours were circulated, and it was even represented that owing to the difficulties of the Burmese war the British were about to retire altogether from Central India. It was probably owing in part to these absurd rumours that in one locality a rising was organized, and that in the vicinity of Boorhanpoor, among the jungles which extend to the north of the Taptee, between Aseerghur and Ellichpoor, Sheikh Dalla, an old Pindaree leader, collected a strong body of horse and foot, and did serious mischief before he was effectually checked. The Bheels too began again to grow troublesome, and were with difficulty restrained from resuming their predatory habits. disturbance Still farther to the south, in the Mahratta country, some serious disturb- Mahratta ances occurred. Kittoor, situated to the east of the Portuguese territory of Goa, at Kittoor. and to the north-west of Darwar, was, with the adjoining district, held under the Company. On the death of the chief without children, in September, 1824, the grant was understood to have lapsed, but the natives, who had previously been intrusted with the management of the district, being unwilling to relinquish it, endeavoured to secure its continuance, by alleging that the chief, previous to his death, authorized his wife and his mother to adopt a son for him. accordance with this pretended injunction a boy very distantly related to his In VOL. III. 219 A.D. 1824. family was brought forward and recognized as his successor. Revolt at Proceedings of the Rajah The whole pro ceeding was informal. The adoption to be valid ought to have taken place during the chief's lifetime, and at all events no subsequent steps ought to have been taken without the sanction of the paramount power. On these grounds, and also because he believed that the real object of the proceedings was to favour the ambition of a faction, and carry off the accumulated treasure of the late chief, to the detriment of his widow, Mr. Thackeray, the British collector, refused to recognize the new arrangements, and in the meantime, while waiting instructions from Bombay, took possession of the treasure, and assumed the management of the district. No opposition was offered, and in order to prevent the treasure within the fort from being clandestinely carried off, it was sealed up and a guard placed over it. The collector, with his two assistants, was encamped without the fort with an escort consisting of a company of native horseartillery and a company of native infantry, and on the 23d of October, on sending as usual to relieve the guard over the treasure, was astonished to learn that the gates had been shut, and that all admission was refused. On the spur of the moment an attempt was made to force an entrance and issued in a lamentable disaster. The collector and the two officers commanding the escort were killed, another British officer was wounded, and the two assistants being taken prisoners, were carried into the fort and detained as a kind of hostages. This revolt, apparently trivial in itself, acquired importance from the general excitement which it produced, and the obvious sympathy of the surrounding population with the insurgents. It was necessary, therefore, to lose no time in arresting the insurrectionary spirit, and a large body of troops under Colonel Deacon was immediately despatched against Kittoor. Though the garrison must have seen from the first that their case was desperate, they refused to surrender, and only yielded at last after the batteries had opened and effected a practicable breach. At Kolapoor, the capital of another Mahratta territory, situated among the of Kolapoor. Western Ghauts, the disturbance was of a still more serious character. The rajah, boasting a direct descent from Sevajee, the founder of the Mahratta empire, had a high idea of his own importance, and where he imagined he had a right, thought himself entitled, without consulting any other power, to take his own mode of enforcing it. Acting on this view he made a claim of supremacy over the district of Kagal, in possession of Hindoo Row, a brother-in-law of Scindia, and when the claim was disputed marched a body of troops into the district and took forcible possession of it. Scindia, offended at this treatment of his near relative, applied to the British government on the subject, and complained with some show of justice, that while his own hands were tied up by a treaty which did not allow him to interfere, the Rajah of Kolapoor was allowed to deprive others of rights which were as good as his own, and thus virtually set the paramount power at defiance. This non-interference on the part of the government produced its usual fruits, and the rajah, finding his first encroach-、 |