1773-1781.]

NUNCOMAR EXECUTED.

127

extensive. But in Hindustan the crime, regarded as very venial, had never been dealt with capitally. Nuncomar was tried upon the severer English statute, although one of the judges associated with Impey pressed for his indictment under the earlier and milder enactment. He was tried by a jury of Englishmen, and was found guilty. He was sentenced to be hanged; and the power of reprieve which the Supreme Court possessed was not exercised. The Council had no power to interfere, although the majority remonstrated in the strongest terms against the entire proceedings. The execution of the old man, to whom the agents of the Company had once sued for favour and protection, to whom his countrymen looked up with awe as a Brahmin who was the very head of Brahmins,-was inexorably resolved upon. He was carried in his palanquin to the common gallows, and he died with the most perfect composure. The punishment of Nuncomar put an end to all troubles and accusations against Hastings by native informers. The event, we are assured, was a mere coincidence with the attempts to shake the ascendancy of the Governor-General; and that his friend and schoolfellow, the Chief Justice, was a pure administrator of the law without respect of person.

The public quarrels, and the private immoralities, of Hastings and Francis occupy, for several years, the general narratives of Indian affairs. The adulterous intercourse of Francis with the wife of a Calcutta barrister, and the excessive fine imposed upon him by sir Elijah Impey; the very questionable relations of Hastings with Mrs. Imhoff, who afterwards became his wife, and whose reception at her Court by the rigid queen Charlotte was attributed by satirists to the influence of some of the plundered wealth of India-these are matters which, however entertaining they may be, are now of little historical importance. The Council of Calcutta, and its Supreme Court of Justice, were as discordant an administrative body as ever precipitated an empire into ruin. But Hastings had the sagacity, amidst all the rivalries. which would have pulled down a man of less energetic will, to maintain his own power, and at the same time to look steadily at the aggrandizement of the British crown. Circumstances at home were favourable to him, although lord North, strongly disapproving the Rohilla war, was bent upon his recall. But the Governor-General could not be removed during the first five years of his administration, except by an address to the Crown by the Court of East India Proprietors. The most strenuous exertions were made by the supporters of the ministry to obtain a vote against Hastings; but the proposition for the recall was finally negatived. The Governor-General had once authorized his friend colonel Maclean to tender his resignation, if his conduct should not be approved; and though he had retracted that authority, Maclean in 1776 did tender the resignation. About that time Hastings had acquired a temporary supremacy by the death of Monson. His casting vote enabled him to defeat the proposals of Clavering and Francis, and to carry his own views into effect. In June, 1777, a packet-ship arrived with the announcement that the Governor-General had resigned. Hastings denied that he had authorized any such act. Clavering and Francis claimed immediate authority. Hastings and Barwell maintained that the right of the Governor to obedience should be upheld until further information should arrive. An appeal to military force would have unquestionably determined the victory for Governor Hastings, and not for King Francis, as the presumptuous ex-clerk of the Foreign Office was called. The Supreme Court prevented such a conflict, by

128

DISSENTIONS AT MADRAS.

[1773-1784. deciding that the resignation of Hastings was invalid, and that Clavering had illegally assumed the power of Governor-General. Hastings then contended that Clavering had forfeited his seat in the Council, by his attempt at usurpation; but the Judges of the Supreme Court decided that the Governorgeneral had no power to remove any member of the Board. In two months after this contest Clavering died. A new member of the Council, Mr. Wheler, arrived to fill up the vacancy caused by the death of colonel Monson; and now Hastings had a majority to support him. The same course of unworthy and dangerous rivalries prevailed in the subordinate Council of Madras, between lord Pigot and the members of his Board. He maintained that he was not bound by a majority against him; and upon their refusal to yield, ordered them to be suspended from their functions. They took a stronger step, and put the Governor under military arrest; for which violent act they were recalled home by a vote of the House of Commons; were tried in the Court of King's Bench; and were sentenced to pay a moderate fine, which lenient sentence they probably owed to a speech of Erskine, in mitigation of punishment. Lord Pigot was also recalled, but he had died during his period of imprisonment. When the five years had expired during which

Hastings could not be removed by the government without the concurrence of the East India Company, he was re-appointed. Lord North, in 1786, in a debate on the Rohilla war, the charge against Hastings being then under discussion, strongly expressed his disapprobation of the conduct of the Governor-General; but said that in 1778, when the French war commenced, he did not think that a fit time to make an alteration in the constitution of our government in India, and considering Mr. Hastings as a man of abilities he continued him in his government.*

1773-1784.]

MAHRATTA WAR.

129

In the spring of 1778 the French government had openly made a common cause with the North American colonies, and war between England and France was inevitable. In the previous year a French agent had been negotiating with the Peshwa of the Mahrattas, at his seat of vice-royalty at Poonah, and an alliance dangerous to the British interests was likely to be formed. Hastings was for immediate war; and although two of the Council were opposed to him, an army was sent to the Peshwa's country, with instructions to forward the claims of Ragoba, a pretender to the dignity of Peshwa. It was one of the charges against Hastings, that on the 22nd of June, 1778, he made the following declaration in council: "If it be really true that the British arms and influence have suffered so severe a check in the Western world, it is more incumbent on those who are charged with the interests of Great Britain in the East, to exert themselves for the retrieval of the national loss." Hastings alluded to the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga. In a few weeks arrived the intelligence of hostilities with France. The French settlement of Chandernagore was immediately captured; Pondicherry was invested, and was surrendered after some resistance; and the Mahratta expedition was persevered in. Its results were very unfortunate. The small army under colonel Egerton that had approached Poonah was surrounded by bodies of hostile cavalry; and the only chance of safety was a convention, by which it was agreed that the Mahrattas should recover what the British had gained from them since 1756. Hastings persevered; and other expeditions were more successful. General Goddard took the fort of Ahmedabad by storm, and the city of Bassein by siege. Captain Popham

VOL. VIL

K

130

HYDER ALI-THE CARNATIC RAVAGED.

[1773-1784. deemed impregnable. The government at home, on the first outbreak of the war with France, had sent sir Eyre Coote to be the commander of the forces in India, with a seat in the Council. There had been a partial reconciliation in that body between the discordant parties of Hastings and Francis. But the animosities were only smothered. A duel was fought between the two rivals, in which Francis was shot; and upon his recovery he resigned his office, and returned to England. There were other fierce contests between the wielders of the political and the judicial power. Hastings and Impey were now bitter opponents. These feuds have ceased to command the interest which was once attached to them. Events of more real importance were now to call forth all the resources of the boldness and foresight of the GovernorGeneral. The abilities of Hastings were exhibited in connection with a policy which did not shrink from employing means to ensure success which no amount of success can justify. However we may admire in him the great qualities which saved the British authority in the East from a danger as formidable as that which overthrew our power in the West, we cannot lament that his triumphs did not prevent him being accused as an offender against the rights of humanity, and that years of bitter anxiety and loss of fortune were the penalties he paid for his oppressions.

Hyder Ali, the sovereign of the great kingdom of the Mysore, had been at peace with the British since he concluded a treaty with the Council of Madras in 1769. This extraordinary ruler was now far advanced in years, but his energy was undiminished. It was one of the Articles of Charge against Hastings that his intrigues against the Peshwa of the Mahrattas had produced, amongst the chief princes and states of India, a general distrust and suspicion of the ambitious designs and treacherous principles of the British government. It was alleged that the two principal Hindoo powers-the Peshwa, and the Rajah of Berar-and the two principal Mohammedan powers-Hyder Ali and the Nizam of the Deccan-renouncing all former enmities against each other, united in a common confederacy against the English. In 1780 Hyder Ali assembled an army computed to consist of ninety thousand men. These forces had been partly disciplined by French officers. He had a more personal quarrel to avenge than his dread of the extension of the English power. The Council of Madras, under sir Thomas Rumbold, had given especial offence to Hyder Ali. His rival in the Carnatic, the nabob of Arcot, was surrounded by English, who were his creditors, and who are accused of having carried on a continued plot in the divan, for the destruction of Hyder Ali.* The revenge of the great chief of Mysore has been described in language which makes the soberer colouring of history look pale and ineffective. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy, and with every rival, who buried their mutual animosities in their common detestation against the creditors of the nabob of Arcot, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding all the materials of fury, havock, and desolation, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its

* Burke-"Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts."

1773-1784.]

HYDER DEFEATED BY COOTE.

131

contents on the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war before known or heard of were mercy to that new havock. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of function-fathers torn from children, husbands from wives-enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers, and the trampling of pursuing horses, were

Mysorean Cavalry. From Armed Figures in the collection of Sir Samuel Meyrick.

swept into captivity, in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest fled to the walled cities. But escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine."*

The terrified inhabitants of Madras could trace the progress of the ruthless invader as columns of smoke rose from the burning villages. The danger was approaching to the very walls of the Settlement. A force of three thousand men under colonel Baillie had been cut to pieces by Hyder. Sir Hector Munro, with five thousand men, retreated towards Mount St. Thomas. When the evil tidings reached Hastings he at once adopted his course of action. He abandoned the Mahratta war, and proposed that a treaty of peace and alliance should be concluded. Sir Eyre Coote proceeded with every man that could be shipped from Bengal, to take the command at Madras. Hyder Ali was alarmed when Coote took the field in January, 1781; and he immediately raised the siege of Wondewash, and the siege of Vellore. At length on the 1st of July, the English commander, having only a force of nine thousand men to oppose to Hyder's enormous army, brought him to action at Porto Nono, and obtained a signal victory. Another battle, on the 27th of August, was not so decisive. Peace was not concluded with the Mahrattas till early in 1782; and the continued war with Mysore and with Poonah involved so great a cost, that Hastings had to look to extraordinary resources, to enable him to carry on this struggle against the most dangerous enemy that had yet assailed the British power. He had to repeat the policy of 1773; when he violated a solemn compact with the mogul, and let out his troops to the nabob of Oude for the enslavement of the Rohillas, with the sole object of replenishing his exhausted treasury.

* Burke-"Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts."