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of seditious papers, upbraiding them with their degenerate submission to Feringhi ascendency ('); and fresh converts were daily attracted by the vehement harangues of the new secta-. ries, who avowed their aim of restoring Islam to its ancient purity and pre-eminence. The movement party at length found a leader in the Nawab Mubariz-ed-dowlah, (brother of the reigning Nizam,) a prince of remarkable personal advantages and high popularity, who openly embraced the Wahhabi creed, and made his palace in Hyderabad the head-quarters of their faction; while at the same time it became known that vast quantities of artillery and military stores were being collected by the Nawab of Kurnool, a petty Patan ruler, whose country adjoined that of the Nizam. The British government now felt itself compelled to interfere. In June 1839, Mubariz-ed-dowlah was arrested in pursuance of a requisition from the resident, and conveyed as a state prisoner to the fort of Golconda, where he still remains; and in October of the same year, the Nawab of Kurnool was mediatized, (to borrow a phrase from the Germanic empire,) and his district absorbed in the dominions of the Company (). The discoveries made at the occupation of this place were sufficiently calculated to open the eyes of the government to the nature and extent of the plot which had been concocted. An enormous number of newly-cast guns, piles of shot, shells, and missiles

....

(1) Som idea may be formed of the terms and spirit of these proclamations from the following extracts, taken from a paper seized at the capture of Kurnool, in October 1839. «The sins of him who dies for the faith are remitted by God, and he enters Paradise pure and spotless. . . . . If a single Moslem opposes ten infidels in battle, and is victorious, he becomes a Ghazi, (champion of the faith :)-should he be slain, he is a shahhid, (martyr,) and will enter into glory. But the death of one man, the glorified shahhid Tippoo-Sultan, the Moslems fell into their present state of degradation and subjection to the infidels; and you, of the present day, though you are the heirs of the prophets aud the sons of the men who fought for Islam, have deserted your religion, and obey the infidel Nazarenes! But you will speedily hear the cry of Deen! Deen! (the faith)-then shake off all negligence, and fear from your hearts; repeat the Kulma and the Fatah, (Mohammedan formul of faith) and join the army of the true believers who have come for the battle! >>

(2) He was murdered (June 1840) at Trichinoply, whither he had been sent under surveillance, by one of his own Moslem attendants, who had conceived, from his master's familiar intercourse with the English residents, that he meditated embracing Christianity!

of extraordinary and novel fashions, were found concealed in every part of the palace, gardens, and town, in such profusion as could scarcely be explained except by supposing it to be the central depôt of some widely-ramified conspiracy; and though it does not appear that any direct correspondence was proved to have existed between the malecontents at Kurnool and the Wahhabi faction at Hyderabad, it was clear that their sentiments and objects, whether devised in concert or not, were essentially the same.

The transactions of which we have now endeavoured to show the true tendency and importance, were doubtless duly reported in the English newspapers at the time, but passed wholly unheeded by the British public, who saw in the dispossessment of a refractory nawab, and the imprisonment of a native prince, nothing more than the ordinary and constitutional exercise of the authority legitimately vested in the rulers of India. But it is impossible to say what might have been the consequences of this abortive movement, had any grounds of private discontent combined with the efforts of the Wahhabi propagandists to shake the fidelity of the sepoys. The matériel of the Madras army (unlike that of Bengal, which consists in a great measure of Brahmins and other high-caste Hindoos) is drawn principally from the lower grades of Moslems; and the famous mutiny of Vellore in July 1806, which, both for its suddenness and secrecy, and for the merciless spirit displayed by the revolters, bore no inconsiderable similitude to the recent outbreak at Cabul ('), affords fatal evidence of the ease with which their passions may be goaded to acts of violence. It would naturally be supposed that, particularly at such a crisis as the present, the government would avoid exciting the angry feelings of a force thus constituted, by any tampering with their pay; yet such a reduction has recently been attempted, and the consequences have been such as might have been anticipated.

(') The standard of Tippoo, whose sons were then state prisoners in the fort of Vellore, was hoisted by the mutineers; but we believe it was never clearly ascertained under what instigation they acted, or what ulterior objects they proposed to themselves. An interesting narrative of this remarkable revolt is given in the United Service Journal for May 1841.

From the first establishment of the native army in India it has been customary, instead of organizing a regular commissariat service for the maintenance of the troops in the field, to issue to the soldier an extra pecuniary allowance for the purchase of provisions, under the title of Batta-a Hindostani phrase, properly implying the rate of exchange between coins bearing the same name but from different mints. This ordinary allowance was termed half batta- but when the troops were called on for field service, or stationed beyond the boundaries of their own. presidency, a further advance was made, which was denominated full batta. This latter regulation particularly affected the Madras troops, from the continual calls made on them for service in the Nagpoor and Hyderabad territorics, &c., and until very recently no attempt was made to alter it. But in the latter part of 1841, the fort of Aseerghur, which (though in the Bombay territory) is garrisoned by Madras troops, was reduced from a full to a half batta station by a government order; but the regiment stationed there (the 52d Madras infantry) refused, on the next pay-day, to receive their money, and were not without difficulty reduced to submission by the efforts of the European officers. The government, however, persevered in the plan of reduction, which was next put in force (in February of the present year) at the important stations of Jaulnah and Secunderabad, in the Nizam territories, where, in addition to the proposed diminution of batta, the pay of the soldier was further curtailed by being issued in the depreciated coinage of Hyderabad (1). Secunderabad is one of the most extensive cantonments of the Madras army, and derives additional importance from its close vicinity to Hyderabad, the capital city of the Nizam, and filled (as we have already mentioned) with a disaffected Moslem population. The troops followed the example of their comrades at Asseerghur-not less than four regiments (7th, 32d, and 8th infantry, and 4th

(') The troops, officers and men, had always been paid, when quartered in the Nizam's dominions, at the rate of 111 Hyderabad for 100 Company's rupees, the reai equivalent being 120 for 100; but this has been redressed since the outbreak at Secunderabad.

light cavalry) rejected their pay unless accompanied by full batta, and broke out into open mutiny and though the firstnamed corps, after some demur, returned to their duty, the others remained refractory till surrounded by a superior force of Europeans and artillery, when several hundreds were disarmed and made prisoners; and have since been either dismissed the service, or draughted into other regiments, as if to disseminate as widely-as possible the example of disaffection. At present, (as we are assured by the latest accounts,) all symptoms of insubordination have disappeared; and as the batta grievance has been redressed by order of Lord Ellenborough, this may be really the case. Still it must be admitted as singularly fortunate, that this disturbance did not take place at the time when the fidelity of the soldiers was assailed by the machinations of Mubariz-ed-dowlah and his Wahhabi confederates; and even now, with the examples of the insurrection at Cabul and the mutiny at Vellore before our eyes, who can say how far this seeming security, in the critical state of our affairs in other quarters, is to be depended upon?

Such, up to the present time, have, been the visible results of Whig domestic government in India, and of that ever-memorable stroke of Whig policy by which (as we were assured two years ago) our Anglo-Indian empire had been established for ever on an immovable basis; what the ultimate consequences of both may be, is as yet hidden in the womb of time. It had been long since foretold by him whose lightest word was never spoken in vain, at once the most illustrious of our warriors and most sagacious of our statesmen, that «it would not be till Lord Auckland's policy had reached the zenith of apparent success, that its difficulties would begin to develope themselves,» and fatally has the prediction been verified. But if the ikbal, or good fortune, which is proverbially believed in the East to attend on all the operations of the Company, has deserted them in their utmost need in the passes of Cabul, it must be allowed that the original instigators of, and agents in, the Affghan war (with the single exception of the unfortunate Macnaghten,) have most signally

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reaped the benefits of its influence. Titles, pensions, and promotions, have been heaped upon them in unexampled profusion, which presents a strange contrast with the impeachment of Hastings, and the general neglect experienced by those who laid, in past days, the foundations of our Asiatic rule; and before their short-lived laurels have had time to wither, they have been recalled to the tranquil enjoyment of their honours in England, leaving the rectification of their errors to their successors. Even to the last moment of his stay in India, the late viceroy was fostered by the breath of popular favour; and the thunder of the cannon which announced the arrival of Lord Ellenborough, was mingled with the acclamations which rang through the Town Hall of Calcutta from those assembled to do honour to the ruler whom he came to succeed. With the tributes of respect thus tendered we have no fault to find, if considered as on the principle of speed the parting guest," or with reference to the amiable character and high private worth of the individual; but the laudatory allusions to his trans-Indian policy, with which the Calcutta addresses were filled, were equally opposed to fact and to good taste; and must (we think) have been felt by the object of them as a painful and humiliating mockery. When Lord Auckland assumed the reins of government in 1836, the external relations of our Eastern empire were peaceful, the finances prosperous, and the army, notwithstanding the injudicious reductions of Lord William Bentinck, amply sufficient for any duty required within our own frontier; but a far different prospect awaits his successor. A treasury drained to the last rupee an army defeated in one quarter, and disaffected in another—an almost hopelessly-involved foreign policy-with a war of extermination in Affghanistan-a seemingly interminable bucanier warfare in China, and the probability of hostilities with Burmah and Nepaul-such is the frightful catalogue of difficulties with which the new governor-general is called upon at once to grapple!

But Lord Ellenborough approaches the task with far different qualifications to several of his immediate predecessors, who seem to have assumed the viceregal sceptre of India as

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