might be fallible; yet common caution required that the no longer postponable enterprise of extirpating the Pindarries, who had again mercilessly laid waste our territories, should embrace a provision for encountering the widest combination among the native states. Supposing their confederacy to be actually established, and that I failed in the project I had formed for rendering the collection of their forces impracticable, I was to look to coping with little less than three hundred thousand men in the field. It was a formidable struggle to incur; such indeed as it would have been irreconcilable to my duty towards my employers to have risked, had the hazard been avoidable. I think, however, that no one who considers the circumstances will regard it as having been adventured wilfully or inexpediently; I refer not to the fortunate issue, which is always a doubtful criterion of policy. I desire my position to be fairly examined. If it be evident that the contest, whether it should originate in a conspiracy of the native sovereigns, or in the support given by the Mahratta states and Ameer Khan to the Pindarries, was not ultimately to be avoided, the question was only when and how it might be entered on with the best chances of success; and I believe I decided as was imperiously demanded by the interests with which I stood intrusted. I calculated that, by celerity of movement on our part, the ill-disposed might be incapacitated from attempting the opposition which they meditated; and any appearance of our proceeding on unconfirmed suspicions would be far counterbalanced by their escape from being involved in the destruction of the Pindarries; still more as the measures held in view promised them their share in the anticipated improvement of condition throughout Central India. Before however our troops were put in motion, our informations respecting the concerted attack on the British possessions were distinct and incontrovertible.

From Cawnpore, whither I had proceeded, I notified to the Council at Calcutta my purpose of framing the campaign consonantly to the above computation. What I contemplated was the pushing forward unexpectedly several divisions, which should occupy positions opposing insuperable obstacles to the junction of the army of any state with that of another; even subjecting to extreme peril any Sovereign's attempt to assemble the dispersed corps of his forces within his own dominions, should we see cause to forbid it. The success of the plan depended on the secrecy with which the preparations could be made, the proper choice of the points to be seized, and the speed with which we should reach the designated stations. I speak relatively to the troops which were to penetrate from the north; for the advance of those from the south, destined to act against the Pindarries, could not be con

cealed. The formation of my magazines of grain on the frontier was fortunately disguised by a bad harvest in that quarter, which furnished the excuse for transportation of corn thither, as if it were a provision for the inhabitants against eventual dearth. In all other respects the arrangements were so admirably conducted by the few public functionaries confidentially intrusted with them, that not a suspicion of any intended stir was afloat. In the most

distant battalion destined for the service there was not a surmise of impending movement above five or six days previous to its being actually in march. The suddenness with which we occupied the heart of the inimical countries, added to the efficiency of the means employed, caused all the essential parts of the business to be finished completely to my wish in hardly more than three months; so that I was enabled almost immediately after that period to send back to their cantonments that part of the force the most chargeable in the field, the European troops. The vast scale of the operations could not but be attended with great expense; it was from their short duration that, when the war charges came to be wound up, the amount for the six divisions of the Bengal troops brought forward on the occasion did not reach thirty-five lacks of Sonaut rupees, or about thirty-three and a half of Sicca, that is, 417,000.μ1 When the charge for the troops periodically and unavailingly moved forward from the Madras presidency, to cover the country south of the Nerbudda from the Pindarries, is considered, and the heavy loss of revenue from the devastations committed by those wretches is taken into account; it may be thought a thrifty expenditure which, at such a rate, once for all put an end to that annual tax on our finances. In that expenditure is included not only every kind of disbursement usually connected with troops, beyond what would have been required for them had they remained in quarters, but one arising out of the special circumstances. While every exaction for provisions and forage was strictly forborne in the neutral or feudatory countries through which we passed, compensation was made for the damage done by encamping the troops, even for a night, where the ground was under crop, as was almost invariably the case. The injury was estimated between the chief commissariat officer and the principal men of the villages concerned; and the compensation agreed on by them was paid on the spot in ready money. This measure, besides its essential justice, had the object of manifesting to the natives the equity of the British Government, and of inducing such petty independent communities as had not already relations with us to obtain our protection, by voluntarily soliciting to be taken under our paramountship. The expectation

did not deceive us; all those little territories, which had till then remained unattached, ranged themselves under our banners. Among other chiefs, the Rajah of Tihree, when he presented his nuzzer in token of plighted fealty, desired me to understand that it was the first time that state had acknowleged the supremacy of another, all the efforts of the Moghul emperors to subdue it having proved abortive. We were not at the time in the Tihree territories, nor were we likely to enter them, therefore the conduct of the Rajah could only spring from an impression which must be flattering for our country.

The economy of making our exertion so powerful, will be still better comprehended, from a further particular. Trimbuckjee Danglia, the favorite and confidential instrument of the Peishwa, was the immediate agent in the murder of the Guyckwar's minister. Gungudri Shastree, the person in question, had been earnestly invited to Poonah by the Peishwa, for the ostensible purpose of settling accounts which were afloat between the two states, but with the real object of gaining the minister to seduce his sovereign into the confederacy against us. The Guyckwar, from some doubt of the Peishwa, would not suffer his minister to repair to Poonah, unless the British Government would be answerable for his safety; and we pledged ourselves to that prince accordingly, not merely in compliance with the solicitation of the Peishwa, but because we were anxious that counter-claims between the two states, which had given us such trouble, should be finally adjusted. That a Bramin of the highest caste, first minister of an independent prince, and invested with a public commission by his sovereign, should stand in any risk, appeared incredible: therefore our guarantee was unhesitatingly given. When the Peishwa found that the minister was proof against all temptation, and refused absolutely to betray his master into a scheme, which the minister thought would entail his destruction, his highness determined to make away with such an obstacle to his views, in the hope that the office of his minister might be filled by some more manageable individual. Gangudri Shastree was barbarously assassinated, on his way back from a devotional ceremony by night, in the temple, whither he had gone on repeated entreaties from Trimbuckjee Danglia, after having previously excused himself on the score of indisposition. The Peishwa was apprised, that his participation in the crime was minutely known to us, but that, to save his credit, the guilt should be thrown on the special perpetrator, Trimbuckjee Danglia, who must be delivered up to us, in atonement for the outrage offered to our plighted security. Trimbuckjee was put into our hands accordingly. To conciliate the Peishwa, it was promised to his highness, that his favorite should not be

proceeded against capitally, but be merely kept in confinement as a state prisoner. Trimbuckjee, having made his escape from á fortress, where he was negligently guarded, was afterwards taken in the field, speedily subsequent to the Peishwa's surrender. Regarding the game as irretrievably lost, he thought concealment useless, and indulged that boast of a nearly accomplished design, with which persons often console themselves under failure. He unfolded that, from early in 1814, the Peishwa had been busied in organizing a general confederacy of native powers, for the purpose of driving the British out of India, and he averred, that we were only by three or four months too quick on them, or we should have found them the assailants, in which case the issue might have been very different. Certainly, had Scindiah, by much the most powerful of the native princes, been in the field at the head of his assembled veteran troops, with the fine and well-manned artillery which he possessed, time as well as encouragement would have been afforded to the other confederate powers for resorting to arms in so many quarters, as must have made our movements cautious, and consequently protracted, under heavy expense.

The incurrence of such circumstances was, at all events, to be' risked by us, since, I repeat, it was not a matter of option, whether the extinction of an evil so intolerable as the ravages of the Pindarries should be undertaken.

It has been said, however, that confident expectation had been entertained of achieving the main purpose, while every hostile speculation of the native sovereigns would be repressed, by our sudden pre-occupation of particular positions: and this calculation applied in a more special degree to Scindiah. Residing at Gwalior, he was in the heart of the richest part of his dominions: but independently of the objection that those provinces were separated from our territory only by the Jumna, there was a military defect in the situation to which it must be supposed the Maharajah had never adverted. About twenty miles south of Gwalior, a ridge of very abrupt hills, covered with the tangled wood peculiar to India, extends from the Little Sinde to the Chumbal, which rivers form the flank boundaries of the Gwalior district and its dependencies. There are but two routes by which carriages, and perhaps cavalry, can pass that chain; one along the Little Sinde, and another not far from the Chumbal: by my seizing, with the centre division, a position which would bar any movement along the Little Sinde, and placing M. General Donkin's division at the back of the other pass, Scindiah was reduced to the dilemma of subscribing the treaty which I offered to him, or of crossing the hills through bye-paths, attended by the few followers who might be able to accompany him, sacrificing his splendid train of artillery (above one hundred

VOL. XXIV.

brass guns), with all its appendages, and abandoning at once sto us his most valuable possessions. The terms imposed on him were, essentially unqualified submission, though so colored as to avoid making him feel public humiliation. Their intrinsic rigor will not be thought overstrained or inequitable, when it is observed, that I had ascertained the Maharajah's having promised the Pindarries decisive assistance; and that I had intercepted the secret correspondence, through which he was instigating the Nepaulese to attack us. Nothing, in short, but my persuasion, that the maintenance of the existing governments in Central India, and the making them our instruments and sureties for preserving the future tranquillity of the country, would have dictated the forbearance manifested, under the reiterated perfidies of that prince. He closed with the proffered conditions, and was saved by the acquiescence. The advantage to us was, that resistance in any other quarter could be only a transient ebullition. To the more distant states, this non-appearance of a formidable force, with which they were to co-operate, was absolute incapacitation from effort. In my way back to Calcutta, in July 1818, I received a rescript, brought by an envoy from the Birman monarch, whom we incorrectly call King of Ava, from one of the great divisions of his empire. The purport of this curious paper was, a requisition for our immediate surrender of all the provinces east of the Banghautty, even including Moorshadabad, with a menace, that should the demand not be obeyed, he would lay waste our territories with fire and sword. His projected hostility was evidently a measure concerted with the Mahrattas; and during the rainy season, when the overflowing of the rivers renders the march of troops impracticable, his majesty conceived, that by advancing a title, however extravagant, to those provinces, he should have an ostensible ground for invading a state, with which otherwise he had no quarrel. I sent back the envoy, with an intimation, that the answer should be conveyed through another channel. He had come from the court through the northern Birman provinces. The answer was dispatched by sea to the Viceroy of Arracán, residing at the port of Rangoon, in the central division, for transmission to his sovereign. It expressed that I was too well acquainted with his majesty's wisdom to be the dupe of the gross forgery attempted to be palmed on me; wherefore I sent to him the document fabricated in his august name, and trusted that he would subject to condign punishment the persons who had so profligately endeavored to sow dis-sension between two powers reciprocally interested to cultivate amity. By this procedure I evaded the necessity of noticing an insolent step, foreseeing that his Birman majesty would be thoroughly glad of the excuse to remain quiet, when he learned his secret allies had been subdued. That information he received