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History of the Indian Mutiny

Book 1 – Introductory – 1846–1856

Chapter 1

Broken in bodily health, but not enfeebled in spirit, by eight years of anxious toil beneath an Indian sun, Lord Dalhousie laid down the reins of government and returned to his native country to die. Since the reign of Lord Wellesley, so great in written history, so momentous in practical results, there had been no such administration as that of Lord Dalhousie; there had been no period in the annals of the Anglo-Indian Empire surcharged with such great political events, none which nearly approached it in the rapidity of its administrative progress. Peace and War had yielded their fruits with equal profusion.

On the eve of resigning his high trust to the hands of another, Lord Dalhousie drew up an elaborate state-paper reviewing the eventful years of his government. He had reason to rejoice in the retrospect; for he had acted in accordance with the faith that was within him, honestly and earnestly working out his cherished principles, and there was a bright flush of success over all the apparent result. Peace and prosperity smiled upon the empire. That empire he had vastly extended, and by its extension he believed that he had consolidated our rule and imparted additional security to our tenure of the country.

Of these great successes some account should be given at the outset of such a narrative as this: for it is only by understanding and appreciating them that we can rightly estimate the subsequent crisis. It was in the Panjab and in Oudh that many of the most important incidents of that crisis occurred.

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Lord Dalhousie found them Foreign States; he left them British Provinces.

First occupation of the Panjab

Lord Hardinge conquered the Sikhs; but he spared the Panjab. Moderate in victory as resolute in war, he left the empire of Ranjit Singh shorn only of its outlying provinces, to be governed by his successors, and strove to protect the boy-prince against the lawlessness of his own soldiers. But it was felt that this forbearance was only an experimental forbearance; and the proclamation which announced the restoration of the Panjab to the Maharajah Dhulip Singh sounded also a note of warning to the great military autocracy which had well-nigh overthrown the State. “If this opportunity,” said the victor, “of rescuing the Sikh nation from military anarchy and misrule be neglected, and hostile opposition to the British army be renewed, the Government of India will make such other arrangements for the future government of the Panjab as the interests and security of the British power may render just and expedient.” Thus was the doubt expressed; thus were the consequences foreshadowed. It did not seem likely that the experiment would succeed; but it was not less right to make it. It left the future destiny of the empire, under Providence, for the Sikhs themselves to determine. It taught them how to preserve their national independence, and left them to work out the problem with their own hands.

But Hardinge did more than this. He did not interfere with the internal administration, but he established a powerful military protectorate in the Panjab. He left the Durbar to govern the country after its own fashion, but he protected the Government against the law-less domination of its soldiery. The Sikh army was overawed by the presence of the British battalions; and if the hour had produced the man – if there had been any wisdom, any love of country, in the councils of the nation – the Sikh Empire might have survived the great peril of the British military protectorate. But there was no one worthy to rule; no one able to govern. The mother of the young Maharajah was nominally the Regent. There have been great queens in the East as in the West – women who have done for their people what men have been incapable of doing. But the mother of Dhulip Singh was not one of these. To say that she loved herself better than her country is to use in courtesy the mildest words, which do not actually violate truth. She was,

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indeed, an evil presence in the nation. It rested with her to choose a minister, and the choice which she made was another great suicidal blow struck at the life of the Sikh Empire. It may have been difficult in this emergency to select the right man, for, in truth, there were not many wise men from whom a selection could be made. The Queen-Mother cut through the difficulty by selecting her paramour.

Lal Singh was unpopular with the Durbar; unpopular with the people; and he failed. He might have been an able and an honest man, and yet have been found wanting in such a conjuncture. But he was probably the worst man in the Panjab on whom the duty of reconstructing a strong Sikh Government could have devolved. To do him justice, there were great difficulties in his way. He had to replenish an exhausted treasury by a course of unpopular retrenchments. Troops were to be disbanded and Jaghirs resumed. Lal Singh was not the man to do this, as one bowing to a painful necessity, and sacrificing himself to the exigencies of the State. Even in a country where political virtue was but little understood, a course of duty consistently pursued for the benefit of the nation might have ensured for him some sort of respect. But whilst he was impoverishing others, he was enriching himself. It was not the public treasury, but the private purse, that he sought to replenish, and better men were despoiled to satisfy the greed of his hungry relatives and friends. Vicious among the vicious, he lived but for the indulgence of his own appetites, and ruled but for his own aggrandisement. The favourite of the Queen, he was the oppressor of the People. And though he tried to dazzle his British guests by rare displays of courtesy towards them, and made himself ‘immensely popular among all ranks of the Army of Occupation by his incessant efforts to gratify them, he could not hide the one great patent fact, that a strong Sikh Government could never be established under the wazirat of Lal Singh.

But the British were not responsible for the failure. The Regent chose him; and, bound by treaty not to exercise any interference in the internal administration of the Lahor State, the British Government had only passively to ratify the choice. But it was a state of things burdened with evils of the most obtrusive kind. We were upholding an unprincipled ruler and an unprincipled minister at the point of our British bayonets, and thus aiding them to commit iniquities which, without such

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external support, they would not have long been suffered to perpetrate. The compact, however, was but for the current year; and even for that brief period there seemed but little probability of Lal Singh tiding over the difficulties and dangers which beset his position.

Very soon his treachery undid him. False to his own country, he was false also to the British Government. The province of Kashmir, which was one of the outlying dependencies taken by the British in payment of the war-charges, had been made over to Gulab Singh, chief of the great Jamu family, who had paid a million of money for the cession. But the transfer had been resisted by the local governor, who had ruled the province under the Sikh Rajahs, and covertly Lal Singh had encouraged the resistance.

December 1846

The nominal offender was brought to public trial, but it was felt that the real criminal was Lal Singh, and that upon the issue of the inquiry depended the fate of the minister. It was soon apparent that he was a traitor, and that the other, though, for intelligible reasons of his own, reluctant to render an account of his stewardship, was little more than a tool in his hands. The disgrace of the minister was the immediate result of the investigation. He left the Durbar tent a prisoner under a guard, an hour before his own body-guard, of Sikh soldiers; and the great seal of the Maharajah was placed in the hands of the British Resident. So fell Lal Singh; and so fell also the first experiment to reconstruct a strong Sikh Government on a basis of national independence.

Another experiment was then to be tried. There was not a native of the country to whose hands the destinies of the empire could be safely entrusted. If the power of the English conqueror were demanded to overawe the turbulent military element, English wisdom and English integrity were no less needed, in that conjuncture, to quicken and to purify the corrupt councils of the State. Sikh statesmanship, protected against the armed violence of the Praetorian bands, which had overthrown so many ministries, had been fairly tried, and had been found miserably wanting. A purely native Government was not to be hazarded again. Averse as Hardinge had been, and still was, to sanction British interference in the internal administration of the Panjab, there was that in the complications before him which compelled him to overcome his reluctance. The choice, indeed, lay between a half measure, which might

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succeed, though truly there was small hope of success, and the total abandonment of the country to its own vices which would have been speedily followed, in self-defence, by our direct assumption of the Government on our own account. Importuned by the Sikh Durbar, in the name of the Maharajah, Hardinge tried the former course. The next effort, therefore, to save the Sikh Empire from self-destruction embraced the idea of a native Government, presided over by a British statesman. A Council of Regency was instituted, to be composed of Sikh chiefs, under the superintendence and control of the Resident; or, in other words, the British Resident became the virtual ruler of the country.

And this time the choice, or rather the accident, of the man was as propitious, as before it had been untoward and perverse. The English officer possessed well-nigh all the qualities which the Sikh Sirdar so deplorably lacked. A captain of the Bengal Artillery, holding the higher rank of colonel by brevet for good service, Henry Lawrence had graduated in Panjabi diplomacy under George Clerk, and had accompanied to Kabul the Sikh Contingent, attached to Pollock’s retributory force, combating its dubious fidelity, and controlling its predatory excesses on the way. After the return of the expedition to the British provinces, he had been appointed to represent our interests in Nipal; and there – for there was a lull in the sanguinary intrigues of that semi-barbarous Court – immersed in his books, and turning to good literary purpose his hours of leisure, he received at Katmandu intelligence of the Sikh invasion, and of the death of George Broadfoot, and was summoned to take the place of that lamented officer as the agent of the Governor-General on the frontier. In the negotiations which followed the conquest of the Khalsa army, he had taken the leading part, and, on the restoration of peace, had been appointed to the office of British Resident, or Minister, at Lahor, under the first experiment of a pure Sikh Government hedged in by British troops.

If the character of the man thus placed at the head of affairs could have secured the success of this great compromise, it would have been successful far beyond the expectations of its projectors. For no man ever undertook a high and important trust with a more solemn sense of his responsibility, or ever, with more singleness of purpose and more steadfast sincerity of heart, set himself to work, with God’s blessing, to turn a great

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opportunity to great account for the benefit of his fellows. In Henry Lawrence a pure transparent nature, a simple manliness and truthfulness of character, were combined with high intellectual powers, and personal energies which nothing earthly could subdue. I may say it here, once for all, at the very outset of my story, that nowhere does this natural simplicity and truthfulness of character so often as in India survive a long career of public service. In that country public men are happily not exposed to the pernicious influences which in England shrivel them so fast into party leaders and parliamentary chiefs. With perfect singleness of aim and pure sincerity of purpose, they go, with level eyes, straight at the public good, never looking up in fear at the suspended sword of a parliamentary majority, and never turned aside by that fear into devious paths of trickery and finesse. It may be that ever since the days of Clive and Omichund an unsavoury odour has pervaded the reputation of Oriental diplomacy; but the fact is, that our greatest successes have been achieved by men incapable of deceit, and by means which have invited scrutiny. When we have opposed craft to craft, and have sought to out-juggle our opponents, the end has been commonly disastrous. It is only by consummate honesty and transparent truthfulness that the Talleyrands of the East have been beaten by such mere children in the world’s ways as Mountstuart Elphinstone, Charles Metcalfe, James Outram, and Henry Lawrence.

Henry Lawrence, indeed, was wholly without guile. He had great shrewdness and sagacity of character, and he could read and understand motives, to which his own breast was a stranger, for he had studied well the Oriental character. But he was singularly open and unreserved in all his dealings, and would rather have given his antagonist an advantage than have condescended to any small arts and petty trickeries to secure success. All men, indeed, trusted him; for they knew that there was nothing selfish or sordid about him; that the one desire of his heart was to benefit the people of the country in which it had pleased God to cast his lot. But he never suffered this plea of beneficence to prevail against his sense of justice. He was eminently, indeed, a just man, and altogether incapable of that casuistry which gives a gloss of humanity to self-seeking, and robs people for their own good. He did not look upon the misgovernment of a native State as a valid reason for the absorption of its revenues, but thought that British power

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might be exercised for the protection of the oppressed, and British wisdom for the instruction and reformation of their oppressors, without adding a few more thousand square miles to the area of our British possessions, and a few more millions of people to the great muster-roll of British subjects in the East.

Above the middle height, of a spare, gaunt frame, and a worn face bearing upon it the traces of mental toil and bodily suffering, he impressed you, at first sight, rather with a sense of masculine energy and resolution than of any milder and more endearing qualities. But when you came to know him, you saw at once that beneath that rugged exterior there was a heart gentle as a woman’s, and you recognised in his words and in his manner the kindliness of nature, which won the affection of all who came within its reach, and by its large and liberal manifestations made his name a very household word with thousands who had never felt the pressure of his hand or stood in his living presence. But, with all this, though that name, was in men’s mouths and spoken in many languages, no unknown subaltern had a more lowly mind or a more unassuming deportment.

Such was the man who now found himself the virtual sovereign of the empire of Ranjit Singh. The new protectorate, established at the end of 1846, gave to Henry Lawrence “unlimited authority,” “to direct and control every department of the State.” He was to be assisted in this great work by an efficient establishment of subordinates, but it was no part of the design to confer upon them the executive management of affairs. The old officers of the Sikh Government were left to carry on the administration, guided and directed by their British allies. Under such a system corruption and oppression could no longer run riot over the face of the land. It was a protectorate for the many, not for the few; and for a while it seemed that all classes were pleased. with the arrangement. Outwardly, indeed, it did not seem that feelings of resentment against the British Government were cherished by any persons but the Queen-Mother and her degraded paramour.

And so, in the spring of 1847, the political horizon was almost unclouded. The Council of Regency, under the control of Henry Lawrence, seemed to be carrying on the government with a sincere desire to secure a successful result. Tranquillity had been restored; confidence and order were fast returning.

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The Sikh soldiery appeared to be contented with their lot, and to be gradually acquiring habits of discipline and obedience, under a system which rendered them dependent on the British officers for whatever most promoted their interests and contributed to their comforts. But it did not escape the sagacious mind of the Resident, that serene as was the aspect of affairs, and promising as were the indications of continued repose, there were, beneath all this surface-calm, dangerous elements at work, waiting only for time and circumstance to call them into full activity. The memory of frequent defeat was still too fresh in the minds of the humbled Khalsa to suffer them to indulge in visions of once re-acquiring their lost supremacy. But as time passed and the impression waxed fainter and fainter, it was well-nigh certain that the old hopes would revive, and that outbursts of desperate Asiatic zeal might be looked for in quarters where such paroxysms had long seemed to be necessary to the very existence of a lawless and tumultuous class. It is a trick of our self-love – of our national vanity – to make us too often delude ourselves with the belief that British supremacy must be welcome wheresoever it obtrudes itself. But Henry Lawrence did not deceive himself in this wise. He frankly admitted that, however benevolent our motives, and however conciliatory our demeanour, a British army could not garrison Lahor, and a British functionary supersede the Sikh Durbar, without exciting bitter discontents and perilous resentments. He saw around him, struggling for existence, so many high officers of the old Sikh armies, so many favourites of the old line of Wazirs now cast adrift upon the world, without resources and without hope under the existing system, that when he remembered their lawless habits, their headstrong folly, their desperate suicidal zeal, he could but wonder at the perfect peace which then pervaded the land.

But whatsoever might be taking shape in the future, the present was a season of prosperity – a time of promise – and the best uses were made by the British functionaries of the continued calm. Interference in the civil administration of the country was exercised only when it could be turned to the very apparent advantage of the people. British authority and British integrity were then employed in the settlement of long-unsettled districts, and in the development of the resources of long-neglected tracts of country. The subordinate officers thus employed under the Resident were few, but they were men of

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no common ability and energy of character – soldiers such as Edwardes, Nicholson, Reynell Taylor, Lake, Lumsden, Becher, George Lawrence, and James Abbott; civilians such as Vans Agnew and Arthur Cocks – men, for the most part, whose deeds will find ample record in these pages. They had unbounded confidence in their chief, and their chief had equal confidence in them. Acting, with but few exceptions, for the majority were soldiers, in a mixed civil and military character, they associated with all classes of the community; and alike by their courage and their integrity they sustained the high character of the nation they represented. One common spirit of humanity seemed to animate the Governor-General, the Resident, and his Assistants. A well-aimed blow was struck at infanticide, at Sati, and at the odious traffic in female slaves. In the agricultural districts, a system of enforced labour, which had pressed heavily on the ryots, was soon also in course of abolition. The weak were everywhere protected against the strong. An entire revision of the judicial and revenue systems of the country – if systems they can be called, where system there was none – was attempted, and with good success. New customs rules were prepared, by which the people were greatly gainers. Every legitimate means of increasing the revenue, and of controlling unnecessary expenditure, were resorted to, and large savings were effected at no loss of efficiency in any department of the State. The cultivators were encouraged to sink wells, to irrigate their lands, and otherwise to increase the productiveness of the soil, alike to their own advantage and the profit of the State. And whilst everything was thus being done to advance the general prosperity of the people, and to ensure the popularity of British occupation among the industrial classes, the Army was propitiated by the introduction of new and improved systems of pay and pension, and taught to believe that what they had lost in opportunities of plunder, and in irregular largesses, had been more than made up to them by certainty and punctuality of payment, and the interest taken by the British officers in the general welfare of their class.

As the year advanced, these favourable appearances rather improved than deteriorated. In June, the Resident reported that a large majority of the disbanded soldiers had returned to the plough or to trade, and that the advantages of British influence to the cultivating classes were every day becoming

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more apparent. But still Lawrence clearly discerned the fact that although the spirit of insurrection was at rest in the Panjab, it was not yet dead. There were sparks flying about here and there, which, alighting on combustible materials, might speedily excite a blaze. “If every Sirdar and Sikh in the Panjab,” he wrote, with the candour and good sense which are so conspicuous in all his communications, “were to avow himself satisfied with the humbled position of his country, it would be the extreme of infatuation to believe him, or to doubt for a moment that among the crowd who are loudest in our praise there are many who cannot forgive our victory, or even our forbearance, and who chafe at their own loss of power in exact proportion as they submit to ours.” People were not wanting even then, in our camp, to talk with ominous head-shakings of the “Kabul Catastrophe,” and to predict all sorts of massacres and misfortunes. But there was no parallel to be drawn between the two cases, for an overweening sense of security had not taken possession of the British functionaries at Lahor. They had not brought themselves to believe that the country was “settled,” or that British occupation was “popular” among the chiefs and people of the Panjab. With God’s blessing they were doing their best to deserve success, but they knew well that they might some day see the ruin of their hopes, the failure of their experiments, and they were prepared, in the midst of prosperity, at any hour to confront disaster.

Even then, fair as was the prospect before us, there was one great blot upon the landscape; for whilst the restless nature of the Queen-Mother was solacing itself with dark intrigues, there was a continual source of disquietude to disturb the mind of the Resident with apprehensions of probable outbreaks and seditious. She hated the British with a deadly hatred. They had deprived her of power. They had torn her lover from her arms. They were training her son to become a puppet in their hands. To foment hostility against them, wheresoever there seemed to be any hope of successful revolt, and to devise a plot for the murder of the Resident, were among the cherished objects by which she sought to gratify her malice. But she could not thus labour in secret. Her schemes were detected, and it was determined to remove her from Lahor. The place of banishment was Shekhopur, in a quiet part of the country, and in the midst of a Musulman population. When the decision

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was communicated to her by her brother, she received it with apparent indifference. She was not one to give her enemies an advantage by confessing her wounds and bewailing her lot. She uttered no cry of pain, but said that she was ready for anything, and at once prepared for the journey.

The autumn passed quietly away. But an important change was impending. Lord Hardinge was about to lay down the reins of government, and Colonel Lawrence to leave the Panjab for a time. The health of the latter had long been failing. He had tried in August and September the effect of the bracing hill air of Simla. It had revived him for a while, but his medical attendants urged him to resort to the only remedy which could arrest the progress of the disease; and so, with extreme reluctance, he consented to quit his post, and to accompany Lord Hardinge to England. He went; and Sir Frederick Currie, a public servant of approved talent and integrity, who, in the capacity of Political Secretary, had accompanied the Governor-General to the banks of the Satlaj, and who had been subsequently created a baronet and appointed a member of the Supreme Council of India, was nominated to act as Resident in his place.

Meeting the stream of European revolution as they journeyed homewards, Hardinge and Lawrence came overland to England in the early spring of 1848. Brief space is allowed to me for comment; but before I cease to write Lord Hardinge’s name in connection with Sikh politics and history, I must give expression, if only in a single sentence, to the admiration with which I regard his entire policy towards the Panjab. It was worthy of a Christian warrior: it was worthy of a Christian statesman. It is in no wise to be judged by results, still less by accidents not assignable to errors inherent in the original design. What Hardinge did, he did because it was right to do it. His forbearance under provocation, his moderation in the hour of victory foreshadowed the humanity of his subsequent measures. It was his one desire to render British connection with the Panjab a blessing to the Sikhs, without destroying their national independence. The spirit of Christian philanthropy moved at his bidding over the whole face of the country – not the mere image of a specious benevolence disguising the designs of our ambition and the impulses of our greed, but an honest, hearty desire to do good without gain, to save an Empire, to reform a people, and to leave behind us

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the marks of a hand at once gentle and powerful – gentle to cherish and powerful only to sustain.

Conquest of the Panjab

The portfolio of the Indian Government now passed into the hands of Lord Dalhousie, a young statesman of high promise, who, in the divisions of party politics at home, had been ranged among the followers of Sir Robert Peel, and professed the newly-developed liberalism of that great parliamentary chief. Held in esteem as a man of moderate views, of considerable administrative ability, and more than common assiduity in the public service, his brief career as an English statesman seemed to afford good hope that, in the great descriptive roll of Indian -Viceroys, his name would be recorded as that of a ruler distinguished rather for the utility than for the brilliancy of his administration. And so, doubtless, it seemed to himself. What India most wanted at that time was Peace. Left to her repose, even without external aid, she might soon have recovered from the effects of a succession of wasting wars. But, cherished and fostered by an unambitious and enlightened ruler, there was good prospect of a future of unexampled prosperity – of great material and moral advancement – of that oft-promised, ever realisable, but still unrealised blessing. the “development of the resources of the country.” The country wanted railroads, and the people education, and there was good hope that Dalhousie would give them both.

When he looked beyond the frontier he saw that everything was quiet. The new year had dawned auspiciously on the Panjab. The attention of the British functionaries, ever earnest and active in well-doing – for the disciples of Henry Lawrence had caught much of the zealous humanity of their master – was mainly directed to the settlement of the Land Revenue and the improvement of the judicial system of the country. They had begun codifying in good earnest, and laws, civil and criminal, grew apace under their hands. In a state of things so satisfactory as this there was little to call for special remark, and the Governor-General, in his letters to the Home Government, contented himself with the simple observation, that he “forwarded papers relating to the Panjab.” But early in May intelligence had reached Calcutta which impelled him to indite a more stirring epistle. The Panjab was on the eve of another crisis.

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In September, 1844, Sawan Mall, the able and energetic Governor1 of Multan, was shot to death by an assassin. He was succeeded by his son Mulraj, who also had earned for himself the reputation of a chief with just and enlightened views of government, and considerable administrative ability. But he had also a reputation very dangerous in that country: he was reputed to be very rich. Sawan Mall was believed to have amassed immense treasures in Multan; and on the instalment of his son in the government, the Lahor Durbar demanded from him a succession duty2 of a million of money. The exorbitant claim was not complied with; but a compromise was effected, by which Mulraj became bound to pay to Lahor less than a fifth of the required amount. And this sum would have been paid, but for the convulsions which soon began to rend the country, and the disasters which befell the Durbar.

On the re-establishment of the Sikh Government the claim was renewed. It was intimated to the Diwan that if the stipulated eighteen lakhs, with certain amounts due for arrears, were paid into the Lahor Treasury, he would be allowed to continue in charge of Multan; but that if he demurred, troops would be sent to coerce him. He refused payment of the money, and troops were accordingly sent against him. Thus threatened, he besought the British Government to interfere in his favour, and consented to adjust the matter through the arbitration of the Resident. The result was, that he went to Lahor in the autumn of 1846; promised to pay by instalments the money claimed; and was mulcted in a portion of the territories from which he had drawn his revenue. The remainder was farmed out to him for a term of three years. With this arrangement he appeared to be satisfied. He was anxious to obtain the guarantee of the British Government; but his request was refused, and he returned to Multan without it.

For the space of more than a year, Mulraj remained in peaceful occupation of the country which had been leased out to him. There was no attempt, on the part of the British functionaries, to interfere with the affairs of Multan. That territory was especially exempted from the operation of the revenue settlement,

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which had taken effect elsewhere, and of the new customs regulations which had been established in other parts of the Panjab. But the compact which had been entered into with the Lahor Durbar did not sit easily upon him. He thought, or affected to think, that its terms were too rigorous; and accordingly, about the close of 1847, he repaired to the capital to seek some remission of them. He soon began intriguing with the Durbar for the reduction of the stipulated rents; and not coming to any satisfactory arrangement, intimated his wish to resign a charge which he had found so little profitable. He was told that his resignation, when formally tendered, would be accepted; but was recommended to reflect upon the subject before finally coming to a determination, which could not be subsequently revoked. Mulraj quitted Lahor; and sent in first a somewhat vague, and afterwards a more distinct, resignation of his office; and the Durbar at once appointed a successor. Sirdar Khan Singh, who was described as a “brave soldier and intelligent man,” was nominated to the Governorship of Multan, on a fixed annual salary. At the same time, Mr. Vans Agnew, a civil servant of the Company, and Lieutenant Anderson, of the Bombay army, were despatched to Multan with the new Governor, and an escort of five hundred men, to receive charge of the place. On their arrival before the city there were no symptoms of any hostile intentions on the part of its occupants. Mulraj himself waited on the British officers on the 18th of April, and was peremptorily called upon to give in his accounts. Disconcerted and annoyed, he quitted their presence, but next morning he met them with a calm aspect, and conducted them through the fort. Two companies of Gurkhas and some horsemen of the escort were placed in possession of one of the fort-gates. The crisis was now at hand. Mulraj formally gave over charge of the fort; and as the party retired through the gate, the British officers were suddenly attacked and severely wounded. Mulraj, who was riding with them at the time, offered no assistance, but, setting spurs to his horse, galloped off in the direction of his garden-house, whilst the wounded officers were carried to their own camp by Khan Singh and a party of the Gurkhas.

In the course of the following day all the Multani troops were in a state of open insurrection. Mulraj himself, who may not have been guilty in the first instance of an act of premeditated treachery, and who subsequently pleaded that he was

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coerced by his troops, sent excuses to Vans Agnew, who, with the generous confidence of youth, acquitted him of all participation in the outrage. But he was soon heart and soul in the work; and his emissaries plied their trade of corruption with unerring effect. Before nightfall, the commandant of the escort, with all his men, went over to the enemy. The building in which the wounded officers lay was surrounded. A motley crew of ruffians – soldiers and citizens – men of all classes, young and old, moved by one common impulse, one great thirst of blood, came yelling and shouting around the abode of the doomed Faringhis. In they rushed, with a savage cry, and surrounded their victims. The wounded officers lay armed on their beds, and helpless, hopeless as they were, put on the bold front of intrepid Englishmen, and were heroes to the last. Having shaken hands, and bade each other a last farewell, they turned upon their assailants as best they could; but, overpowered by numbers, they fell, declaring in the prophetic language of death, that thousands of their countrymen would come to avenge them. The slaughter thoroughly accomplished, the two bodies were dragged out of the mosque, and barbarously mutilated by the murderers, with every indignity that malice could devise.

Irretrievably committed in the eyes both of our countrymen and his own, Mulraj now saw that there was no going back; he had entered, whether designedly or not, on a course which admitted of no pause, and left no time for reflection. All the dormant energies of his nature were now called into full activity. He took command of the insurgents – identified himself with their cause – bestowed largesses upon the men who had been most active in the assault upon the British officers, retained all who would take service with him, laid in stores, collected money, and addressed letters to other chiefs urging them to resistance. He had never been looked upon by others – never regarded himself – as a man to become the leader of a great national movement; but now circumstances had done for him what he would never willingly have shaped out for himself; so he bowed to fate, and became a hero.

Thus was the second Sikh War commenced. Outwardly, it was but the revolt of a local government – the rebellion of an officer of the Sikh State against the sovereign power of the land. But, rightly considered, it was of far deeper significance. Whether Mulraj had been incited to resistance by the promptings of a spirit far more bitter in its resentments, and more

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active in its malignity than his own, is not very apparent. But it is certain that when he raised the standard of rebellion at Multan, he did but anticipate a movement for which the whole country was ripe. Already had ominous reports of ill-concealed disaffection come in from some of the outlying districts, and though the mortifying fact was very reluctantly believed, it is certain that the state of things which Henry Lawrence had predicted was already a present reality, and that the Sikhs, chafing under the irritating interference of the European stranger, were about to make a common effort to expel him. A finer body of officers than those employed under the British Resident in the Panjab seldom laboured for the good of a people. That they worked, earnestly and assiduously, animated by the purest spirit of Christian benevolence, is not to be doubted. But it was not in the nature of things that even if the thing done had been palatable to the Sikhs, they would have reconciled themselves to the doers of it. Habituated to rule in all parts of the world, and to interfere in the affairs of people of all colours and creeds, Englishmen are slow to familiarise themselves with the idea of the too probable unpopularity of their interference. They think that if they mean well they must secure confidence. They do not consider that our beneficent ways may not be more in accordance with the national taste than our round hats and stiff neckcloths; and that even if they were, alien interference must in itself be utterly distasteful to them. It is not to be doubted, I say, that the young Englishmen first employed in the Panjab laboured earnestly for the good of the people; but their very presence was a sore in the flesh of the nation, and if they had been endowed with superhuman wisdom and angelic benevolence, it would have made no difference in the sum total of popular discontent.

But it is probable that some mistakes were committed – the inevitable growth of benevolent ignorance and energetic inexperience – at the outset of our career as Panjabi administrators. The interference appears to have been greater than was contemplated in the original design of the Second Protectorate. At that time the God Terminus was held by many of our administrators in especial veneration. The Theodolite, the Reconnoitring Compass, and the Measuring Chain were the great emblems of British rule. And now these mysterious instruments began to make their appearance in the Panjab. We were

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taking sights and measuring angles on the outskirts of civilisation; and neither the chiefs nor the people could readily persuade themselves that we were doing all this for their good; there was an appearance in it of ulterior design. And, as I have hinted, the agents employed were sometimes wholly inexperienced in business of this kind. “My present rôle,” wrote a young ensign3 of two years’ standing in the service, whose later exploits will be recorded in these pages, “is to survey a part of the country lying along the left bank of the Ravi and below the hills, and I am daily and all day at work with compasses and chain, pen and pencil, following streams, diving into valleys, burrowing into hills, to complete my work. I need hardly remark, that having never attempted anything of the kind, it is bothering at first. I should not be surprised any day to be told to build a ship, compose a code of laws, or hold assizes. In fact, ‘tis the way in India; everyone has to teach himself his work, and to do it at the same time.” Training of this kind has made the finest race of officers that the world has ever seen. But the novitiate of these men may have teemed with blunders fatal to the people among whom they were sent, in all the self-confidence of youth, to learn their diversities of work. As they advance in years, and every year know better how difficult a thing it is to administer the affairs of a foreign people, such public servants often shudder to think of the errors committed, of the wrong done, when they served their apprenticeship in government without a master, and taught themselves at the expense of thousands. The most experienced administrators in the present case might have failed from the want of a right understanding of the temper of the people. But it was the necessity of our position that some who were set over the officers of the Sikh Government knew little of the people and little of administration. They were able, indefatigable, and conscientious. They erred only because they saw too much and did too much, and had not come to understand the wise policy of shutting their eyes and leaving alone.

And so, although the rebellion of Mulraj was at first only a local outbreak, and the British authorities were well disposed to regard it as a movement against the Sikh Government, not

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as an outrage especially directed against ourselves, that fiction could not be long maintained – for every day it became more and more apparent that the whole country was ripe for another war with the intruding Faringhi. The Durbar officers did not hesitate to express their conviction that to send Sikh troops to act against Mulraj would only be to swell the number of his adherents. To have despatched with them a small English force would have been to risk its safety and precipitate the conflict. An overwhelming display of force, on the part of the British Government, might have crushed the rebellion at Multan and retarded the general rising of the country. But the season was far advanced; the responsibility was a great one. The Commander-in-Chief of the British army in India was not far distant. Currie, therefore, though his own judgment inclined to the commencement of immediate hostilities, rightly referred the momentous question to the military chief. Lord Gough was against immediate action; and the head of the Indian Government unreservedly endorsed the decision.

The remnant of the old Khalsa army eagerly watched the result, and were not slow to attribute our inactivity, at such a moment, to hesitation – to fear – to paralysis. I am not writing a military history of the Second Sikh War, and the question now suggested is one which I am not called upon to discuss. But I think that promptitude of action is often of more importance than completeness of preparation, and that to show ourselves confident of success is in most cases to attain it. The British power in India cannot afford to be quiescent under insult and outrage. Delay is held to be a sign of weakness. It encourages enmity and confirms vacillation. It is a disaster in itself – more serious, often, than any that can arise from insufficient preparation, and that great bugbear the inclemency of the season. On the other hand, it is not to be forgotten that to despise our enemies is a common national mistake, and that sometimes it has been a fatal one. We have brought calamities on ourselves by our rashness as we have by our indecision. The History of India teems with examples of both results; the most profitable lesson to be learnt from which is, that, however wise we may be after the event, criticism in such a case ought to be diffident and forbearing.

But whilst the Commander-in-Chief, in the cool mountain air of Simla, was deciding on the impossibility of commencing military operations, a young lieutenant of the Bengal army, who

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had been engaged in the Revenue settlement of the country about Banu, was marching down upon Multan with a small body of troops, to render assistance to his brother-officers in their perilous position, and to support the authority of the Lahor Durbar. A letter from Vans Agnew, dictated by the wounded man, had providentially fallen into his hands. He saw at once the emergency of the case; he never hesitated; but abandoning all other considerations, improvised the best force that could be got together, and, with fifteen hundred men and two pieces of artillery, marched forth in all the eager confidence of youth, hoping that it might be his privilege to rescue his countrymen from the danger that beset them.

The name of this young officer was Herbert Edwardes. A native of Frodley, in Shropshire, the son of a country clergyman, educated at King’s College, London, he had entered the Company’s service as a cadet of infantry, at an age somewhat more advanced than that which sees the initiation into military life of the majority of young officers. But at an age much earlier than that which commonly places them in possession of the most superficial knowledge of the history and politics of the East, young Edwardes had acquired a stock of information, and a capacity for judging rightly of passing events, which would have done no discredit to a veteran soldier and diplomatist. He had served but a few years, when his name became familiar to English readers throughout the Presidency to which he belonged, as one of the ablest anonymous writers in the country. His literary talents, like his military qualities, were of a bold, earnest, impulsive character. Whatever he did, he did rapidly and well. He was precisely the kind of man to attract the attention and retain the favour of such an officer as Henry Lawrence, who, with the same quiet love of literature, combined a keen appreciation of that energy and fire of character which shrinks from no responsibility, and are ever seeking to find an outlet in dashing exploits. In one of the earliest and most striking scenes of the Panjabi drama, Edwardes had acted a distinguished part. When the insurrection broke out in Kashmir, he was despatched to Jamu, to awaken Gulab Singh to a sense of his duty in that conjuncture; and there are few more memorable and impressive incidents in Sikh history than that which exhibited a handful of British officers controlling the movements of large bodies of foreign troops, – the very men, and under the very leaders, who, so short a time before, had

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contested with us on the banks of the Satlaj the sovereignty of Hindustan.

On the reconstruction of the Sikh Government, after the deposition of Lal Singh, Herbert Edwardes was one of the officers selected to superintend the internal administration of the country; and he had just completed the Revenue settlement of Banu when the startling intelligence of the Multan outbreak reached his camp. He marched at once to succour his brother-officers; crossed the Indus, and took possession of Leia, the chief city in the Sindh Sagar Duab. But tidings by this time had reached him of the melancholy fate of Agnew and Anderson, and there was then no profit in the immediate movement on Multan to compensate for its certain danger. But the demonstration still had its uses. It was something that there was a force in the field with a British officer at the head of it to assert the cause of order and authority in the name of the Maharajah of the Panjab. Such a force might, for a time at least, hold rebellion in check in that part of the country. But Edwardes dreamt of higher services than this. To the south of Multan, some fifty miles, lies Bahawalpur, in the chief of which place we believed that we had a staunch ally. In the name of the British Government, Edwardes called upon him to move an auxiliary force upon Multan; and he had little doubt that, after forming a junction with these troops, he could, capture the rebel stronghold. The confidence of the young soldier, stimulated by a victory which he gained over a large body of rebels on the great anniversary of Waterloo, saw no obstacle to this enterprise which could not be overcome if the Resident would only send him a few heavy guns and mortars, and Major Napier, of the Engineers, to direct the operations of the siege. He knew the worth of such a man in such a conjuncture, and every year that has since passed has made him prouder of the youthful forecast which he then evinced.

The Bahawalpur troops were sent, the junction was formed, and the force marched down upon Multan. Placing himself at the head of a considerable body of men, the rebel chief went out to give them battle, but was beaten by Edwardes, aided by Van Cortlandt, a European officer in Sikh employ, who has since done good service to the British Government, and Edward Lake, a gallant young officer of Bengal Engineers, directing the Bahawalpur column, who has abundantly fulfilled, on the same theatre of action, the high promise of his youth.

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But much as irregular levies, so led, might do in the open field, they were powerless against the walls of Multan. Again, therefore, Edwardes urged upon the Resident the expediency of strengthening his hands, especially in respect of the ordnance branches of the service. Only send a siege train, some Sappers and Miners, with Robert Napier to direct the siege, and – this time, for the difficulties of the work had assumed larger proportions in his eyes – a few regular regiments, under a young brigadier, and we shall “close,” he said, “Mulraj’s account in a fortnight, and obviate the necessity of assembling fifty thousand men in October.”

In the early part of July this requisition was received at Lahor. The interval which had elapsed, since the disastrous tidings of the rebellion of Mulraj had reached the Residency, had not been an uneventful one at the capital. Early in May, discovery was made of an attempt to corrupt the fidelity of our British Sipahis. The first intimation of the plot was received from some troopers of the 7th Irregular Cavalry, who communicated the circumstance to their commanding officer. The principal conspirators were one Khan Singh, an unemployed general of the Sikh army, and Ganga Ram, the confidential Vakil of the Maharani. These men, and two others, were seized, tried, and convicted. The two chief conspirators were publicly hanged, and their less guilty associates transported. That they were instruments of the Maharani was sufficiently proved. The conspirators acknowledged that she was the prime instigator of the treacherous attempt, and her letters were found in their possession. With this knowledge, it could no longer be a question with the Resident as to what course it behoved him to adopt. The mother of the Maharajah and the widow of Ranjit Singh could no longer be suffered to dwell among the Sikhs. She had already been removed from Lahor to Shekhopur. It now became necessary to remove her from the Panjab. Accordingly, certain accredited agents of the Lahor Durbar, accompanied by two British officers, Captain Lumsden and Lieutenant Hodson, were despatched to Shekhopur, with a mandate under the seal of the Maharajah, directing her removal from that place. Without offering any resistance, or expressing any dissatisfaction, she placed herself under the charge of the deputation; and, when it became clear to her that she was on her way to the British frontier, she desired – not improbably with that blended irony and

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bravado which she so well knew how to employ – that her thanks might be conveyed to the Resident for removing her to the Company’s dominions, out of the reach of the enemies who would destroy her. With a considerable retinue of female attendants, she was conveyed to Firuzpur, and eventually to Banaras, where she was placed under the charge of Major George Macgregor, an Artillery officer of high personal character and great diplomatic experience, who had well sustained in the Panjab the brilliant reputation which he had earned at Jalalabad.

Such was the apparent growth visible at the British Residency, recognised in our State-papers, of those three months in the Panjab. But in the hands of a Sikh historian these incidents would form but a small part of the national annals, for all over the country the great chiefs were actively maturing the plan of their emancipation, calling upon all true Sikhs, in the name of the great Founder of their Faith, to exterminate the Christian usurpers, and even those nearest to the throne were among the arch promoters of the movement. The daughter of Chatar Singh and the sister of Sher Singh was the betrothed wife of the Maharajah; but these Sirdars, though anxious to veil their designs until the whole country was ripe for a simultaneous rising, were intriguing and plotting for our overthrow. The former was in the Hazarah, where his fidelity had been for some time suspected by James Abbott – another officer of the Bengal Artillery, friend and comrade of Henry Lawrence, who had been settling that part of the country – one of those men whose lot in life it is never to be believed,’ never to be appreciated, never to be rewarded; of the true salt of the earth, but of an unrecognised savour; chivalrous, heroic, but somehow or other never thoroughly emerging from the shade. He was not one to estimate highly the force of the maxim that “speech is silver, silence is gold;” and his suspicions are said not to have been acceptable at Lahor. But though it may be good to suspect, it is doubtless good, also, not to appear to suspect. And if Currie, in that conjuncture, had betrayed a want of confidence in the Sikh Sirdars, he would have precipitated the collision which it was sound policy to retard. So, whatever may have been his genuine convictions, he still appeared to trust the chiefs of the Regency; and Sher Singh, with a strong body of Sikh troops, was sent down to Multan. It was wise to maintain, as long as possible, the semblance of the authority of

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the Sikh Durbar – wise to keep up the show of suppressing a rebellion by the hand of the native Government. To send down that undeveloped traitor to the great centre of revolt may have been a hazardous experiment, but it was hazardous also to keep him where he was; and the master-passion of the Sikh soldiery for plunder might have kept his battalions nominally on the side of authority, until they had glutted themselves with the spoils of Multan, and preparations had, meanwhile. been made in the British provinces for the commencement of military operations on a scale befitting the occasion. But the repeated requisitions of Edwardes for British aid at last wrought upon the Resident, and Currie determined to send a force to Militia, with a siege-train for the reduction of the fortress. In General Samson Whish, of the Artillery, under whose command the force was despatched, there was not literally what Edwardes had asked for – “a young brigadier” – but there was a general officer of unwonted youthfulness of aspect and activity of body, who could sit a horse well, could ride any distance at a stretch, and was generally esteemed to be one of the best artillery officers in the service. This forward movement was not countenanced in high places. The Commander-in-Chief shook his head. The Governor-General shook his head. But the Resident had ordered it, and it could not be countermanded without encouraging a belief that there was a want of unanimity in British councils.

So the besieging force marched upon Multan, and arrived before the city in high health and excellent spirits. On the 5th of September, in the name of the Maharajah and Queen Victoria, the British General summoned the garrison to surrender. No answer was returned to the summons, and the siege commenced. But on the 14th, when our guns were within breaching distance of the walls of the town, Whish, to his bitter mortification, was compelled to abandon the siege. The Sikh force under Sher Singh had gone over to the enemy.

This event had long been matter of anxious speculation in the British camp, and now took no one by surprise. It was known that the hearts of the soldiery were with Mulraj; but there was something of a more doubtful character in the conduct of the Rajah himself, who had on more than one occasion testified his zeal and loyalty by voluntary acts of service in our cause. In his own camp, the Khalsa troops said contemptuously, that he was a Musulman. With Edwardes he was outwardly

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on the best possible terms; spoke freely of the conduct of his father, Chatar Singh; declared that he washed his hands of all the old man’s rebellious projects; and candidly avowed his mistrust of the Sikh troops. But in all this he was playing a part. He had written to his brother to say that he intended to go over to the enemy on that very 14th of September, and he kept his word to the letter. On the morning of that day, the whole Durbar force sought entrance into the city. Doubtful of the real nature of the movement., Mulraj at first refused them admittance; but soon satisfied of their intentions, he opened the gates; the long dreaded and fatal junction was effected; and the British General was under the mortifying necessity of raising the siege of Multan.

The whole truth was now visible before the world. It was impossible any longer to maintain the fiction of a local rebellion, to pretend V that the Lahor Government, assisted by British troops, was endeavouring to coerce a refractory subject. The very heads of that Government were in open hostility to the British, raising the standard of nationality in the name of the Maharajah. it was obvious that the war now about to be waged, was between the British and the Sikhs. Some hope was at one time to be drawn from the fact of long-standing feuds among the different Sikh families. Then there was the not unreasonable conviction that the Muhammadan population of the Panjab might easily be kept in a state of enmity with the Sikhs. But these assurances soon melted away. Hostile families and hostile religions were content to unite for the nonce against the Faringhis; and the Commander-in-Chief, as the cold weather approached, was gratified by finding that there had been no premature birth of victory – that the work was yet to be done – and that an army of twenty thousand men. under his personal command, was required to take the field.

And from that time Multan ceased to be the focus of rebellion and the head-quarters of the war. In the Hazarah country Chatar Singh had thrown off all vestments of disguise, and plunged boldly into the troubled waters that lay before him. The thoughts of Sher Singh soon began to turn towards that quarter – indeed, such had been his desire from the first – and before the second week of October had passed away, he had marched out of Multan to join his father. The whole country was now rising against us. Having used the name of the

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Maharajah, the Sikh leaders were eager to possess themselves of the person of the boy-King, and but for the vigilance of the Resident they would have achieved an object which would have added a new element of strength to the national cause. Dhulip Singh remained in our hands virtually a prisoner at Lahor.

All this time the Governor-General was at Calcutta, watching from a distance the progress of events, and betraying no eagerness to seize a favourable opportunity for the conquest of the Panjab. Indeed, it has been imputed to him, as a grave political error, that he did not at an earlier period make due preparation for the inevitable war. But, it would seem that in the summer of 1848, his desire was to recognise as long as possible only internal rebellion in the Sikh country – to see, not the rising of a nation against a foreign intruder, but the revolt of a few unloyal chiefs against their own lawful sovereign. But with the first breath of the cool season there cape a truer conception of the crisis, and Lord Dalhousie prepared himself for the conflict. “I have wished for peace,” he said, at a public entertainment, early in October; “I have longed for it; I have striven for it. But if the enemies of India determine to have war, war they shall have, and on my word they shall have it with a vengeance.” A few days afterwards he turned his back upon Calcutta, and set his face towards the north-west. All the energies of his mind were then given to the prosecution of the war.

The British army destined for the re-conquest of the Panjab assembled at Firuzpur, and crossed the Satlaj in different detachments. On the 13th of November the head-quarters reached Lahor. At that time it could hardly be said that British influence extended a rood beyond the Residency walls. In all parts of the country the Sikhs had risen against the great reproach of the English occupation. In many outlying places, on the confines of civilisation, our English officers were holding out, in the face of every conceivable difficulty and danger, with constancy and resolution most chivalrous, most heroic, hoping only to maintain, by their own personal gallantry, the character of the nation they represented. There was, indeed, nothing more to be done. We had ceased to be regarded as allies. So eager and so general was the desire to expel the intruding Faringhi, that the followers of Govind sank for a time all feelings of national and religious animosity against their Afghan neighbours,

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and invoked Muhammadan aid from the regions beyond the passes of the Khaibar.

On the 21st of November, Lord Gough joined the army on the left bank of the Satlaj. A veteran commander, who within the space of a few years had fought more battles in different parts of the world than were crowded into the lives of most living warriors – a general whose uniform good fortune had glossed over his want of forecast and science, and whose repeated successes had silenced criticism – he was now about to engage in military operations greater than those of his antecedent campaigns, with, perhaps, even less knowledge of the country and less consideration of the probable contingencies of the war. But all men had confidence in him. India had been won by a series of military mistakes that would have disgraced an ensign before the examination period, and, perhaps, would not have been won at all if we had infused into our operations more of the pedantry of military science. He was a soldier, and all who fought under him honoured his grey hairs, and loved him for his manly bearing, his fine frank character, and even for the impetuosity which so often entangled his legions in difficulties, and enhanced the cost of the victories he gained.

The arrival of the Commander-in-Chief was the signal for the immediate commencement of hostilities. The force then under his personal command consisted of upwards of twenty thousand men, with nearly a hundred pieces of artillery, and Gough was in no temper for delay. On the day after his arrival in camp was fought the battle of Ramnagar, the first of those disastrous successes which have given so gloomy a character to the campaign. The enemy had a strong masked battery on the other side of the river, and very cleverly contrived to draw the British troops into an ambuscade. The operations of the Commander-in-Chief, commenced with the object of driving a party of the rebels, who were on his side of the China, across the river, had the effect of bringing his cavalry and artillery within reach of these concealed guns; and twenty-eight pieces of ordnance opened upon our advancing columns. The cavalry were ordered to move forward to the attack as soon as an opportunity presented itself. They found an opportunity, and charged a large body of the enemy, the Sikh batteries pouring in their deadly showers all the while. Many fell under the fire of the guns, many under the sabre-cuts of the Sikh swordsmen,

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many under the withering fire of a body of matchlockmen, who, taking advantage of the nature of the ground, harassed our horsemen sorely. Nothing was gained by our “victory;” but we lost many brave and some good soldiers; and our troops returned to camp weary and dispirited, asking what end they had accomplished, and sighing over the cost.

Some days afterwards a force under General Thackwell was sent out to cross the river, but being scantily supplied with information, and grievously hampered by instructions, it succeeded only in losing a few men and killing several of the enemy. No great object was gained, but great opportunities were sacrificed. The Commander-in-Chief pompously declared that “it had pleased Almighty God to vouchsafe to the British arms the most successful issue to the extensive combinations rendered necessary for the purpose of effecting the passage of the Chinab, the defeat and dispersion of the Sikh force under the insurgent Rajah Sher Singh and the numerous Sikh Sirdars who had the temerity to set at defiance the British power.” These “events, so fraught with importance,” were to “tend to most momentous results.” The results were, that the field of battle was shifted from the banks of the Chinab to the banks of the Jhilam. The enemy, who might have been taken in rear, and whose batteries might have been seized, if Thackwell had been free to carry out the most obvious tactics, escaped with all their guns; and on the 13th of January bore bloody witness to the little they had suffered, by fighting one of the greatest and most sanguinary battles in the whole chronicle of Indian warfare4.

By this time Henry Lawrence had returned to the Panjab. The news of the outbreak at Multan had reached him in England, whilst still in broken health, and had raised within him an incontrollable desire, at any hazard, to return to his post. He had won his spurs, and he was eager to prove that he was worthy of them, even at the risk of life itself. It has been said that he ought not to have quitted the Panjab, and that if he had been at Lahor in the spring of 1848, the war would not then have been precipitated by the rebellion of Mulraj, for “any one but a civilian would have foreseen that to send Vans Agnew and Anderson down to Multan at the time

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and in the manner selected was almost sure to produce an ebullition of feeling and violence.”

Calcutta Review

But if Lawrence had not gone to England at the time, he would, in all probability, have died; and though he might not have sent the same men to Multan, he would have sent a mission there for the same purpose. “I meant to have sent Arthur Cocks,” was his remark to the present writer, when the disastrous news reached us in London. He saw at once that the Multani revolt was but the prelude to a great national outbreak, and though his friends trembled for his safety and counselled delay, his strong sense of duty to the State overruled all personal considerations, and so he carried back his shattered frame and his inexhaustible energies to the scene of the coming conflict. Leaving London at the end of October, he reached Bombay early in December, and pushing up the Indus with characteristic rapidity of movement, joined the camp of General Whish, before the walls of Multan, two days after the great festival of Christmas.

On the second day of the new year, Whish, reinforced from Bombay, carried the city of Multan. Long and obstinate had been the resistance of the besieged; and now that our storming columns entered the breach, the garrison still, at the bayonet’s point, showed the stuff of which they were made. Frightful had been the carnage during the siege. Heaps of mangled bodies about the battered town bore ghastly witness to the terrible effects of the British ordnance. But many yet stood to be shot down or bayoneted in the streets; and the work of the besieging force was yet far from its close. Mulraj was in the citadel with some thousands of his best fighting-men; and the fort gnus were plied as vigorously as before the capture of the town. The strength of this formidable fortress seemed to laugh our breaching batteries to scorn. Mining operations were, therefore, commenced; but carried on, as they were, beneath a constant discharge from our mortars, it seemed little likely that the enemy would wait to test the skill of the engineers. The terrible shelling to which the fortress was exposed dismayed the pent-up garrison. By the 21st of January they were reduced to the last extremity. Mulraj vainly endeavoured to rally his followers. Their spirit was broken. There was nothing left for them but to make a desperate sally and cut their way through the besiegers, or to surrender at once. The nobler alternative was rejected. Asking only for his own life

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and the honour of his women, Mulraj tendered on that day his submission to the British General. Whish refused to guarantee the first, but promised to protect the women; and on the following morning the garrison marched out of Multan, and Diwan Mulraj threw himself on the mercy of the British Government.

Meanwhile, Henry Lawrence, having witnessed the fall of the city of Multan, hastened upwards to Firuzpur, conveyed to Lord Dalhousie the first welcome tidings of that event, took counsel with the Governor-General, made himself master of the great man’s views, then hurried on to Lahor, communicated with the Resident, and on the same evening pushed on to the camp of the Commander-in-Chief, which he reached on the 10th of January. He was there in no recognised official position, for Currie’s tenure of office did not expire until the beginning of the ensuing month; but he was ready for any kind of service, and he placed himself at Lord Gough’s disposal, as an honorary aide-de-camp, or any other subordinate officer, in the fine army which was now stretching out before him.

Three days after Lawrence’s arrival in camp the battle of Chilianwala was fought. The time had arrived when a far less impetuous general than Gough might have deemed it incumbent on him to force the Sikh army into a general action. It is true that the final reduction of the fortress of Multan would have liberated a large portion of Whish’s column, and greatly have added to the strength of the British army on the banks of the Jhilam. But the Sikh Sirdars, on this very account, were eager to begin the battle, and would not have suffered us to wait for our reinforcements. Gough already had a noble force under him, equal to any service. It was panting for action. There had been a lull of more than a month’s duration, and all through India there was a feeling of impatience at the protracted delay. Gough, therefore, prepared for action. Ascertaining the nature of the country occupied by the Sikh army, and the position of their troops, he planned his attack upon sound tactical principles, and fully instructed his generals in the several parts which they were called upon to play. On the afternoon of the 13th everything was ready, and the battle was to have been commenced early on the following morning. But, unwilling to give the British General the long hours of the morrow’s light, from daybreak to sunset, that he wanted, to fight his battle according to approved principles of modern warfare, the Sikh leaders, when the day was far spent, determined, if possible, to

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aggravate him into an immediate encounter. They knew their man. So they advanced a few guns, and sent some round-shot booming in the direction of the British camp. The bait took. The warm Hibernian temperament of the British leader could not brook the insult. He moved up his heavy guns, responded with some chance shots at the invisible enemy, and then, there being little of the day left for his operations, gave the command for his line to advance.

The story of what followed has been often told, and it is not so gratifying a page of history that I need care to repeat it, Night closed upon the fearful carnage of that terrible engagement, and both armies claimed the victory. What it cost us is written in the Gazette. Never was an official bulletin received in England with a wilder outcry of pain and passion. The past services, the intrepid personal courage, the open honest character, the many noble qualities of the veteran Commander were forgotten in that burst of popular indignation, and hundreds of English families turned from the angry past to the fearful future, and trembled as they thought that the crowning action with that formidable enemy had yet to be fought by a General so rash, so headstrong, and so incompetent.

In the high places of Government there was universal discomposure, and the greatest military authority in the country shook his head with an ominous gesture of reproach. Then arose a wild cry for Napier. The conqueror of the Biluchis was sent out in hot haste to India to repair the mischief that had been done by Gough, and to finish off the war with the Sikhs in a proper workmanlike manner. But the hottest haste could not wholly annihilate time and space, and though this sudden supersession of the brave old chief, who had fought so many battles and won so many victories, might shame his grey hairs, it could not bring the war to a more rapid or a more honourable close. The carnage of Chilianwala shook for a time the confidence of the army in their chief, but it did not shake the courage of our fighting-men, or destroy their inherent capacity for conquest. It was a lesson, too, that must have scored itself into the very heart of the British chief, and made him a sadder man and a wiser commander. The errors of the 13th of January were to be atoned for by a victory which any leader might contemplate with pride, and any nation with gratitude. Scarcely had his appointed successor turned his hack upon England when Gough fought another great battle,

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which neither Napier, nor Wellington himself, who talked of going in his place, could have surpassed in vigour of execution or completeness of effect.

Anxiously was the intelligence of the surrender of Mulraj looked for in the camp of the Commander-in-Chief. Since that disastrous action at Chilianwala, Gough had been intrenching his position, and waiting reinforcements from Multan. The surrender of that fortress set free some twelve thousand men, and Whish, with unlooked-for rapidity, marched to the banks of the Jhilam to swell the ranks of the grand army. A great crisis was now approaching. Thrice had the British and Sikh forces met each other on the banks of those classical rivers which had seen the triumphs of the Macedonian – thrice had they met each other only to leave the issue of the contest yet undecided. A great battle was now about to be fought – one differing from all that had yet been fought since the Sikhs first crossed the Satlaj, for a strange but not unlooked-for spectacle was about to present itself – Sikhs and Afghans, those old hereditary enemies, fighting side by side against a common foe. The Sikh Sirdars, I have said, had been intriguing to secure the assistance of the Amir of Kabul. For some time there appeared little likelihood that old Dost Muhammad, whose experience ought to have brought wisdom with it, would lend himself to a cause which, in spite of temporary successes, was so sure to prove hopeless in the end. But neither years, nor experience, nor adversity had taught him to profit by the lessons he had learned. The desire of repossessing himself of Peshawar was the madness of a life. The bait was thrown out to him, and he could not resist it. He came through the Khaibar with an Afghan force, marched upon the Indus, and threatened Atak, which fell at his approach; despatched one of his sons to the camp of Sher Singh, and sent a body of Durani troops to fight against his old Faringhi enemy, who for years had been the arbiter of his fate. How deplorable an act of senile fatuity it was, the events of the 21st of February must have deeply impressed upon his mind. On that day was fought an action – was gained a victory, in the emphatic words of the Governor-General, “memorable alike from the greatness of the occasion, and from the brilliant and decisive issue of the encounter. For the first time, Sikh and Afghan were banded together against the British power. It was an occasion which demanded the putting forth of all the means at our disposal,

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and so conspicuous a manifestation of the superiority of our arms as should appal each enemy, and dissolve at once their compact by fatal proof of its futility. The completeness of the victory which has been won equals the highest hopes entertained.” And there was no official exaggeration in this; none of the vain boasting of the interested despatch-writer. At Gujrat, to which place the enemy had unexpectedly moved their camp, Lord Gough fought a great battle as a great battle ought to be fought, coolly and deliberately, by a British Commander. Every arm of his fine force was brought effectively into play; each in its proper place, each supporting and assisting the others, and each covering itself with glory. From the early dawn of that clear bright morning the cannonade commenced. Never had the Bengal Artillery made a nobler display; never had it been worked with more terrible effect. Resolute and well handled as was the Sikh army, it could not stand up against the steady fire of our guns. By noon the enemy were retreating in terrible disorder, “their position carried, their guns, ammunition, camp equipage, and baggage captured, their flying masses driven before their victorious pursuers, from mid-day receiving most severe punishment in their flight.” And all this was accomplished with but little loss of life on the side of the victorious army. It pleased the Almighty that the bloody lessons of the Chinab and the Jhilam should not be thrown away.

A division under Sir Walter Gilbert, an officer of great personal activity, unequalled in the saddle, was ordered to follow up the successes of Gujrat, and to drive the Afghans from the Panjab. And well did he justify the choice of his chief. By a series of rapid marches, scarcely excelled by any recorded in history, he convinced the enemy of the hopelessness of all further resistance. The Barukzai force fled before our advancing columns, and secured the passage of the Khaibar before British influence could avail to close it against the fugitives. By the Sikhs themselves the game had clearly been played out. The Khalsa was now quite broken. There was nothing left for Sher Singh and his associates but to trust themselves to the clemency of the British Government. On the 5th of March, the Rajah sent the British prisoners safely into Gilbert’s camp. On the 8th, he appeared in person to make arrangements for the surrender of his followers; and on the 14th, the remnant of the Sikh army, some sixteen thousand

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men, including thirteen Sirdars of note, laid down their arms at the feet of the British General.

The military chief had now done his work, and it was time for the appearance of the Civil Governor on the scene. Lord Dalhousie was on the spot prepared for immediate action. Already was his portfolio weighty with a proclamation which was to determine the fate of the empire of Ranjit Singh. I do not suppose that a moment’s doubt ever obscured the clear, unsullied surface of the Governor-General’s resolution. It was a case which suggested no misgivings and prompted no hesitation. The Sikhs had staked everything on the issue of the war, and they had lost it in fair fight. They had repaid by acts of treachery and violence the forbearance and moderation of the British Government. We had tried to spare them; but they would not be spared. First one course, then another, had been adopted in the hope that eventually a strong native Government might be established, able to control its own subjects, and willing to live on terms of friendly alliance with its neighbours. Our policy had from the first been wholly unaggressive. There was no taint of avarice or ambition in it. But it had not been appreciated; it had not been successful. The whole system had collapsed. And now that again a British ruler was called upon to solve the great problem of the Future of the Panjab, he felt that there was no longer any middle course open to him; that there was but one measure applicable to the crisis that had arisen; and that measure was the annexation of the country to the territories of the British Empire. So a proclamation was issued announcing that the kingdom founded by Ranjit Singh had passed under British rule; and the wisdom and righteousness of the edict few men are disposed to question.

March 29, 1849

The last Sikh Durbar was held at Lahor. The fiat of the British conqueror was read aloud, in the presence of the young Maharajah, to the remnant of the chiefs who had not committed themselves by open rebellion; and a paper of Terms was then produced by which the British Government bound themselves to pay the annual sum of forty or fifty thousand pounds to the boy-Prince and his family5, so long as he should remain faithful to his new master and abide

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by his sovereign will. It was a happy change for Dhulip Singh, born as he was for the Sikh shambles; for in his new state he had abundant wealth, perfect safety, freedom from all care, and the unsurpassable blessing of a saving faith. Becoming, in his twelfth year, the ward of the Governor-General, he was placed under the immediate tutelage of an Assistant-Surgeon of the Bengal Army6, who was so fit a man for the office, so worthy of the confidence reposed in him, that the little Sikh Prince, under his wise ministrations, developed into a Christian gentleman, an English courtier, and a Scotch laird.

1863

And it may be recorded here, before I pass on to the history of British rule in the Panjab, that the mother of Dhulip Singh, the widow of old Ranjit, that restless, turbulent Chand Kaur, whose intrigues did so much to precipitate the fall of the Sikh Empire, after a series of strange romantic vicissitudes, prematurely old, well-nigh blind, broken and subdued in spirit, found a resting-place at last under the roof of her son, in a quiet corner of an English castle, and died in a London suburb7.

1849

Administration of the Panjab

The proclamation which turned the Panjab into a British province was not the only weighty State-paper in the portfolio of the Governor-General. Whilst Gough had been preparing to strike the last crushing blow at the military power of the Khalsa, Dalhousie, with Henry Elliot at his elbow, never doubting the issue, was mapping out the scheme of administration under which it

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seemed good to him to govern the country which was about to pass under our rule. The crowning victory of Gujrat found everything devised and prepared to the minutest detail. The men were ready; the measures were defined. There was no hurry, therefore – no confusion. Every one fell into his appointed place, and knew what he had to do. And never had any Governor better reason to place unbounded confidence in the men whom he employed; never was any Governor more worthily served.

The country which had thus fallen by right of conquest into our hands embraced an area of fifty thousand square miles, and contained a population of four millions of inhabitants. These inhabitants were Hindus, Muhammadans, and Sikhs. The last were a new people – a sect of reformed Hindus, of a purer faith than the followers of the Brahminical superstitions. It was a Sikh Government that we had supplanted; and mainly a Sikh army that we had conquered; but it must not be supposed that Panjabi is synonymous with Sikh, that the country was peopled from one end to the other with the followers of Nanak and Govind, or that they were the ancient dwellers on the banks of those five legendary rivers. The cities of the Panjab were Muhammadan cities; cities founded, perhaps, ere Muhammad arose, enlarged and beautified by the followers of the Ghaznivite. The monuments were mainly Muhammadan monuments, with traces here and there of Grecian occupation and Bactrian rule. Before Dehli had risen into the imperial city of the Mughuls, Lahor had been the home of Indian kings. But the rise of the Sikh power was contemporaneous with our own, and the apostles of the new Reformation had not numbered among their converts more than a section of the people. And as was the population, so was the country itself, of a varied character. Tracts of rich cultivated lands, the cornfield and the rose-garden, alternated with the scorched plain and the sandy desert. Here, as far as the eye could reach, a dreary level of jungle and brushwood; there, a magnificent panorama, bounded by the blue ranges and the snowy peaks of the Himalayah. And ever the great rivers as they flowed suggested to the cultured mind of the English scholar thoughts of that grand old traditionary age, when Porus fought, and Alexander conquered, and Megasthenes wrote, and the home-sick Argive, on the banks of those fabulous streams, sighed for the pleasant country he had left, and rebelled against his leader and his fate. It was a country full of interest and

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full of opportunity; and it grew at once into the pet province of the British Viceroy, the youngest and the most hopeful of all.

That a country so situated, so circumstanced, and so peopled, should not be brought under the system of administration prevailing in our long-settled provinces was a mere matter of course. But Dalhousie had no disposition to rush into the opposite extreme of a purely military government. He had at no time of his career any class prejudices, and he did not see why soldiers and civilians should not work harmoniously together in the administrative agency of the province. He had faith in both; each in his appointed place; for there was rough soldiers’ work to be done, and much also that needed the calm judgment and the tutored eye of the experienced civilian. So he called in the aid of a mixed Staff of civil and military officers, and at the head of this he placed a Board of Administration, presided over by Henry Lawrence8.

The Board was to consist of three members, with secretaries to do the pen-work of the administration, and to scatter its instructions among the subordinate functionaries of the province. It was not a controlling authority which a man of Dalhousie’s stamp was likely to affect; scarcely, indeed, could he be supposed to tolerate it. But he could not set aside the great claims of Henry Lawrence, nor, indeed, could he safely dispense with his services in such a conjuncture; yet he was unwilling to trust to that honest, pure-minded, soldier-statesman the sole direction of affairs. The fact is that, with a refinement of the justice and moderation which were such conspicuous features of Henry’s character, he dissented from the policy of annexation. He thought that another effort might have been made to save the Sikh Empire from destruction. Out of this difficulty arose the project of the Board. It was natural that Dalhousie should have desired to associate with one thus minded some other statesman whose views were more in harmony with his own. A Board of two is, under no circumstances, a practicable institution; so a Triumvirate was established. But sentence of death was written down against it from the very hour of its birth.

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The second seat at the Board was given to the President’s brother, John Lawrence. An officer of the Company’s Civil Service, he had achieved a high reputation as an administrator; as one of those hard-working, energetic, conscientious servants of the State, who live ever with the harness on their back, to whom labour is at once a duty and a delight, who do everything in a large unstinting way, the Ironsides of the Public Service. He had taken, in the earlier stages of his career, an active part in the Revenue Settlement of the North-Western Provinces, and had subsequently been appointed Magistrate of the great imperial city of Delhi, with its crowded, turbulent population, and its constant under-current of hostile intrigue. In this post, winning the confidence of men of all classes and all creeds, Lord Hardinge found him when, in 1845, he journeyed upwards to join the army of the Satlaj. There was an openness, a frankness about him that pleased the old soldier, and a large-hearted zeal and courage which proclaimed him a man to be employed in a post of more than common difficulty, beyond the circle of ordinary routine. So, after the campaign on the Satlaj, when the Jalandhar Duab was taken in part payment of the charges of the war, John Lawrence was appointed to superintend the administration of that tract of country; and on more than one occasion, during the enforced absence of Henry from Lahor, in the first two years of the British Protectorate, he had occupied his brother’s seat at the capital, and done his work with unvaried success. That there were great characteristic differences between the two Lawrences will be clearly indicated as I proceed; but in unsullied honesty and intrepid manliness, they were the counterparts of each other. Both were equally without a stain.

The third member of the Lahor Board of Administration was Mr. Charles Grenville Mansel, also a covenanted civilian, who had earned a high reputation as one of the ablest financiers in India, and who supplied much of the knowledge and experience which his colleagues most lacked. His honesty was of as fine a temper as theirs, but he was a man rather of thought than of action, and wanted the constitutional robustness of his associates in office. Perhaps his very peculiarities, rendering him, as it were, the complement of the other two, especially marked him out as the third of that remarkable triumvirate. Regarded as a whole, with reference to the time and circumstances of its creation, the Board could not have been better constituted. It

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did honour to the sagacity of Lord Dalhousie, and fully justified the choice of agents he had made.

The system was one of divided labour and common responsibility. On Henry Lawrence devolved what was technically called the “political” work of the Government. The disarming of the country, the negotiations with the chiefs, the organisation of the new Panjabi regiments, the arrangements for the education of the young Maharajah, who had now become the ward of the British Government, were among the immediate duties to which he personally devoted himself; the chief care of John Lawrence was the civil administration, especially the settlement of the Land Revenue; whilst Mansel superintended the general judicial management of the province; each, however, aiding the others with his advice, and having a potential voice in the general Council. Under these chief officers were a number of subordinate administrators of different ranks, drawn partly from the civil and partly from the military service of the Company. The province was divided into seven divisions, and to each of these divisions a Commissioner was appointed. Under each of these Commissioners were certain Deputy-Commissioners, varying in number according to the amount of business to be done; whilst under them again were Assistant-Commissioners and Extra Assistants, drawn from the uncovenanted servants of Government – Europeans, Indo-Britons, or natives of pure descent.

The officers selected for the principal posts under the Lahor Board of administration were the very flower of the Indian services. Dalhousie had thrown his whole heart into the work which lay before him. Resolved that it should not be marred by the inefficiency of his agents, he looked about him for men of mark and likelihood, men in the vigour of their years, men of good performance for the higher posts, and sturdy, eager-spirited youths of good promise for the lower. It mattered not to him whether the good stuff were draped in civil black or military red. Far above all petty prejudices of that kind, the Governor-General swept up his men with an eye only to the work that was in them, and sent them forth to do his bidding. Some had already graduated in Panjabi administration under the Protectorate; others crossed the Satlaj for the first time with honours taken under Thomason and his predecessors in the North-West Provinces. And among them were such men as George Edmonstone, Donald Macleod, and Robert Montgomery

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from the one service; Frederick Mackeson and George Macgregor from the other; such men, besides those already named9, as Richard Temple, Edward Thornton, Neville Chamberlain, George Barnes, Lewin Bowring, Philip Goldney, and Charles-Saunders; soldiers and civilians working side by side, without a feeling of class jealousy, in the great work of reconstructing the administration of the Panjab and carrying out the executive details; whilst at the head of the department of Public Works was Robert Napier, in whom the soldier and the man of science met together to make one of the finest Engineer officers in the world.

They found much to do, but little to undo. The Government of Ranjit Singh had been of a rude, simple, elementary character; out of all rule; informal; unconstitutional; unprincipled! one great despotism and a number of petty despotisms; according to our English notions, reeking with the most “frightful injustice.” But somehow or other it had answered the purpose. The injustice was intelligible injustice, for it was simply that of the strong will and the strong hand crushed down in turn by one still stronger. Petty governors, revenue-farmers, or kardars, might oppress the people and defraud the State, but they knew that, sooner or later, a day of reckoning would come when their accounts would be audited by the process of compulsory disgorgement, or in some parts of the country settled in the noose of the proconsular gibbet. No niceties of conscience and no intricacies of law opposed an obstacle to these summary adjustments. During the existence of that great fiction, the Council of Regency, we had begun to systematise and to complicate affairs; and as we had found – at least, as far as we understood the matter – a clear field for our experiments, we now, on assuming undisguisedly the administration of the country, had a certain basis of our own to operate upon, and little or nothing to clear away.

The system of administration now introduced into the Panjab, formal and precise as it may have been when compared with the rude simplicity of the old Sikh Government, was loose and irregular in comparison with the strict procedure of the Regulation Provinces. The administrators, whether

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soldiers or civilians, were limited to the discharge of no particular departmental functions. They were judges, revenue-collectors, thief-catchers, diplomatists, conservancy officers, and sometimes recruiting serjeants and chaplains, all in one. Men trained in such a school as this, and under such masters as the Lawrences, became equal to any fortune, and in no conjuncture, however critical, were ever likely to fail. There was hardly one among them who did not throw his whole heart into his work; who ever thought of ease, or leisure, or any personal enjoyment beyond that which comes from an honest sense of duty done. They lived among the people of the country, their tents open to all the points of the compass10; and won by their personal bearing the confidence and the admiration of all who came within their reach.

And so, far sooner than even sanguine men ventured to predict, the Panjab began to settle down under its new rulers. Even the old Khalsa fighting-men accepted their position, and with a manly resignation looking cheerfully at the inevitable, confessed that they had been beaten in fair fight, and submitted themselves to the English conqueror. Some were enlisted into the new Panjabi Irregular Regiments, which were raised for the internal defence of the province. Others betook themselves, with the pensions or gratuities which were bestowed upon them, to their fields, and merged themselves into the agricultural population. There was no fear of any resurrection of the old national cause. For whilst the people were forced to surrender all their weapons of war -their guns, their muskets, their bayonets, their sabres, their spears – the whole province was bristling with British arms. An immense

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military force was maintained in the Panjab. It was a happy circumstance that, as the Indus had now become our boundary and the country of the Sikhs our frontier province, it was necessary for purposes of external defence, after the apparent settling down of our newly-acquired territories, still to keep our regular troops, European and native, at a strength more than sufficient to render utterly harmless all the turbulent elements of Panjabi society. Had the British army been withdrawn from the Panjab, as at a latter period it was from Oudh, it is hard to say what might not have resulted from our confidence and incaution.

On the acquisition of a new country and the extinction of an old dynasty, it has commonly happened that the chief sufferers by the revolution have been found among the aristocracy of the land. The great masses of the people have been considerately, indeed generously treated, but the upper classes have been commonly prostrated by the annexing hand, and have never recovered from the blow. This may be partly attributed to what is so often described as the “inevitable tendency” of such a change from a bad to a good government. It has been assumed. that the men whom we have found in the enjoyment of all the privileges of wealth and social position, have risen to this eminence by spoliation and fraud, and maintained it by cruelty and oppression. And it is true that the antecedents of many of them would not bear a very jealous scrutiny. Now, so far as the substitution of a strong and pure for a weak and corrupt government must necessarily have checked the prosperous career of those who were living on illicit gains and tyrannous exactions, it was, doubtless, the inevitable tendency of the change to injure, if not to ruin them, as the leaf must perish when the stem dies. But it must be admitted that for some years past the idea of a native aristocracy had been an abomination in the eyes of English statesmen in India; that we had desired to see nothing between the Sarkar, or Government, and the great masses of the people; and that, however little we might have designed it, we had done some great wrongs to men, whose misfortune, rather than whose fault, it was that they were the growth of a corrupt system. There was at the bottom of this a strong desire for the welfare of the people – au eager and a generous longing to protect the weak against the tyranny of the strong; but benevolence, like ambition, sometimes overleaps itself, and falls prostrate on the

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other side, and out of our very love of justice come sometimes unjust deeds.

To the great chiefs of the Panjab the annexation of the country to the British Empire was a source of sore disquietude11. Mercy to the vanquished in the hour of victory was not one of the weaknesses they had been accustomed to contemplate. They had played for a great stake, and they had lost. They had brought their losses on themselves. They had invited by their own acts the conflict which had ruined them. In no one instance had our policy been aggressive. We had not coveted the possession of the Panjab. We had not invited either the first or the second great conflict between the British and the Sikh armies. A brave nation fighting for its independence is one of the noblest spectacles of humanity; and the leaders of such a movement have just claim to sympathy and respect. But these men had risen against us whilst they pretended to be our friends. They had soiled their patriotism by treachery, and forfeited their honour by falsehood and deceit. Still, to a man of large mind and catholic spirit like Henry Lawrence, it could not seem right to judge these Sirdars as he would the flower of European chivalry. So he dealt gently with their offences; and when he came to consider their position under the new Government, he respected their fallen fortunes, and laid a lighter hand upon their tenures than higher authority was altogether willing to sanction. That a large portion of the revenue would be alienated by grants to military chiefs and to priestly sinecurists was certain; not less certain did it appear that the money might be better bestowed. Still, it might be politic, even in a financial aspect, to tolerate for a time abuses of this kind, as not the most expensive means of reconciling the influential classes to our rule. Thus argued Henry Lawrence. So these privileged classes received from him, in many instances, though not all that he wished to give, more perhaps

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than they had dared to expect. Existing incumbents were generally respected; and the privileges enjoyed by one generation were to be only partially resumed in the next.

Thus, by a well-apportioned mixture of vigour and clemency, the submission, if not the acquiescence, of the more dangerous classes was secured; and our administrators were left, undisturbed by the fear of internal revolt, to prosecute their ameliorative measures. It would be beyond the scope of such a narrative as this to write in detail of the operations which were carried out, under the Lahor Board, at once to render British rule a blessing to the people, and the possession of the Panjab an element of strength and security to the British Empire. These great victories of peace are reserved for others to record. That the measures were excellent, that the men were even better than the measures, that the administration of the Panjab was a great fact, at which Englishmen pointed with pride and on which foreigners dwelt with commendation, is freely admitted, even by those who are not wont to see much that is good in the achievements of the British Government in India. Under the fostering care of the Governor-General, who traversed the country from one end to the other, and saw everything with his own eyes, the “Panjab system” became the fashion, and men came to speak and to write of it as though it were a great experiment in government originated by Lord Dalhousie. But it was not a new system. It had been tried long years before, with marked success, and was still in force in other parts of India, though it had never been carried out on so large a scale, or in so fine a country, or been the darling of a viceroy. The only novelty in the construction of the administration was the Lahor Board, and that was abandoned as a failure.

I do not say that it was a failure; but it was so regarded by Lord Dalhousie, who, in 1853, remorselessly signed its death-warrant. A delicate operation, indeed, was the breaking up of the Panjabi Cabinet and the erection of an autocracy in its place. It was the will of the Governor-General that the chief direction of affairs should be consigned to the hands, not of many, but of one. And when the rumour of this resolution went abroad, there was scarcely a house, or a bungalow, or a single-poled tent occupied by an English officer, in which the future of the Panjab – the question of the Lawrences – was not eagerly discussed. Was Henry or was John Lawrence to remain supreme director of affairs? So much was to be said in favour

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of the great qualities of each brother, that it was difficult to arrive at any anticipatory solution of the question. But it was in the character of the Governor-General himself that the key to the difficulty should have been sought. Lord Hardinge would have chosen Henry Lawrence. Lord Dalhousie chose John. No surprise is now expressed that it was so; for, in these days, the character and policy of Dalhousie are read by the broad light of history. No regret is now felt that it was so; for, when the great hurricane of which I am about to write swept over India, each of those two great brothers was, by God’s providence, found in his right place. But there were many at the time who grieved that the name of Henry Lawrence, who had been for so many years associated with all their thoughts of British influence in the Sikh country, and who had paved the way to all our after successes, was to be expunged from the list of Panjabi administrators. It was said that he sympathised overmuch with the fallen state of Sikhdom, and sacrificed the revenue to an idea; that he was too eager to provide for those who suffered by our usurpation; whilst Dalhousie, deeming that the balance-sheet would be regarded as the great test and touchstone of success, was eager to make the Panjab pay. John Lawrence, it was said, better understood the art of raising a revenue. He was willing, in his good brotherly heart, to withdraw from the scene in favour of Henry; but the Governor-General needed his services. So he was appointed Chief-Commissioner of the Panjab, and a new theatre was found for the exercise of Henry Lawrence’s more chivalrous benevolence among the ancient states of Rajputana.

Outwardly, authoritatively, and not untruthfully, the explanation was, that the work of the soldier-statesman was done, that the transition-period in which Henry Lawrence’s services were so especially needed had passed; that the business of internal administration was principally such as comes within the range of the civil officer’s duties; and that a civilian with large experience, especially in revenue matters, was needed to direct all the numerous details of the Executive Government. Dalhousie never liked the Board. It was not a description of administrative agency likely to find favour in his eyes; and it is not impossible that he placed, with some reluctance, at the head of it a man who had not approved the original policy of annexation. But he could not have read Henry Lawrence’s character so badly as to believe for a moment that, on that

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account, the policy once accomplished, he could have been less eager for its success, or less zealous in working it out. There was the indication, however, of a fundamental difference of opinion, which as time advanced became more and more apparent, for Henry’s generous treatment of his fallen enemies came from that very source of enlarged sympathy which rendered the policy of annexation distasteful to him. It was natural, therefore, that the Governor-General, who had resolved to rid himself of the Board on the first fitting opportunity, should have selected as the agent of his pet policy, the administrator of his pet province, the civilian who concurred with, rather than the soldier who dissented from, his views. The fitting opportunity came at last, for there was a redistribution of some of the higher political offices12; and Dalhousie then swept away the obnoxious institution, and placed the administration of the Panjab in the hands of a single man.

Henry Lawrence bowed to the decision, but was not reconciled to it. He betook himself to his new duties a sadder and a wiser man. He did not slacken in good service to the State; but he never again had the same zest for his work. Believing that he had been unfairly and ungratefully treated, he had no longer his old confidence in his master, and as the Dalhousie policy developed itself, under the ripening influence of time, he saw more clearly that he was not one to find favour in the eyes of the Governor-General. Much that he had before but dimly seen and partly understood now became fully revealed to him in the clear light of day. Once, and once only, there was any official conflict; but Henry Lawrence saw much that whilst he deplored he could not avert, and he sighed to think that his principles were out of date and his politics out of fashion.

In the meanwhile, John Lawrence reigned in the Panjab. The capacity for administration, which he had evinced as a Member of the Board, had now free scope for exercise, and was soon fully developed. His name became great throughout the land, and he deserved the praise that was lavished upon him. Right or wrong he did all in accordance with the faith that was

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in him. He was a fitting agent of Dalhousie’s policy, only because he believed in that policy. And happily the greater part of his work lay along the straight road of undebatable beneficence. How he worked, day after day, early and late, and how all men worked under him, is a history now well known. He was emphatically a man without a weakness. Strong himself, bone and muscle, head and heart, of adamantine strength, that would neither bend nor break, he expected others to be equally strong. They sighed, perhaps they inwardly protested, but they knew that the work he exacted from them he gave, in his own person, unstintingly to the State; and they could not regard as a hard task-master one who tasked himself hardest of all. From moral infirmities of all kinds he appeared to be equally free. He did not even seem to be ambitious. Men said that he had no sentiment, no romance. We so often judge our neighbours wrongly in this, that I hesitate to adopt the opinion; but there was an intense reality about him such as I have never seen equalled. He seemed to be continually toiling onwards, upwards, as if life were not meant for repose, with the grand princely motto, “I serve,” inscribed in characters of light on his forehead. He served God as unceasingly as he served the State; and set before all his countrymen in the Panjab the true pattern of a Christian gentleman.

And it was not thrown away. The Christian character of the British administration in the Panjab has ever been one of its most distinguishing features. It is not merely that great humanising measures were pushed forward with an alacrity most honourable to a Christian nation – that the moral elevation of the people was continually in the thoughts of our administrators; but that in their own personal characters they sought to illustrate the religion which they professed. Wherever two or three were gathered together, the voice of praise and prayer went up from the white man’s tent. It had been so during the Protectorate, when, in the wildest regions and in the most stirring times, men like the Lawrences, Reynell Taylor, and Herbert Edwardes, never forgot the Christian Sabbath13. And

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now that peace and order reigned over the country, Christianity asserted itself more demonstratively, and Christian churches rose at our bidding. There was little or none, too, of that great scandal which had made our names a hissing and a reproach in Afghanistan. Our English officers, for the most part, lived pure lives in that heathen land; and private immorality under the administration of John Lawrence grew into a grave public offence.

Conquest of Pegu

And so the Panjab administration flourished under the Chief-Commissioner and his assistants14; and the active mind of Lord Dalhousie was enabled to direct itself to new objects. Already, far down on the south-eastern boundary of our empire – at the point farthest removed of all from the great country whose destinies we have been considering – the seeds of war had been sown broad-cast. Ever since 1826, when the first contest with Ava had been brought to a close by the surrender to the English of certain tracts of country in which no Englishman could live, our relations with the Burmese had been on an unsatisfactory footing. In truth, they were altogether a very unsatisfactory people; arrogant and pretentious, blind to reason, and by no means anxious to manifest their appreciation of the nice courtesies of diplomatic intercourse. To find just cause, according to European notions for chastising these people would at any time have been easy. But their insolence did us very little harm. We could tolerate, without loss of credit or of prestige, the discourtesies of a barbarian Government on the outskirts of civilisation. An insult on the banks of the Irawadi was very different from an insult on the banks of the Jamna. The Princes and chiefs of India knew nothing and cared nothing about our doings far out beyond the black waters of the Bay of Bengal. But at last these discourtesies culminated in an outrage which Lord Dalhousie thought it became the British Government to resent. Whether, under more discreet management, redress might have been obtained and war averted, it is now of little moment to inquire. A sea-captain was appointed to conduct our diplomacy at Rangun, and he conducted it successfully to a rupture. A

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war ensued, to which the future historian of India may devote a not very inviting chapter, but its details have nothing to do with the story of this book. English arms were triumphant, and the province of Pegu lay at our feet. Dalhousie annexed it to the British Empire, “in order that the Government of India might hold from the Burmese State both adequate compensation for past injury, and the best security against future danger.” Thus did the British Empire, which had so recently been extended to the north-west, stretch itself out to the south-east; and the white man sat himself down on the banks of the Irawadi as he had seated himself on the banks of the Indus. There were not wanting those who predicted that the whole of Burmah would soon become British territory, and that then the “uncontrollable principle,” by reference to which a great English statesman justified the seizure of Sindh, would send the English conqueror to grope his way through the Shan States and Siam to Cochin-China. But these apprehensions were groundless. The administrator began his work in Pegu, as he had begun his work in the Panjab, and there was no looking beyond the frontier; but, on the other hand, a desire to avoid border disputes, or, if they could not be avoided, to treat them as matters of light account, inevitable and soon to be forgotten. There was a military officer, admirably fitted for the work, who had served long and successfully, as a civil administrator, in Arakan; who knew the Burmese language and the Burmese people, and had a great name along the eastern coast. Those isolated regions beyond the Bay of Bengal are the grave of all catholic fame. Whilst the name of Lawrence was in all men’s mouths, Phayre was pursuing the even tenor of his way, content with a merely local reputation. But the first, and as I write the only commissioner of Pegu, is fairly entitled to a place in the very foremost rank of those English administrators who have striven to make our rule a blessing to the people of India, and have not failed in the attempt.

In India the native mind readily pervades vast distances, and takes little account of space that the foot can travel. But it is bewildered and confused by the thought of the “black water.” The unknown is the illimitable. On the continent of India, therefore, neither our war-successes nor our peace-successes in the Burmese country stirred the heart of Indian society. In the lines of the Sipahi and the shops of the money-changer they were not matters of eager interest and voluble discourse. We

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might have sacked the cities of Ava and Amarapura, and caused their sovereign lord to be trodden to death by one of his white elephants without exciting half the interest engendered by a petty outbreak in Central India, or the capture of a small fort in Bundelkhand. The Princes and chiefs of the great continent of Hindostan knew little and cared less about a potentate, however magnificent in his own dominions, who neither worshipped their gods nor spoke their language, and who was cut off from their brotherhood by the intervention of the great dark sea. We gained no honour, and we lost no confidence, by the annexation of this outlying province; but it opened to our Native Soldiery a new field of service, and unfortunately it was beyond the seas.

Footnotes

1. I have used the word most intelligible to ordinary English readers, but it does not fitly represent the office held by the “Diwan,” who was financial manager or revenue-farmer of the district, with the control of the internal administration.

2. Nazurana.

3. W. R. Hodson (“Hodson of Hodson’s Horse”), January, 1848. This young officer narrowly escaped the fate of Anderson at Multan, for he had been selected in the first instance to accompany Vans Agnew.

4. A critical account of this campaign, based on the most accurate information, is to be found in ‘The Decisive Battles of India,’ published by Messrs. Allen & Co. – G. B. M.

5. This is not the loose diction of doubt. The agreement was, that the British Government should pay not less than four, or more than five, lakhs of rupees.

6. Afterwards Sir John Login.

7. In the presence of the subsequent action of Dhulip Singh, of his abnegation of the Christian faith, and of the position of “an English courtier and a Scotch laird,” it is impossible to allow this passage to pass without remark. When Lord Dalhousie annexed the Panjab Dhulip Singh was the ward of the British Government. The British troops combated for him, and on his behalf. The rebellion which culminated in the victory of Gujrat was brought about by the incompetence, not of Dhulip Singh, but of the British officials by whom he was surrounded, notably by that of the acting Resident, Sir F. Currie. It is difficult, then, to see the moral grounds upon which it was decided that Dhulip Singh should bear the brunt of the punishment. Sir Henry Lawrence could not see them, neither can I. Havinc, annexed his country for no fault of his, mere child as he was, we were bound to assure to him something more than a mere personal provision, to lapse upon his death. I am far from defending the recent action of Dhulip Singh, but it is most certain that he had a very just cause for discontent. – G. B. M.

8. Sir Frederick Currie had by this time resumed his seat in the Supreme Council of India.

9. Ante, p. 12. I have here named only those distinguished during the earlier deriod of our Panjabi career. Others there were, appointed at a later period, equally entitled to honourable mention.

10. Sir John Malcolm used to say that the only way to govern the people of a newly-acquired country was by means of char durwaseh kolah, or four doors open. That the Panjabi officials well understood this, here is a pleasant illustrative proof, from a paper written by one of them: – “For eight months in the year the tent is the proper home of him who loves his duties and his people. Thus he comes to know and be known of them; thus personal influence and local knowledge give him a power not to be won by bribes or upheld by bayonets. The notables of the neighbourhood meet their friend and ruler on his morning march; greybeards throng round his unguarded door with presents of the best fruits of the land, or a little sugar, spices, and almonds, according to the fashion of their country, and are never so happy as when allowed to seat themselves on the carpet and talk over old times and new events – the promise of the harvest and the last orders of the rulers.” – Calcutta Review, vol. xxxiii.

11. This was admitted in the first Panjab Report, the following passage of which may be advantageously quoted: – “A great revolution cannot happen without injuring some classes. When a State falls, its nobility and its supporters must to some extent suffer with it; a dominant sect and party once moved by political ambition and religious enthusiasm, cannot return to the ordinary level of society and the common occupations of life without feeling some discontent and some enmity against their powerful but humane conquerors. But it is probable that the mass of the people will advance in material prosperity and in moral elevation under the influence of British rule.”

12. The Haidarabad Residency was about to be vacated. It was an office that had been held by Sir Charles Metcalfe and other eminent men. I believe that Henry Lawrence suggested. (for the days of the Board had been for some time numbered) that either he or his brother should be sent to Haidarabad. Lord Dalhousie, however, sent General Low to the Court of the Nizam, and gave Henry Lawrence the scarcely less honourable appointment of Governor-General’s agent in Rajputana.

13. Many will remember that delightful little story, so pleasantly told in Edwardes’s “Year on the Panjab frontier,” of Reynell Taylor’s invitation to prayer on a Sunday morning in February, 1848, and of the question whether the half-caste colonel, “John Holmes,” who had “always attended prayers at Peshawar” in George Lawrence’s house, was sufficiently a Christian to be admitted to swell the two or three into three or four.

14. On the abolition of the Board, Mr. Montgomery, who had succeeded Mr Hansel as third member, became Judicial Commissioner, and Mr. Macleod vas appointed Financial Commissioner.

This collection transcribed by Chris Gage
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