CHAPTER II

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMPANY INTO THE SUPREME POWER IN INDIA

MARQUESS WELLESLEY, 1760-1842

It must be a rare thing to find in one family so many distinguished men as were Richard Colley Wellesley, afterwards the first Marquess Wellesley, William Wellesley Pole, afterwards the first Baron Maryborough, Henry Wellesley, afterwards the first Baron Cowley, and Arthur Wellesley, afterwards the first Duke of Wellington. Their mother appears to have found it at times rather embarrassing that she should have been the mother of such sons, for it is recorded that being delayed one day when she was driving out, by an applauding crowd, she remarked, 'This comes of being the mother of the Gracchi.' Wellesley, as the subject of this sketch will be called throughout, to distinguish him from his brother, the great Duke, was first sent to school at Harrow, but was expelled for a boyish escapade, which serves to illustrate more than anything else the lack of discipline in the school at the time. He had joined some other boys in barring out a new head master. He was afterwards sent to Eton, for which school he entertained a life-long affection, and at his own special request, he was buried there when he died. His head master thought very highly of his scholarly attainments. It is recorded that George the Third was present on the occasion when it fell to Wellesley's lot to recite the speech made by the Earl of Strafford on the occasion of his famous trial, when he was accused of alienating the King from his subjects, and that Wellesley's presentation of his theme was so graphic that the King shed tears. The great actor, Garrick, met him soon after and said to him: Your lordship has done what I never could do. You have drawn tears from the King.' 'Yes,' was Wellesley's reply,' but

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you never spoke before him in the character of a fallen, favourite, arbitrary minister.' After a short stay at the University of Oxford, Wellesley took up for a time a Parliamentary career, sitting first in the Irish House of Peers, and afterwards in the English House of Commons. One subject which he advocated in common with William Wilberforce was the abolition of slavery throughout the British Dominions. The Speaker of the House of Commons had remarked one day to Wellesley: You want a wider With the offer made sphere you are dying of cramp. to him in 1797 of the Governor-Generalship of India, that wider sphere had come. His brother Arthur had already preceded him for his turn of military service in India, and he had had some correspondence with him; he had also read much Indian history and in other ways had been following Indian affairs pretty closely.

Wellesley arrived in India in 1798. There was much in common between Pitt and Wellesley. Pitt had realized the necessity of checking the ascendancy of the French in America, if England was ever to expand in that portion of the world: Wellesley realized that a similar policy was necessary in India, if England was not simply to expand, but to hold any footing at all in that country. In this necessity lay the secret of much of Wellesley's policy as Governor-General. He had delivered an impassioned address from his place in the House of Commons as early as 1794, in which he had clearly laid down his views as to the general principles, designs, and power of France. The real cause of our present security is He had said: to be found in our own exertions. By those exertions we were able to withstand and repel the first assault of the arms and principles of France, and the continuance of the same effort now forms our only barrier against the return of the same danger.' Sir Alfred Lyall has stated as a remarkable fact that each repeated demonstration of France against the English Dominion in India has accelerated instead of retarding its expansion'. Wellesley saw clearly that as long as the great Native Powers of India retained European and especially French officers in their pay, and in their armies, and listened to French advice in their Councils, so long would the demonstrations of

France against the British Power in India be continued. It was in his determination to end this dangerous state of things that eventually came about that inevitable collision with these great Native Powers, which resulted in that vast expansion of English influence and ascendancy in the continent of India for which his period of rule is remarkable. That the danger from the French was no mere chimera of Wellesley's imagination appears from a fact stated by Sir Alfred Lyall, that on the very day, in April, 1798, that Wellesley landed at Madras on his way to Calcutta, the ambassadors of one of these Native Powers, Tipu, the Ruler of Mysore, had disembarked at Mangalore on their return from the Isle of France, where the French Governor had not only given them a public reception, but had also issued a Proclamation inviting all good citizens to enrol themselves under the Mysore banner for a war to expel the English from India'. His biographer has well said: "This was the true greatness of Wellesley, that he recognized in all their fullness alike the need and the responsibility of the expansion of British India'; and the greater part therefore of his career in India was spent in effecting that expansion. The political outcome of Lord Wellesley's Governor-Generalship,' writes Sir Alfred Lyall, 'is well summarized in the final paragraph of the long dispatch in which he reported to the Court of Directors, in the lofty language of a triumphant pro-consul, the general result of the wars and Treaties that he had made for the consolidation of our Eastern Empire, and the pacification of all India : a general bond of connexion is now established between the British Government and the principal States of India, on principles which render it the interest of every State to maintain its alliance with the British Government, which precludes inordinate aggrandizement of any one of those States by an usurpation of the rights and possessions of others, and which secures to every State the unmolested exercise of its separate authority within the limits of its established dominion under the general protection of the British Power.""

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The Native States that Wellesley was called upon to deal with were the tributary States of Tanjore, the Karnatik, Oudh, which was within the British sphere of influ

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ence, if not indeed tributary, and the independent States of Mysore, Haidarabad, and those of the great Mahratta Confederacy. The two chief centres of French intrigue and ambition at the time were Mysore and Haidarabad. The greatest danger lay in Mysore, the Ruler of which State, Tipu Sultan, had already shown his hand by making that offensive and defensive alliance with the French already referred to, which had for its professed object the expulsion of the British Nation from India'. Before Wellesley could deal with him, he found it necessary to come to some arrangement both with the Nizam of Haidarabad and with the Mahrattas. One of the results of the nonintervention policy, or the policy of neutrality, as one historian calls it, which had lasted from 1792 to 1798, was that the Nizam had to see his old allies stand by while he was being reduced by the Mahrattas into a position of dependence upon them. Naturally, he was now more or less disaffected towards the British, and, though comparatively weak, he still had a large and well-disciplined force under French officers; and Wellesley realized how dangerous this force might well become if it chose, as it probably would, to march over to Tipu's side in the event of hostilities between the British and that ruler. Wellesley was always able to secure the assistance of skilful and able lieutenants in carrying out his policy, and he could have made no better choice than that of John Malcolm, for the purpose of converting the Nizam of Haidarabad from a doubtful friend into a faithful ally. Malcolm's diplomacy was eminently successful; and the result was a Treaty made with the Nizam in 1798, under the terms of which all Frenchmen in his service were to be dismissed. The disbandment of the French battalions was carried out, again through the influence of Malcolm, with great skill and resolution; and the Nizam received a force in their place commanded by English officers, to be stationed permanently in his country. The basis of the Treaty was thus what is known in Indian history as the subsidiary system'. When Wellesley tried to effect the same arrangement with the Mahrattas, he did not find them so complacent they were at this time the most formidable power to be reckoned with, and they were unwilling to have the

thin end of the wedge of ultimate British paramountcy in their Councils introduced in the shape of an alliance under the subsidiary system. All they would agree to, therefore, was to join the league against Mysore: this was all that Wellesley could have hoped for he had not expected their active co-operation, and he was content so long as they were prepared to maintain an attitude of benevolent neutrality. This he seemed now to have been successful in securing, and he was therefore prepared to deal with Mysore.

It had been evident for some time that Tipu had been dreaming of Empire: his great ambition was to become Emperor of Southern India. If the result of the recent neutral attitude of the British towards the Native Powers had been the weakening of the Nizam, owing to the aggrandizement of the Mahrattas, the result in Tipu's case had been the strengthening of his position, and he was now a far more formidable enemy than he had been at the time that Lord Cornwallis had concluded peace with him in 1792. The position was recognized as a dangerous one, and Wellesley, realizing that the Madras Government was not strong enough to deal with the situation, resolved on independent action, untrammelled by the opposition he might expect from divided counsels. With him to resolve was to act, and he commenced negotiations with Tipu, with the view of getting him to disarm, and abandon his alliance with the French. His first demand was couched in sufficiently conciliatory terms. Tipu's reply, however, was subtle and shuffling; he practically denied the truth of the reports about his French alliances. The conclusion of his letter was eminently characteristic of an Oriental prince, who strives to conceal his insincerity under the guise of a studied courtesy and politeness ; continue to allow me,' he wrote, the pleasure of your correspondence, making me happy by accounts of your health.' ~ This did not deceive Wellesley on his way out to India he had met David Baird, afterwards General Baird, who had at one time been a prisoner in Tipu's hands; and he had learnt much from him as to the real attitude of Tipu towards the British. Wellesley at once proceeded in person to Madras to take personal command of the operations

OSWELL III

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