be placed in the India House as a public, conspicuous and permanent mark of the admiration and gratitude of the East India Company'. Wellesley acknowledged the honours thus conferred upon him in characteristic language : My first emotion was to offer up my thankful acknowledgements to the Almighty Power which has preserved my life beyond the ordinary limits of human nature, to receive a distinction of which history affords so few, if any, examples. May the memorial by which you are pleased to distinguish my services remind you of the source from which they proceed and of the ends to which they were directed, and confirm the principles of public virtue, the maxims of public order, and a due respect for just and honest Government.' The great Marquess died in 1842 at the age of eighty-two, and at his own request was buried at Eton. His best epitaph would be the words which the great Duke uttered when he heard of his brother's death: There is a great man gone.'

The address which the English residents of Calcutta presented to him on the eve of his departure from India best sums up the great work that the first Marquess Wellesley did for India: The events of the last seven years have marked the period of your Government as the most important Epoch in the history of European power in India. Your discernment in seeing the exigencies of the country, and of the times in which you were called to act, the promptitude and determination with which you have seized on the opportunities of acting, your first conception and masterly use of our intrinsic strength, have eminently contributed in conjunction with the zeal, the discipline and the courage of our armies, to decide upon these great events, and to establish, from one extremity of this Empire to the other, the ascendancy of the British name and dominion.'

CHAPTER III

THE FINAL OVERTHROW OF THE MAHRATTA

POWERS

MARQUESS OF HASTINGS, 1754-1826

THE subject of this sketch was first Lord Rawdon, and then the Earl of Moira in the Irish Peerage; for the sake of continuity he will be designated in these pages the Marquess of Hastings. He was educated at Harrow, and his visit to his old school on his return to England after his distinguished career as Governor-General of India was long remembered there; the Marquess Dalhousie, who was a boy at Harrow at the time, has recorded the indelible impression it left upon his mind for many reasons, and not alone on account of Hastings's princely generosity in bestowing a couple of sovereigns on every boy at the school. From Harrow Hastings proceeded to the University of Oxford, not so much to obtain any academic distinction as for the social advantages life at the University brings with it; and he took no degree. A continental tour gave the finishing touch to his education, and he thus obtained that acquaintance with the world that every man of affairs is bound to acquire. His preferences were in favour of a military career; and he obtained a commission as ensign in the Army at the age of seventeen, while, indeed, he was still at the University. Two years later he became a lieutenant in the 5th Foot, and at once proceeded to America to join his regiment. He remained in that country for eight years; thus he came in for a share in the American War of Independence, and won renown for his gallantry in action in the opening battle of the campaign at Bunker's Hill, where he had two bullets through his cap. The general in command wrote to the British Government in these terms: 'Lord Rawdon has this day stamped his fame for life.' While in America he succeeded in raising a regiment known as 'The Volunteers of Ireland'.

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command of such a regiment naturally required qualities of no common order, and that Hastings possessed these is shown by the fact that the regiment greatly distinguished itself under his leadership. In 1775 he had become a captain in the 63rd Foot; and he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1778, and appointed Adjutant-General of the Forces in America the same year. He was able to show his quality when holding an independent command, as he did on one occasion, when he was pitted against the American general, Greene, whom his countrymen thought to be second only to Washington himself. Lord Cornwallis is recorded to have described the victory which Hastings won over this general, whose force was far superior in numbers, as by far the most splendid of the war. On account of ill-health, he was compelled to leave America before the war came to an end, in 1781. The ship by which he was proceeding home was captured by a French cruiser and taken to Brest, and thus Hastings became for a time a prisoner of war; but he was soon exchanged for some French prisoners, and returned to England. He was only twenty-eight when he was promoted in 1782 to be full colonel; he was at the same time appointed an aide de camp to the King. As a military commander he had the reputation of being a strict martinet.

In 1783, Hastings was created an English peer under the style of Baron Rawdon of Rawdon in the County of York, and thus became entitled to a seat in the English House of Lords; hitherto he had had a seat in the Irish House of Commons. He was never a very keen Parliamentarian, though he was credited with the ambition of forming an independent party. On the death of his father in 1793, he became Earl of Moira in the Irish peerage. In 1794, having attained the rank of major-general, he was sent to Flanders in command of a force of 10,000 men to assist in extricating the Duke of York from his difficulties. By what was really a brilliant piece of bluff on his part, he succeeded in executing a movement from Ostend, whereby he was able to effect a junction with the Duke, though his route had lain through a country occupied by the enemy. He was complimented by an Austrian general in these terms: You have known, my Lord, how to do the impos

sible.' It had, however, been an expensive operation, for he had adopted a ruse to deceive the enemy as to his real numbers and had thus been able to avert an attack. He had ordered rations to be collected for 25,000 men, though he had only 10,000 with him. The ruse had succeeded, and the French general refrained from attacking him on the march. The British Government, however, refused to pay for the extra 15,000 rations, and the contractor was referred for payment to Hastings. As long as he lived, he steadily refused to pay, but his widow, Lady Hastings, was afterwards made to pay the whole sum claimed. Hastings was not again engaged on active service in the field in Europe. He took up his work again in Parliament and especially interested himself in Irish affairs. In 1803, he had a term of military duty as Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, in which capacity he made himself exceedingly popular. Owing to the zeal and ability he displayed, coupled with singleness of purpose and firmness of will, in certain delicate negotiations with which the Prince Regent had entrusted him, he attracted the attention of the Ministry of the day; and, a vacancy having occurred in the office of Governor-General of India, through the resignation of Lord Minto, he was appointed to fill it in the year 1813. He left England in the spring of that year and landed at Calcutta in the month of October.

The great work of consolidation of Empire in India which the Marquess Wellesley had inaugurated, had been abruptly stopped when that great Ruler left India for good. British influence had indeed been extended over a very large portion of the country, and England stood nominal Suzerain of the whole peninsula. But a long period had intervened between the departure of Wellesley and the arrival of Hastings, during which the British Government had drawn back from any further expansion of the Empire, and had retired within its own administrative borders, 'content,' writes Sir Alfred Lyall, 'to transact in future its political affairs upon the principle of limited liability, and to maintain, outside its actual obligations, the attitude of a placid spectator, unconcerned with the quarrels or misfortunes of its neighbours.' Certain States, it is true, were left within the sphere of British influence, but there was a vast region

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where this influence had hardly penetrated, the immense tract of Central India, thrust in, as it were, as a double wedge, into the very centre of the Empire. This region had become what has been aptly styled a political Alsatia, full of brigands and roving banditti. Almost all Central India, including Rajputana, had been left to take care of itself. 'All round our territories,' writes the historian, we had a cordon of rigid, irresistible order. While outside this ring-fence, in the great interior region that contained the principalities of the Mahratta families, and of the ancient Rajput chiefs, we allowed a free hand to Scindia, Holkar, and the predatory leaders.' How bad the condition of things was may be gathered from a remonstrance which some of the Rajput States had presented to the British Government. They said that some Power in India had always existed to which peaceable States submitted, and in return obtained its protection against the invasions of upstart chiefs and the armies of lawless banditti; that the British Government now occupied the place of that protecting Power, and was the natural guardian of weak States, which were continually exposed to the cruelties and oppression of robbers and plunderers, owing to the refusal of the British Government to protect them.' They could not understand a Government that had occupied the imperial place, but yet evaded the imperial obligation.

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A graphic picture of the condition of this great central tract of India has been given by the pen of the historian. The great central tract of the Indian continent, presented truly a pitiable spectacle, and never before had there been such intense and general suffering. The Native States were disorganized and society on the very verge of dissolution; the people were crushed by despots and ruined by exactions; the country was over-run by bandits, and its resources wasted by enemies: armed forces existed only to plunder, to torture, and to mutiny. Briefly, Government there was none; it had ceased to exist; there remained only misery and oppression.' When it stands on record that villagers burned their homesteads, and preferred to perish in the flames with their wives and children, to falling into the hands of the bands of freebooters; and that hundreds of women threw themselves into wells to avoid the same fate,