He died, 4th December 1717. Gabriel Boughton, his predecessor in patriotism, dying God knows when, being buried God knows where.

So the epitaph is a trifle over-confident; for Great Britain has a trick of forgetting her most faithful servants.

THE RISE OF THE MAHRATTA POWER

A.D. 1707 TO A.D. 1738

The story of Siva-ji has already been told. His early decease, while it did not materially check the rising flood of Mahratta power, certainly left the invading West a freer hand along the shores of India from Bombay to Calicut.

For Siva-ji seems to have had a genius for sea, as well as for land warfare. It was his unerring eye which, seizing on an island along the coast overlooked hitherto by both Portuguese and English, had it fortified for use as a point d'appui, whence he could control the shipping north and south. Indeed, having in view the fact that he was the only person who managed in any way to harass English fleets, it seems not unlikely that, had he lived longer, British commerce would have been longer, also, in finding firm foothold in India.

But he died, and his son Samba-ji died also, meanly, miserably. That, however, only delayed the inevitable for a short time. The Mahratta star was in the ascendant, that of the Moghuls was sinking fast, and the death of Aurungzebe accelerated both ascent and descent.

To begin with, it ended what may be called the Râjput acquiescence in empire; that is to say, their acceptance of "Akbar's Dream" as an ideal, which by good fortune might become real. It was an ideal absolutely foreign to the whole Râjput spirit, the whole Râjput theory of life. In their State-Politic, one chieftain had as independent a position as any other chieftain, and even amongst the followers of those chieftains none was really before or after the other. Every Râjput owed equal fealty to his race, was equally free to defend his own rights as he chose. Yet side by side with this curious individual independence ran what, for want of a better word, we may call a feudal bond betwixt follower and chieftain, between chieftain and suzerain. Akbar's Dream of Empire had been antagonistic to this, yet they had accepted that Dream at his hands, and at his death the mere fact of his heir Jahângir being half a Râjput by birth, had helped them to forget what they had given up to the dead man's genius. Shâhjahân was still more Râjput. In his veins there flowed but one-fourth of the hated Mahomedan blood, so they bore with him. But with Aurungzebe it was different. Born of a Mahomedan mother, the old race intolerance showed in him early, and from the moment he set his foot on the throne, alienation of loyalty began actively, passively, so that by the time the bigot's reign of fifty years was over, every Râjput in India was ripe for revolt; a fact which naturally was in favour of the Mahrattas, since it weakened the power of the Moghuls. It was still more favourable to the advancement of the West, since with India engaged in internecine strife, attention was withdrawn from many a seemingly slight advance which yet was the first step to final conquest. Naturally, after Aurungzebe's anxious efforts to settle the succession by means of a last will and testament, his sons immediately came to blows over the business; in which quarrel the best claimant appears to have gone to the wall, for Azim, the second son, was defeated and killed near Agra by his elder brother, Shâh-Alam, and Kambaksh, the youngest, shortly afterwards drew death down on himself by a desperate defiance near Hyderabâd. Thus Shâh-Alam was left to face the situation for five years under the title of Bahâdur-Shâh. It is worthy of note that he, the first puppet-emperor of Delhi, had thus the same name as the last, the old man Bahâdur-Shâh, who, after dallying with disgrace and deceit in 1857 went to end his miserable life in the Andaman Islands.

Bahâdur-Shâh the First found his hands full. Having pursued Kambaksh to the very confines of the Dekkan, it was necessary ere returning northward to settle the Râjput rebellion (which was becoming daily less restrained), and to temporise in some way with the Mahrattas. And here a piece of diplomacy on the part of the dead brother, Azim, served Bahâdur's turn well. The former, when advancing to dispute the crown, had sought to strengthen his position and protect his rear by giving back to the Mahrattas the rightful heir to Siva-ji's throne in the person of his grandson Sâho, who had been kept in captivity by the Moghuls ever since his father Samba-ji had paid the penalty for blasphemy amongst the Mahomedans, and so been made a martyr by the Mahrattas. It was a wily move, for during the young claimant's long incarceration, another pretender to Siva-ji's crown had arisen. Azim-Shâh, therefore, had deliberately started a successional dispute in the hopes of being thereby freed for a time of troublesome neighbours.

The ruse succeeded, and Bahâdur-Shâh, by ratifying his brother's promise of favourable peace should the young pretender succeed in establishing his claim, managed to keep the Mahrattas quiet for some years.

He was less fortunate with the Râjput confederacy, though he was prepared to give up all things but the mere name of Empire. In the case of Oudipur (Chitore) he went so far as to restore all annexations, to release it from the obligation of furnishing a contingent, to abolish the infidel capitation tax, or jizyia, and to re-establish religious toleration as it had existed in the time of Akbar. He could not well have done more; but for once--almost for the only time in Indian history--a faint political feeling is here to be traced. For even the removal of the hated jizyia was not enough for the Râjput; he wanted, and he meant to have, independence. This is--or seems to be--the only occasion in all the long centuries of Indian history which gives us a hint of any recognition on the part of the people of political rights, and as such it is peculiarly interesting. Unfortunately, it is so mixed up with the religious motive that it is impossible to say if it really gives ground for supposing that we have here a faint realisation of the rights of the individual.

While Bahâdur-Shâh was engaged in pacifying the Râjputs by the relinquishment of everything, he was suddenly called to the Punjâb by an insurrection amongst the Sikhs.

Nânuk, their original founder, had lived in Akbar's time; a time peculiarly productive of religious enthusiasms all over the world. And Nânuk was a religious enthusiast pure and simple. Of the soldier caste, the son of a grain merchant, he was devote from childhood. Much travel and mature manhood turned him into an almost inspired preacher of the Theistic doctrines of Kâbir, who in his turn was a disciple of the great Ramanuja. Concerning this same Kâbir there is a curious legend, the recital of which may serve to impress the memory with the most salient feature of his teaching--his tolerance.

The tale runs that at his death the Mahomedans claimed the right to bury the saint, the Hindus to burn him; in consequence of which there was a free fight over the corpse, in the midst of which the still, white-shrouded form lay, mutely appealing for peace. And lo! when blood had been uselessly spilt, and a compromise effected, it was found that beneath the white sheet was no dead man, only where his holy head had lain grew a sweet basil plant, sacred to the God Vishnu, only where his holy feet had touched, a perfumed rehan bush, green as the green of the Prophet's turban!

Nânuk, then, was a preacher, a quietest, and being possessed of this spirit of universal charity, was allowed, naturally, to live in peace during the reign of that past--master in tolerance, Akbar. At his death, however, the rapid increase of the sect attracted the unfavourable notice of Jahângir, and Nânuk was cruelly put to death. The usual result followed. Armed with a sainted martyr, religion became fanaticism. Har-Govind, the murdered man's son, brought revenge and hatred to his holding of the supreme pontiff-ship, and from this time the Sikhs, expelled forcibly from their lands, presented from the mountains north of Lahôre an unbroken front of rebellion to the Government.

It was not, however, till 1675 that, under Govind, the tenth Guru (or spiritual head of the sect) from Nânuk its founder, the Sikhs formed themselves into an aggressive military commonwealth.

Guru Govind was a wise man. Numbers were his first need, so he set to work to establish a creed wide enough to contain all converts, attractive enough to compel them to come in.

Caste was abolished; Mahomedan or Hindu, Brahman or Pariah, were alike when once the oath of fealty was taken, when once the new-made Sikh had vowed to be a religious soldier, to carry cold steel about with him from birth to death, to wear blue clothes always, and never to clip a hair which God had sent to grow upon him. In order still further to emphasise the separation of the Sikh from his fellows, new methods of salutation, new ceremonials for all the principal events of life, were instituted.

Nothing more interesting in the annals of heredity exists than the startling rapidity of the change thus brought about in the Sikhs. They are now--that is, after two hundred years--(as they were, indeed, after a scant one hundred) as distinct a race as any in India, with as well marked a national character as any of the original peoples of India.

So far, therefore, Guru Govind was successful; but his personal mission proved disastrous. Despite his diplomacy, he failed in numbers; his foes were too strong for him, and in the end the pontiff saw all his fortresses taken, his mother and his children murdered, his followers tortured, dispersed, or killed.

This was in Aurungzebe's time, that most bigoted and bloodthirsty of pious kings. The closing years of his reign, however, found him with all his energies centred on the Dekkan, and almost immediately after his death, the Sikhs recovered from their stupor, and having found a new, and this time an unscrupulously cruel leader, broke out into almost incredible excesses of revenge. They ravaged Sirhind, they brutally butchered whole towns, and after penetrating southward as far as Saharunpur, retreated to the Cis and Trans-Sutlej states, which are to this day the stronghold of the Sikh faith.

It was against these stalwart rebels--for one of the quickly acquired national characteristics of the Sikhs is unusual physical height and breadth--that Bahâdur-Shâh had to march in person. He managed with infinite trouble to besiege the chief offenders in a hill-fort, whence, after enduring the utmost extremities of famine, they made a wild sally, headed, apparently, by their leader Banda, who, after making himself conspicuous by desperate resistance, was captured and brought to the Mahomedan camp in triumph. Once there, however, the prisoner threw aside his borrowed rôle, openly declared himself nothing but a poor Hindu convert who had dared all to save his Guru, and taunted his captors with having fallen into the trap and allowed the real Banda to escape them!

It is pleasantly noteworthy to find that Bahâdur-Shâh, struck by the man's self-devotion, spared his life.

Before, however, the further endeavours to secure the real leader and crush the Sikhs were successful, the emperor himself fell sick and died, and the usual turmoil of murder and intrigue followed, which ended in the temporary enthronement, at the instigation of Zulfikar Khan (who had been chief instrument in the late king's succession), of the eldest son, Jahândar-Shâh. An inveterate intriguer was this same Zulfikar. He it was who had suggested hampering the hands of the Mahrattas by presenting them with a new claimant for their crown; and now he chose his nominee--despatching the remainder of the royal family instanter--because Jahândar, weak, vicious, enslaved by a public dancer, offered himself an easy prey to Zulfikar's desire to be the real ruler.

But Farokhshir, son of one of the murdered princes, who had escaped massacre by being in Bengal, had just sufficient spunk in him to oppose the maker of puppet-kings. Fortune favoured him miraculously, quite irrationally, and--surely to his own surprise--he found himself marching on Delhi, victorious, triumphant. But the whole affair had degenerated--as purely Indian history after the death of Aurungzebe so often does degenerate--into transpontine melodrama and comic opera, and he was met at the gates by an obsequious Zulfikar and his still more obsequious papa, both ready, willing, and eager to deliver up their prisoner, the late Emperor Jahândar, and take the oath of allegiance to the new one, Farokhshir.

But this passed. It was, to use a vulgarism, "too thick" even for a debased Moghul. So the double-dyed traitor was calmly strangled in the imperial tent, Jahândar was quietly put out of the way, and Farokhshir reigned in his stead.

One is irresistibly reminded, as one reads the records of the few following reigns, of the terrible annals of the Slave and Khilji Kings. There is only this to choose between them, that the latter concerned themselves with kings who, however degenerate, were at least real, whereas these occupants of Akbar's throne, Farokhshir, the two infant princes who were in turn raised to power by political factions, and Mahomed-Shâh, were all purely puppets.

The first-named, who owed his kingdom entirely to the ability for intrigue of two Syyeds of Ba'rr'ha, spent his time largely in trying to emancipate himself from their claims on his gratitude. His was a feeble, futile nature, a feeble, futile reign. During it the Mahrattas, becoming tired of their civil war of succession, began to renew their depredations along the Moghul frontiers. But in all ways Farokhshir was a timid creature; so nothing, great was done to hold the marauders in check. He, however, through the aid of a general with an unpronounceable name, was equal to a final tussle and final crushing of the Sikh zealots, seven hundred and forty-nine of whom, defeated and taken prisoners to Delhi, were duly paraded through the streets, exposed to various indignities, and finally beheaded in batches of one hundred and eleven on seven successive days of the week.

Their leader, Banda, was, however, reserved for more refined barbarity. Nothing in the whole annals of history can exceed in devilish malignant cruelty the revolting details of the treatment meted out to this man, who had himself, it is true, led the way in lack of humanity! They are sickening to read, and shall not be repeated here.

Farokhshir only reigned six years. By that time even his masters, the Syyeds, had tired of him, and despite his abject submission, he was finally dragged from the women's apartments, a faint, frightened shadow of a king, and privately made away with.

But these same Syyeds--king-makers as they justly called themselves--were unfortunate in their choice of a successor. They set up one young prince of the blood, who promptly died of consumption in less than three months. They followed him with another, who as promptly followed his example in less time.

The question naturally presents itself--was it tuberculosis or some other toxin? Who can say?

They then, in despair, chose a healthy young man. But the public confidence in them as king-makers was waning, and almost before the new emperor--who was enthroned in the title of Mahomed-Shâh--was firmly settled in his seat, Hussan-Ali--the most powerful of the two Syyeds--was assassinated in his palanquin, and his brother, after vainly trying to hold his own single-handed, was defeated and made prisoner near Delhi, his life being spared out of respect for his sacred lineage--Syyeds being descended directly from the great Prophet.

And all this time, while emperors intrigued against ministers, and ministers intrigued against emperors, while here and there some austere old Mahomedan like Asaf-Jâh (whilom Grand Vizier, and afterwards Governor in the Dekkan), who remembered the bigoted decorum of Aurungzebe's court, lifted up voice of warning and held up holy hands of horror--all this time the Western nibblings continued on the sea-coast, and in the interior the Mahratta power was growing day by day.

For some time the Moghuls kept themselves fairly secure of it by pitting Samba, the one claimant to the crown, against Sâho, the other claimant. But Sâho found a friend in the person of one Bâla-ji, a Brahmin, who began life as a mere village accountant. Ere long, however, he was his master's right hand, and it was by his wits that Sâho found himself no longer a mere vassal of the empire, but an independent ruler, entitled to claim endless minor dues over a large extent of land. A quick wit was this of Bâla-ji's, which recognised the infinite opportunities for encroachments and interference given by widespread, ill-defined rights.

In the confusion worse confounded which ensued, the Mahratta scored invariably against the Moghul, and when Bâla-ji died, his son, still more capable, still more astute, took up the prime minister or Peishwa-ship, and with it his father's life-work.

Now, there is no doubt that this son, by name Bâji-Rao, is, after Siva-ji, by far the ablest Mahratta of history.

He was a warrior, born and bred in camps, a statesman educated ably by his father, a man frank and free, hardy beyond most, content to live on a handful of unhusked grain, vital to the fingertips.

He found himself confronted by a Peace-party, who would fain have paused to consolidate what had already been won, to suppress civil discord, and generally to give a firm administrative grip on the south of India before attempting further conquests on the north.

But Bâji-Rao was clear-sighted; he saw the difficulties of this policy. To attempt the consolidation of what was still absolutely fluid, to bid the bands of predatory horsemen which constituted the Mahratta army suddenly lay down their lances or turn them into ox goads, would be fatal.

The only chance of peace was to form a regular army out of these robber hordes, give that army work to do, and so establish a stern military control as the first and most necessary step towards a fixed Government.

The Moghul empire lay ready to hand, rotten at the core, simply waiting to be overthrown.

He therefore urged his master to "strike the withered trunk, when the branches will fall of themselves," and roused the lazy, somewhat luxurious Sâho to such enthusiasm that he swore he would plant his victorious standard on Holy Himalaya itself.

The career of Sâho-plus-Bâji-Rao was singularly successful. Ere long, after harassing the Dekkan, he forced his rival, Samba, to yield him almost the whole Mahratta country except a portion about Kolapur. Having done this, he turned himself to engage the Moghul force of thirty-five thousand men which had marched on him with the avowed object of delivering Sâho from the terrible tyranny of Bâji. This was defeated, and Sâho-cum-Bâji proceeded to apportion various parts of Southern India amongst the great Mahratta families. The Gaekwars of Baroda date from this time. The Holkar of those days was but a shepherd-soldier, and the Scindias, though of good birth, a mere body-servant of the Peishwas.

Mâlwa was the next emprise, and though its Afghân governor effected his own personal escape by means of a rescue party from Rohilkand summoned by his wife, who sent her veil as a challenge to her brethren's honour, the whole rich province fell into Mahratta hands. The Râjah of Bundulkhund, alarmed, acceded to Bâji-Rao's demands, and Jâi-Singh of Ambêr, hastily summoned by the Moghuls to defend their cause, after a futile and half-hearted resistance, also yielded.

He was more of a scientist than a soldier was Jâi-Singh, and would have been remarkable in any age for his astronomical work. His 'List of the Stars' is still of importance.

Hitherto, all these aggressions had been made by the Mahrattas under cover of claims; those ill-defined, widespread rights of share and taxation which Bâla-ji had started. Now, seeing his opponent's weakness, Sâho-cum-Bâji's demands rose, until even Moghul supineness could not submit to his terms.

Nothing daunted, the former advanced on Delhi itself, but while his light cavalry under Holkar were ravaging the country about Agra, they were attacked and driven back by the Governor of Oudh, a man evidently of some spirit, for he had actually left his own province to defend the adjoining one.

The skirmish was magnified into overwhelming victory by the Moghuls, and this so irritated Bâji-cum-Sâho, that he conceived and put into practice what was more an impish piece of mischief than a serious assault.

Leaving the imperial army which had come out solemnly, solidly, to repel him on the right, he led his swarms of active freebooters by a detour to its rear, and then contemptuously disdaining an attack on the pompous martial array, made one almost unbroken march to the very gates of Delhi.

Here was consternation indeed! The Mahrattas at the very steps of the throne, while the court army was seeking them in the wilderness!

His object, however, was mere intimidation; as he phrased it himself: "Just to show the emperor that he could come if he liked."

So, after repelling with heavy loss one sally caused by the Moghul misapprehension of a retrograde movement he made beyond the suburbs (which was due to his desire to prevent damage by his freebooting followers), he retreated as he came, just as the befogged, bewildered Moghul army, duly bedrummed, beflagged, and bedisciplined, was on the eve of arriving at Delhi.

A sheer piece of devilry, no doubt. He had meant to have crossed the Jumna and looted the rich Gangetic plains, but the rainy season was due, and there was more comfortable work to be done in the Dekkan.

Asaf-Jâh, still active though old, followed him so soon as the weather permitted, and he could manage to scrape together sufficient soldiery; but so low had the power of the Moghul fallen by this time, that he had to start with a bare thirty-five thousand men. Then ensued a campaign of some months on the old well-known lines.

The regulars marching with difficulty, the irregulars harassing the line of march. The Moghuls entrenching themselves scientifically, the Mahrattas cutting off supplies, laying waste the country for miles, looting every baggage-train that tried to get in, and finally cutting off all communication with the base. There was nothing for it finally but retreat; a slow retreat of 4 or 5 miles a day, the enemy's light cavalry hanging on the rear, harassing the disheartened army in every possible way. There could be but one end to it--almost unconditioned surrender.

Bâji-cum-Sâho demanded the cession of all Mâlwa, the country between the rivers Nerbudda and the Chumbal, and an indemnity of fifty lacs of rupees, or five millions.

Weighted down with these fateful terms, for which he promised to gain the emperor's sanction, poor Asaf-Jâh continued his way Delhi-wards, Bâji-cum-Sâho marching a few days behind him to take present possession of his conquests. Whether Asaf-Jâh's efforts would have resulted in confirmation of these terms or not cannot be said; for this was in the year of grace 1738, and in the November of that year Nâdir the Persian invaded India.

THE INVASION OF NÂDIR

A.D. 1738 TO A.D. 1742

The old cry once more!

Over the wheat-fields of the Punjâb, just as the seed was bursting into green, that cry--

"The Toorkh! The Toorkh!"

Surely no land on the globe has suffered so much from invasion as Hindustan? The mythical Snake-people first, coming from God knows where.... Then the Aryans, with their flocks and herds, from the Roof of the World.... Next the well-greaved Greeks, leaving their indelible mark on Upper India.... So through Parthian, and Scythian, and Bactrian, to the wild, resistless influx of Mongolian immigrations. Then finally Mahmûd and Mahomed, Tamerlane and Babar ... last of all, Nâdir the Persian.

His was an unprovoked, almost an unpremeditated invasion. It burst upon India like a monsoon storm, swift, lurid, almost terrible in the rapidity with which action follows menace. And like that same storm it came, it passed, and the blue, unclouded sky seemed far away from the desolation and havoc that had been wrought.

In many ways this, the last, was the worst of all the sacks which India had suffered. To begin with, it came so late in time. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century one does not expect a robbing raid on so vast a scale. It seems almost incredible that an army of eighty thousand men should march through a country bent on plunder, and plunder only.

Then its sole object--gold--was such a mean one. No political reason lay at the back of the raid. Nâdir had no ambitions. He did not wish to add to his kingship; it was all wilful, wicked, merciless greed.

Yet Nâdir-Shâh himself was not absolutely a mean man. He was a native of Khorasân, that is to say, an Afghân, born of no particular family, but born a warrior. At the age of seventeen he was taken prisoner by the Usbeks, but after four years of captivity made his escape.

Then he took service with the King of Khorasân, but, believing himself ill-rewarded for a success against the Tartars, gave up his command, and became, frankly, a freebooter.

A few years later, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, he threw in his fortunes with those of a Persian princeling en retraite, and in his name fought a variety of battles, in which he was invariably victorious. They ended in the nominal restoration of Tâhmâsp to the throne of his fathers. But behind Tâhmâsp sate Nâdir, who had become the idol of the Persian people; and small wonder, since he had raised the nation from abject slavery to such military glory as Persia has seldom possessed.

It was necessary, however, to continue soldierly exploits; so Nâdir set to work to settle a dispute with the Turks who had taken Tabrîz. He had recovered it, when trouble in Khorasân called him back, and kept him employed for so long, that when he returned to the capital, Isphahân, it was to find that his puppet Tâhmâsp had, during his absence, become a person of much importance, and was exercising all the royal prerogatives.

This did not suit Nâdir, so, on the excuse of lack of statesmanship in concluding a treaty with the Turks, he deliberately deposed Tâhmâsp, and set his infant son in his stead.

This was practically the beginning of Nâdir's reign, but he refrained from assuming the title of King until many victories over the Turks and Russians had strengthened his hold on the Persians.

Then, covered with glory, he assembled all the dignitaries, civil and military, to the number of about one hundred thousand in a sort of mutual admiration conference, when, no doubt by previous arrangement, they offered him the crown, which, after some display of surprise and reluctance, he was pleased to accept.

Now this was all very deep-laid, very diplomatic; but Nâdir's cleverness was at times too clever. In some of his campaigns he had deliberately changed his religion--or rather his denomination--becoming Sunni instead of Shiah, in order to gain over a warlike tribe which was obdurately troublesome; now, hoping to stamp out any sentimental attachment to the dynasty which he had just deposed, and whose claim to kingship rested entirely on its championship of the Shiah tenets, he changed the national denomination, and declared Persia henceforward a Sunni country. It was a mistake; for though the Sunni section was pleased, the Shiahs felt themselves alienated from their new king.

In another way Nâdir showed more sense. It was his greatness as a general which had won him sovereignty, and he recognised that it must be kept by the same means; so he gathered together an army of eighty thousand men and set off to conquer Kandahâr.

L'appetit vient en mangeant. India lay just over the barrier of the Koh-i-Suleiman hills, and the tribes who had hitherto been subsidised by the Moghul Government to keep the peaks and passes, were now sulky over their failure for some years past to squeeze anything out of the bankrupt Government of Delhi.

But even Nâdir required some excuse for bald, brutal invasion. He therefore peremptorily demanded the expulsion of some Afghâns who had fled from punishment to shelter in Indian territory. At all times it would have been difficult to lay hands on a band of wandering Pâthâns amongst the frontier hills, but Delhi was at this time distracted by fear of the Mahrattas, and still all uncertain whether to acknowledge Nâdir-Shâh's claim to kingship.

The hesitation suited the latter; he was over the border, had defeated a feeble resistance at Lahôre, and was within 100 miles of Delhi before he found himself faced by a real army.

There must surely be some malignant attraction about the wide plain of Pâniput! Surely the Angel-of-Death must spread his wings over it at all times, since bitter battle has been fought on it again and again, and its sun-saturated sands have been sodden again and again with the blood of many men.

How many times has the fate of India been decided amongst its semi-barren stretches, where the low dhâk bushes glow like sunset clouds on the horizon? First by the mythical, legendary Pândus and Kurus, backed by the gods, protected by showers of celestial arrows. Next, when Shahâb-ud-din-Mahomed Ghori broke down the Râjput resistance, and Prithvi-râj, the flower of Râjput chivalry, was killed flying for his life amongst the sugarcane brakes. Timur passed it by, but his great descendant Babar strewed the plain with dead in his victorious march to Delhi. Here Hemu met with crushing defeat at Akbar's hands, and now Nâdir was to carry on the tradition of death, until that last great fight in 1761, which ended the Mahratta power, and so paved the way for British supremacy.

How many men's dust is mingled with the soil of Pâniput? All we know is that the life-blood of over a million is said to have been spilt upon it.

Nâdir's battle, however, appears to have been a comparatively bloodless rout of an absolutely incapable enemy. Mahomed-Shâh, the so-called emperor of all the Indies, at any rate gave up the struggle incontinently, sent in his submission, and the two kings journeyed peacefully together to Delhi, which they reached in March 1739. Did the populace come out to greet the sovereigns riding in, brother-like, hand in hand, to take up their residence in the palace built by Shâhjahân? It is a quaint picture this, of cringing submission and reckless ascendency.

To Nâdir's credit be it said that, whatever ultimate object of plunder he may have had, he wished to avoid bloodshed. For this purpose he stationed isolated pickets of chosen troops about the city and suburbs to keep order and protect the people. Unavailingly, for a strange thing happened. Whether owing to some deep-laid, well-known plan for poisoning the intruder which failed unexpectedly, or from some other cause, the report was spread abroad within forty-eight hours that Nâdir-the-Conqueror, Nâdir-the-mainspring-of-Conquest, was dead. The rumours blazed like wildfire through the bazaars. In quick impulse the mob fell on the pickets, and seven hundred Persians were weltering in their blood when Nâdir himself rode through the midnight streets, intent, they say, on peace. But the provocation proved too much for his cold, cruel Persian temper.

Struck by stones and mud hurled at him from the houses, the officer next him killed by a bullet aimed at himself, he gave way to Berserk rage. It was just dawn when the massacre he ordered began; it was nigh sunset when it ended, and night fell over one hundred and fifty thousand corpses. Nor did his revenge stop here. The treasure, which he would no doubt have extorted in any case, was now seized on by force, torture and murder being used to make the miserable inhabitants yield up every penny. Every kind of cruelty was employed in this extortion; numbers died from ill-usage, and many others destroyed themselves from fear of a disgraceful death. As an eye-witness writes: "Sleep and rest forsook the city. In every chamber and house was heard the cry of affliction."

The Afghân has always possessed a perfect genius for pillage, and after a short two months Nâdir-Shâh left Delhi, carrying away with him an almost incredible quantity of plunder, which it is very generally estimated at being worth £30,000,000; an enormous sum, but it must be remembered that the famous peacock throne in itself was counted by Tavernier as equal to £6,000,000 sterling.

But Nâdir left Delhi something which, possibly, it might have done better without; for ere leaving, he solemnly reinstated the puppet-king, and swore fearful oaths as to the revenge he would take on the nobles when he returned in a year or two should they fail in allegiance. But he never did return; he really never meant to return. He was a robber pur et simple, and he had got all that he had any hopes of getting.

So he disappeared northwards again, to die a violent death ere long. For despite his success, something of remorse had come to him, uninvited, with the spoils of ravaged Delhi. He became cruel, capricious, tyrannical; finally, he grew half-mad, until one night the nobles, whose arrest he had decreed, the captain of his own body-guard, the very chief of his own clan, entered his tent at midnight. Then from the darkness came the challenge in the deep voice which had so often led them to victory.

"Who goes there?"

For an instant they drew back, uncertain; but only for an instant. They went for him with their sabres as they might have gone at a mad dog, and Nâdir, their hero, their pride, their tyrant, their horror, ended his life.

How had he affected India?

First of all it had for the moment checked Mahratta aggrandisement. The appearance of this unknown, hitherto almost unheard-of foe, who traversed with such ease the country he had hoped to annex, and did the things he had meant to do, seemed to paralyse Bâji-Rao. His first impulse was to aid in a general defence of India. "Our domestic quarrels," he wrote, "are now insignificant; there is but one enemy in Hindustan. The whole power of the Dekkan, Hindu and Mahomedan alike, must assemble for resistance."

And even when Nâdir-Shâh had retreated without further progress southward, Bâji-Rao, free-booter, as all the Mahrattas were at heart, must have felt himself frustrated. What use was there in reaching a city desolate utterly, still infected by the stench of unburied bodies; a city whose treasury doors stood wide open, empty, deserted; a city, briefly, which an Afghân had pillaged? So he and his Sâho retired southwards.

As for the effects which Nâdir's sudden swoop on the interior of the plum-cake had on the nibbling mice upon its circumference, there is little to be said. It must have been a surprise to the civilised communities which were so rapidly coming into existence at such centres as Calcutta, Madras, Bombay; centres in which life went elegantly, and people began to talk of the latest news by mail from England. Still, the mere brute-force of the invasion cannot have shocked them much, for Europe itself was a prey at this time to wars and rumours of wars. The 1715 rebellion was over in England; the 1745 had not yet begun. In France affairs were working up towards the Revolution. Spain and Germany were alike, either at the beginning or the end of disastrous struggles.

Yet the mere fact which must have filtered through to the seacoast--that thirty millions worth of solid plunder had just been filched away from the treasury of India by foreigners--cannot have been pleasing news. The East India Company, however, seems to have made no great efforts at aggrandisement during the years between the special granting to it of lands by Farokhshir and 1746, when it formally entered into grips with the French East Indian Company, which about this time began that dispute for supremacy in India which virtually ended with the taking of Trichinoply in 1761.

In truth we have very little information indeed regarding the doings of John Company during this period. All we know is that British imports into India fell from £617,000 in 1724 to £157,000 in 1741, which, taken with a corresponding decrease in dividends, would seem to show some depression, some check to trade.

One thing is certain. The Constitution of the Company was not satisfactory. An attempt had been made to avoid a monopoly of large shareholders by ruling that, no matter what the share held might be, it should only, whether £500 or £50,000, carry one vote for the election of the Court of Directors. But this ruling could be, and was, easily evaded. All that had to be done was to split the £50,000 into a hundred £500 shares, registered in the names of confidential agents, who--in consideration of an honorarium, no doubt--voted according to direction. It was not very straightforward, of course; on the other hand, the original ruling was silly in the extreme, since it prevented those who had a real interest in the Company from exercising their due share of influence.

Unfortunately, this faggot-voting brought with it a corrupt atmosphere. Appointments under the Company were a common bribe, and as the Court of Directors had to be reappointed every year, there was endless opportunity for jobbery.

So, after a time, opposition to the monopoly of the trade began once more to take form. Proposals for yet a new company were floated. Parliament once more took up the matter; which was finally settled by the existing company offering £200,000 to Government, and a reduction of 1 per cent. on the rate of interest payable on the previous loan of some three-and-a-half millions (that is to say, a yearly income of £35,000), as payment for the extension of their monopoly till 1766. This offer was accepted, and in 1744 the term of monopoly was still further extended until 1780, in consideration of a further loan to Government of £1,000,000 sterling at the low rate of 3 per cent. Coming as it did in the middle of a very expensive war, the temptation of this pecuniary assistance must have been potent; but there can be but little doubt that, publicly at any rate, the trade of India suffered considerably from the exclusion of private enterprise.

Certain it is that while the English East India Company found themselves forced to reduce their dividends to 7 per cent, the Dutch Company was dividing 25.

Altogether, then, it is not surprising that, until the French, by assuming the aggressive, forced the East India Company to bestir itself, it did nothing of importance in the way of progress.

THE GAME OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH

A.D. 1742 TO A.D. 1748

The eye of France had been on India for a century and a half, for it was in 1601 that a fleet of French merchant ships set out from St Malo for Hindustan, but failed of their destination.

The first French East India Company was formed in 1604, the second in 1611, a third in 1615; a fourth was founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1642, yet a fifth in 1664, and finally a sixth, made up by the co-ordination of various older ventures, began in 1719 to trade under the name of "Compagnies des Indes."

There was thus no lack of organisation; of action, there had been, up to 1742, comparatively little. They had secured a factory at Surat, they captured Trincomalee from the Dutch, and they had occupied Pondicherry, which they still hold. Aurungzebe had ceded Chandanagore to them, and they had also obtained Mahé and Karikal, which they bought from the Râjah of Tanjore.

This, then, was the position of France in India when, in the year 1742, the office of Governor was bestowed on one Joseph Dupleix. He had spent his life in India, had amassed a huge private fortune by private trade, but at the same time had done his duty by the company of which his father had been a director.

He was thus saturated, as it were, with the methods and manners of the East, and in addition he had the advantage of a clever wife, who, though European by birth, had been born and bred in India.

Incited, it is believed, by her, he evolved a plan by which he hoped to gain supremacy for France. Competition in fair trade with both the English and the Dutch had failed, but he hoped to gain that by diplomacy which had been denied by commerce. The Moghul dynasty was tottering to its fall. On all sides the petty governors of provinces were aspiring to feeble power, and the balance of parties was often so nearly equal, that a very little support thrown into the scale would determine failure or success. Here Dupleix saw his opportunity, and he set deliberately to work, using Madame Dupleix as his go-between, to make friends for France in this welter of conflicting interests. The work was going on secretly and surely, when in 1744 the war of the Austrian Succession broke out in Europe between England and France.

Dupleix was evidently unwilling that this secret work of his should be interrupted by any outbreak of hostilities in the East, and some little time previous to the open declaration of war, both the French and English Companies had taken steps to provide for peace at any price. But a new factor had arisen on the French side in the person of Admiral Labourdonnais, the Governor of the Isle of France and the Isle of Bourbon.

His had been an adventurous life, and he had often been in and out of favour with those who had employed him. His government of the two contiguous islands was a case in point. He had found a plentiful crop of abuses, he had rooted them out, and in consequence of this, when he returned on private affairs to France, was pursued with unscrupulous enmity and bitter detraction.

In endeavouring to right himself he gave to the Ministers of State and the directors of his Company a full exposition of his views on the Eastern question. It commended itself to the authorities, and he found himself setting sail for the Isle of France in April 1741, backed by a fleet which, with care and training, should be able to secure to his country supremacy in the Eastern seas.

But disappointment awaited him. Long before the declaration of war which he expected, the French Company, who thought it had been made to bear more than its fair share of the cost of fitting out the fleet, sent for their ships, and Labourdonnais was left at a disadvantage. A British squadron was now cruising about the Bay of Bengal, taking the place which he had hoped to fill, and making many French prizes. But he was not a man of discouragements, and the situation having been saved on the Coromandel Coast by the diplomacy of Dupleix, who induced the Nawâb of Arcot to claim Pondicherry as his territory and so save it from occupation by the English, he managed somehow to scrape together sufficient ships and men to try conclusions.

Fortune played a stroke in his favour by the inopportune death of the English captain, by which the command devolved on one who erred on the side of prudence, and who, after the two squadrons had been engaged at long distances until nightfall off the coast, thought it wiser to cut and run under cover of darkness, in consequence of a leak springing in one of his largest vessels.

Labourdonnais, who had suffered far more, and who, in truth, had been anxiously cogitating his best move during the night, thus found himself, as the grey dawn showed an empty sea, a complete victor, and full of relief and pride set sail for Pondicherry. But here a cool reception awaited him, for Dupleix had no notion of having his aims achieved by any one but himself. So the commander by land and the commander by sea were mutually obstructive, and continued to be so; a course which eventually ruined both, destroyed French hopes in India, and for the present saved those of England from almost certain annihilation.

For the British squadron was nowhere. After a month of shelter in the harbour of Trincomalee, it reappeared, only to disappear once more.

Labourdonnais therefore put back to Pondicherry, and prepared seriously to take Madras; which he did, without the least trouble, in September 1746. It was, in truth, incapable of defence.

The French admiral brought eleven ships, two thousand nine hundred European soldiery, eight hundred natives, and adequate artillery against a small fort manned by two hundred men. For the Black Town and the White Town, together with the contiguous five miles of sea-coast, in which were gathered over two hundred and fifty thousand souls, lay absolutely unprotected, at the mercy of all and sundry.

It is said that the English relied for security on the Nawâb of Arcot, who had promised to claim Madras as he had claimed Pondicherry; but, doubtless, Dupleix had been beforehand with them.

This much it is pleasant to record, that the siege, which lasted no less than seven days, was the most bloodless on record. The death-roll was only one Frenchman and five English.

The terms of capitulation were severe. All goods, stores, merchandise, etc., passed to France; all English were prisoners-of-war. A ransom was suggested, but Labourdonnais, while intimating that he was prepared to receive the proposal reasonably, stipulated for previous surrender. Indeed, throughout the whole affair he appears to have behaved honourably and liberally. Not so Dupleix, who, when the subsequent negotiations had commenced, roughly interfered, denied the power of Labourdonnais to dictate terms, claimed Madras as standing in his territory, and generally brought about a dead-lock, during which three more French ships-of-war, with over one thousand three hundred men on board, arrived at Pondicherry.

With this addition to his fleet Labourdonnais could have swept the seas, and Calcutta and Bombay must have shared the fate of Madras; but--alas, for France!--her sons were quarrelling amongst themselves.

And before they could settle their differences the weather intervened. Truly, Great Britain scores something of tenderness from the breezes that blow, by being "set in the steely seas," in the path of the north and the west and the east and the south winds! They saved her once from the Spanish Armada, and now the monsoon rolled up along the coast of Coromandel, and broke in the Madras roads, foundered a French ship of the line, and drove five others dismasted, disabled, out to sea.

It was a crushing blow, one from which France never recovered, and by which poor Labourdonnais, who had consented to be tied by the leg simply from a sense of honour, a determination to stand by his word at all hazards, met with early and disappointed death; for the French Government, filled up with the able lies of Dupleix, sent him to the Bastille, where he lingered for three years, dying soon after his contemptuous and unsympathetic release of poverty and a broken heart.

Dupleix, however, flourished like the proverbial green bay tree. He repudiated ransoms and restorations alike, and seemed likely to remain in possession, when the Nawâb of Arcot intervened, asserting--and no doubt with truth--that the French governor, in order to prevent aid being sent to the English, had promised to make over Madras to him as a reward for quiescence. The intervention was followed by an undisciplined army of ten thousand men. And here, however much the character of Dupleix may arouse dislike, credit must be given to him for showing indubitably the inherent strength of his claim, that European methods should be the weightiest factor in Eastern politics. He met this horde of ten thousand with a body of four hundred half-disciplined native troops--barely half-disciplined--and he literally wiped his enemy out. Henceforward a new element entered into the Eastern problem, for it was abundantly demonstrated that to conquer India it was not necessary to import a whole army. There was that of valour, that of sheer soldiership, amongst the natives themselves, to make them, when properly led, the finest troops in the world. It is hardly too much to say that India practically changed rulers in 1746, when the Nawâb of Arcot was repulsed from Madras.

Out of this repulse (necessary in order to enable Dupleix--despite the promise without which Labourdonnais had refused to budge--to carry through his treacherous intention of repudiating the negotiations, refusing ransom, and holding Madras for the French) arose much. The Nawâb, disgusted, broke with Dupleix and assisted the English at Fort St David, a smaller factory some miles further down the coast. Here the appearance of the undisciplined troops just as the French, imagining themselves secure of victory, were refreshing themselves in a garden, produced such a scare that the victors were across the river again, and on their way back to Pondicherry before they could be rallied.

Dupleix, greatly enraged at his failure, and knowing to a nicety how to deal with natives, now commenced to make the Nawâb of Arcot's life a burden to him by reason of petty raids, until, wearied out, he once more threw the weight of his support into the French scale.

It cannot have been a clean business; it certainly was not an edifying spectacle to see two civilised European communities vieing with one another in their efforts to secure an Oriental potentate, but this much may be said in English extenuation--the French began it.

The case of the English along the Coast of Coromandel now seemed quite desperate. They had lost their only ally, and though an attack by boat on Cuddalore had been repulsed--once more by the aid of Neptune, who always seems favourable to Britain, and who on this occasion swamped half the enemy in the Coromandel Coast, and sent them dripping, half-drowned, with wet powder and soaked magazines, back to sea--they could not hope to avert the renewed assault on Fort St David, which took place in 1747.

But this game of French and English was a series of surprises, a perfect melodrama of dramatic coincidences; for no sooner were the French once more comfortably ensconced in the old garden than--Hey presto!--sails appeared to sea-ward, and in less than no time--hardly long enough for Monsieur's hurried escape--there was a British fleet at anchor in the roads!

It reads like some tale of adventure in which a "God-out-of-a-machine" always appears in the nick of time to save the hero. But so it was, though it must be confessed that beyond a display of force majeure the British fleet did nothing. In truth a more incapable fleet never floated. It seems to have spent a whole year in sailing about the Bay of Bengal looking for the French fleet, and when it caught a glimpse of the enemy, promptly changing its rôle from hound to hare, and running away itself.

Meanwhile, on land one Major Lawrence--this is the first time that this honoured name appears over the horizon of Indian history--a distinguished King's officer, had come out to take over charge of the Company's forces. At first he certainly distinguished himself, for he began by discovering a deep-laid plot, in which Madame Dupleix was prime mover, to tamper with the fidelity of the few hundred sepoys which the English, following the example of the French, were bringing into discipline. Banishment and death having disposed of this conspiracy, Admiral Griffin and the British fleet were given a chance of more honourable warfare; but, unfortunately, at the time the French vessels showed close in to the coast the admiral and all his officers happened to be ashore enjoying themselves, and so once more honest battle degenerated into the looking for a needle in a bundle of hay; in the midst of which the French vessels achieved their object of landing £200,000 in specie, and four hundred soldiers at Pondicherry.

Major Lawrence, however, almost neutralised this failure by a clever repulse of the French at Cuddalore, which lay but 3 miles north of Fort St David. Hearing that a large force was advancing, he ordered all the guns and stores from Cuddalore to be dismantled and taken in to the former fort. Native spies, naturally, brought the news of this to the enemy, who consequently advanced carelessly, applied their scaling ladders to the walls, and were surprised by perfect platoons of musketry and a shower of grape. The guns removed by day had been restored by night, and the garrison largely reinforced. The result was headlong flight.

Once again it reads like a shilling shocker; one is tempted, almost, to take the whole story as the figment of a super-excited brain.

All this time neither France nor England had--and small wonder--taken this game of French and English on the Coromandel Coast at all seriously; but at long last, in 1748, both the Government and the Company of the latter woke up to the necessity for doing something. The result being such a fleet as no Western nation had hitherto put into Eastern waters. Thirty ships in all, thirteen of them being ships of the line, and none of them less than 500 tons burden.

With these, close on four thousand European troops, three hundred Africans, two thousand half-disciplined sepoys, and the support of the Nawâb of Arcot (who had once more changed sides), Fort St David rightly felt itself strong enough, not only to recover Madras, but also to take Pondicherry.

But here, alas! begins one of the most fateful tales of sheer ineptitude to be found in the whole history of English warfare. Delay, crass ignorance, useless persistence, and exaggerated importance, marked the preliminary siege of Arrian-aupan, a small fort which might with ease have been left alone. For the season was already far advanced, and the object at which it was all-important to strike was, palpably, Pondicherry.

September, however, had well begun ere the attacking force found itself within 1,500 yards of the town, and instantly started, with unheard-of caution, to throw up parallels. Wherefore, save from ignorance, God knows, since in those days 880 yards was the limit for such diggings. On they laboured with praiseworthy persistence until, after a month's work, they reached the point at which they ought to have begun, and found that their toil was useless! Between them and the city lay an impassable morass.

The British fleet, meanwhile, getting as near to their range as strong flanking batteries manned with over a hundred guns would allow, had been pounding away quite uselessly at fair Pondicherry, which lay smiling and peaceful, immaculate as any virgin town behind the white line of surf.

What was now to be done? To begin again was hopeless, to persist useless, so after losing over one-third of its European force from sickness, and expending Heaven only knows how many rounds of ammunition, England retired, having inflicted on France the loss by the fire of her ships of one old Mahomedan woman, who was killed by a spent shot in the street, and by sickness and other casualties some two hundred soldiers.

No wonder Dupleix sang "Te Deums" until he was hoarse! No wonder he wrote bombastic, boastful, letters round to every Nawâb and Râjah, including the Great Moghul, proclaiming that the French were the fighters, and that those who were wise would side with them.

There can be no doubt whatever that this pantomimic siege of Pondicherry lost the English prestige, which it took many years of subsequent victories to regain.

For by the irony of fate, no immediate opportunity of revenge for reparation of their honour was given them.

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle terminated the long war between France and England, and one of the provisions of that treaty was the restoration to each power of all possessions taken during the hostilities.

Madras, therefore, was formally receded to England, and the combatants on the Coromandel Coast were left eyeing one another, looking for some new cause of conflict.

But the game of French and English was over.