The history of General Sir Charles Napier's administration of Scinde, and campaign in the Cutchee Hills

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Preface

then have been presented with such naked honesty : nor could he be in any way so successfully defended from slanderers as by letting the reader hear him think aloud. Many of his opinions, thus recorded, will however be misunderstood, if taken otherwise than as applications to the peculiar customs and prejudices of the people he was dealing with. He might, for example, be supposed to advocate military in preference to civil government, if his reasoning on that head was not entirely dependent on the exigencies of a recent conquest over a violent, warlike race, which was to be at once controlled and civilized. In like manner his objection to the employment of civil servants, if not read with reference to the particular state of affairs at the time, and especial reference to his conviction, that the system of civil administration established in India was essentially vicious as well as inapplicable to the condition of Scinde, would seem to imply an indiscriminate contempt for all civil servants and all civil government. But this would be entirely opposed to his real sentiments, and to his practice ; for all his efforts were directed so to use his military power as in the shortest time to render the Scindian population fitted to receive and willing to uphold civil institutions, of which he laid the foundations. How he performed that difficult task this work will show ; and also the many obstacles opposed to his success ; for he was not a man working with and sustained by power — the flame of his genius burst upwards through the official ashes heaped to keep it down. Military

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despotism had no part in his scheme of government beyond the first necessity : and it may be here stated as a fact honourable to both, that his successor, Mr. Pringle, a Company's civil servant, zealous and of a just disposition, after two years' experience voluntarily proffered an acknowledgment of the great capacity for civil government evinced in Sir C. Napier's Scindian institutions.

NOTICE.

The author having reserved to himself the right of giving permission to translate this work into German, has done so, and it will be immediately published in Germany under that authorization.

SIR CHARLES NAPIER'S ADMINISTRATION OF SCINDE.

Chapter I

When Shere Mohamed, called the Lion, was defeated CHAP. i. near Hyderabad, his vanquisher publicly declared that another shot would not be fired. This was ridiculed as a vain boast, but it proved a sound prediction, and well founded on the following considerations.

A country peopled by distinct races, having different religions and opposing interests, could not furnish either the passions or the material means for a protracted contest under misfortune. The Scindian proper, the cultivator of the soil, was but an oppressed bondsman, an unarmed slave, and the destruction of the ameers was his deliverance. The Hindoos, numerous, timid, and of a faith condemned by Beloochee and Scindian alike, were an isolated plundered people and sure to accept peace with protection. The Beloochees only had an interest to prolong the war ; for having been habitually oppressors they desired to maintain their profitable ascendant position. But they had lost two great battles, their treasury had been taken, six of their princes were captives, and their political and military organization was so shattered they could not take the field again for regular warfare, while the diversity of religion and interests was a sure bar to any general insur-

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CHAP. I. gent resistance. Moreover, the Belooch polity was feudal, 1843* an( ^ ^ s na tural tendency to disunion was augmented in Scinde, because the sirdars and chiefs owed service to many heads, — each ameer being sovereign — and though their princes lived in families and even in the same fortresses, it was in hatred, agreeing in nothing save to oppress their subjects and turn the land they misgoverned into a wilderness for hunting.

Mohamed, the Lion of Meerpoore, was the hardiest of the Talpoorees, but he had been signally defeated at Hyderabad. At Meeanee he had not fought at all, and his failing to do so, though caused partly by the rapidity of the English leader, resulted chiefly from a miscalculation of chances and advantages ; for, Sobdar excepted, the ameers had been to him always inimical, and he, thinking like all of his race the British could not stand before the fierce swordsmen gathered on that fatal field, moved slowly. Victory he knew would render the other Talpoor princes more insolently encroaching towards himself, and he reserved his contingent force of twelve thousand warriors entire, to influence the after-arrangements. While on the march he heard with astonishment that the battle was lost and the Talpoor dynasty overthrown; whereupon, falling back to Meerpoore, he offered peace, yet insincerely and only to gain time for collecting all his own feudatories and rallying the fugitives from Meeanee. But though a temporary union of the tribes had taken place before that battle, old feuds were not forgotten, and only the Lhugarees and Nizamarees, under the leading of Ahmed Khan, the chief who assailed the residency, joined him in mass; the others held aloof, or came with broken numbers, for they had little love towards him, and six thousand of their bravest were stretched in death on the gory banks of the Fullaillee.

Great was the Lion's intrepidity to lift his standard amidst all this carnage and terror, defying the conqueror in the very heat and flush of victory, when by merely remaining quiet he might have retained in safety his dominions and dignity ; and had this gallant effort been made from national feeling, the English leader would have felt it a painful duty

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to strike the valiant prince. But the deliverance of an CHAP. I. oppressed people, and the safety of the whole Christian community in India, then seriously menaced by the recent Mahometan success at Cabool, were in one and the same scale with the interests of his country and the honour of his army, while in the other were only gallantry and tyranny — wherefore he smote the last ameer as he had smitten the first, renewing the terrors of Meeanee and rendering them indelible.

Shere Mohamed, thus stricken, could not become the leader of a protracted warfare, and indeed many chiefs and sirdars had abandoned his cause between the two battles, proffering their salaam, or fealty, to the English leader, who treated them so as to excite hope for the future and stifle any lurking attachment to the fallen dynasty ; no difficult matter ; for though it came within the Talpoor sirdars' notions of honour to uphold the family sovereignty while any of the princes struggled in the field, there was no attachment of that kind between the ameers and their feudatory chiefs. As princes they had warred for the Talpooree dynasty, not for the interests of the Belooch race; and the latter had assembled in arms neither from personal attachment nor from national feeling, for being recent and isolated conquerors they had dominion without a country. They were moved to fight by religious hatred and a desire to maintain their power of plundering and oppressing, their pride and cupidity being excited by the Affghan successes. " We are braver and more numerous than the warriors under Ackbar at Cabool 33 was their cry, u the Feringhees at Sukkur and Kurrachee are not so many as those he killed : no, not by half ! why then should we not destroy them also?"

Now the battles of Meeanee and Hyderabad dissipated all this swelling fierceness, and Sir C. Napier, judging that having found him too strong in battle they would, if beneficence followed victory, prefer his rule to that of the ameers, resolved to treat them with a munificent liberality. Those who submitted, soon discovered that their

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CHAP. I. bravery in fight was a recommendation ; and they felt his 1843 generosity was innate, not assumed, when they saw the captive ameers, from whom nothing was to be gained, treated with a respectful and forbearing humanity even while their conduct was dangerous and offensive. Moreover, the great sirdars and chieftains, those who were still in arms and those who had submitted, were for the most part at feud with the Lord of Meerpoore, and in a manner absolved from fealty towards the other ameers by reason of their captivity ; wherefore it was reasonable to suppose they would, if their own possessions and dignities were assured, make their salaams in good faith.

These considerations led the English leader to look on the Lion as an isolated chief whose bravest followers had fallen in battle, leaving him without material resources for regular warfare, and without influence beyond his own feudatories — as one also, who, notwithstanding the greatness of his mind, despaired of success from irregular warfare, because his flight had been to the desert when all his insurrectional resources were in the Delta. For there was his richest territory, there his most numerous feudatories ; and the country itself was so intersected with canals, so dotted with forts, so overspread with unhealthy marshes, that difficulties almost insuperable at that time would have opposed the progress of the British, more especially during the inundation which was close at hand. To fly from such a lair was to say hope was lost, and formed one of the many reasons which prompted the confident assertion that the conquest of Scinde was effected by the battle of Hyderabad so far as arms were concerned. It was the prediction of a sagacious mind, not an idle boast, and when the government of the country was conferred on him, Sir C. Napier evinced the sincerity of his conviction by proceeding at once to establish a polity which made no distinction between the vanquished Beloochees and the delivered races of Scindees and Hindoos.

Having fixed notions of government, he rejected the vulgar opinion that Indian statesmen were to be guided

ADMINISTRATION" OT SCIXDE.

by something occult and peculiar, not by great principles CHAP. I. based on the common nature of man. Condemning the j^J" system of the East Indian Company, he applied to that body the poet's character of Lord Bacon, at once the meanest greatest of mankind, and thus analyzed its policy.

"To the genius of some goyemors-general and some military commanders, and to the constant bravery of the troops, belongs all the greatness j to the Courts of Direction, designated by Lord TTellesley as the ( ignominious tyrants of the East/ all the meanness. Xot that directors have been personally less honourable than other gentlemen, but that they are always in a false position, as merchants ruling a vast and distant empire solely for then private advantage. Xo man ever seeks to be a director from mere patriotism or thirst for military glory unaccompanied by pecuniary profit ; and hence, when the Court does send out a governor-general of great mind, which is not often nor willingly done, it treats him as if he were unworthy to possess power at all. This is natural. Their objects are not alike. His will be the welfare, the aggrandizement, the unity of a hundred and twenty m illi ons of people committed to his charge: theirs the obtaining all possible profit from the labour of those people. If the safety of their empire demands a war the directors object ; not as it inflicts miseiy, but having personally a brief tenure of power they dread loss of profit. This feeling has always led them to quarrel with then best governors-general. The merchant, unable to distinguish between wars for self-preservation and conquest, objects to both as lessening immediate gain j and it must be admitted that the former has in India always involved the latter/'

{e The mercantile spirit weakens if it does not altogether exclude noble sentiments, and the directors have always regarded their armies with a sinister look. The bravery and devotion of their troops, not their own commercial skill and enterprise, have expanded then original small settlement on the Hooghly to a mighty empire ; and yet on every accession of territory the soldier has been treated as unfit to govern what his sword had won ; on each new acquisition a civil establishment has been fastened, incongruent with the military barbarism of the people to be governed bnt fulfilling the conditions of patronage and profit which make the Direction an object of desire. For those civil servants have much higher salaries and allowances than the military servants have, and the proprietors' dividends are thus lowered as the directors' patronage becomes augmented, the true nature of the transaction being covered by loud protestations against all wars/'

" In this manner a vicious circle of policy is completed, and a solution furnished of that seeming paradox, that while the instructions issued by the directors for the government of the East have always been moderate and opposed to aggrandizement by war, their empire has been continually augmented by arms and little or nothing has been effected for the welfare of the people. The truth being, that men momentarily possessed of power at home object to war lest it should diminish immediate profits; but when the soldier has won new dominions the successors of those ephemeral sovereigns hastily gather the private advantages. They denounce war notwithstanding, because it is easy and graceful to be philanthropic in words ; and the topic furnishes convenient arguments for supplanting the military by civil establishments to the advancement of their own private family interests."

"All this is detrimental to the Company's general interests ; for those civil servants are, with splendid exceptions, ignorant of great principles, devoid of business habits, and therefore wasteful of the new resources. The more experienced men naturally abide by their old high and lucrative offices, with the details of which they are familiar, and decline new duties in perhaps insalubrious localities and amongst a people with whose language and customs they are unacquainted. Wherefore nepotism works freely, and young, and often very incapable men, are sent to acquire experience and fortunes at the expense of the proprietors' dividends, by misgoverning newly conquered territories. Unknowing how to rule even a settled country, they have to create every branch of administra-

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tion, and must necessarily manipulate roughly, and as it CHAP. I. were with horny hands when the nicest touch is essential Jjj^j" — meddling arbitrarily and ignorantly with social and financial affairs where error may give mortal offence, where parsimony may be folly and extravagance madness."

This picture of the civil service in India has been confirmed by the Honourable Mr. Shore — one of the body and well acquainted with his subject — an honest benevolent man, whose exposition, published in 1837, has never been controverted ; although he has effaced the directors' pretensions to moderation and justice, by showing that their public instructions, so lauded for their ethics, have invariably been neutralized by an appended provision, that nothing was to be of force which tended to lower dividends. Sir C. Napier, because he accepted Mr. Shore's exposition as coinciding with his own observation, has been called an enemy to all civil servants, and has from many of them suffered wrong; but he only condemned a system under which the best must misgovern, as founded on false principles. Personally he judges the civil service to be like all other bodies, furnishing good and bad, clever and foolish persons ; and he has always been glad to act with those of sound heads and honourable views, though he refused to bend his experience of mankind to newspaper dictation, and the narrow conceit of men who assume that long residence in the East confers an otherwise unattainable capacity for Indian government.

Spurning such arrogance, he remarked— " that length of residence and sensual indulgence weakened body and mind, and give only aptness for official details without enlargement of ideas ; and most of those persons, generalized as ' Old Indians,' because they have worn out originally vigorous appetites and feeble minds while enjoying large salaries and the adulation of black clerks, who do all their duties, imagine they only know the East. Despising and avoiding the society of the natives, they yet pretend to know the characters of those natives, and call themselves the Statesmen of India! There are however amongst those vegetations of a rank soil, men who do study

CHAP. I. the people, who know their customs and their history, lg43 applying minds of a high order and powerful energies to their work ; and pre-eminent in that class are the uncovenanted servants whose enterprise has brought them in mature life to India — men who cannot live in luxurious ease, and therefore the most valuable of the Company's dependants."

That the people of India had feelings in common with the rest of the human race the new governor thought no fallacy, and he imagined two years might suffice to fill any head with all the knowledge of peculiar customs necessary for modifying general principles which nature designed it to contain. With those notions he classed and epitomized the character and interests of the people under his government in the following manner.

" The money-seeking Hindoo goes about all eyes, and with fingers supple as his conscience, robbing everybody by subtlety as the Beloochee robs them by force. To him the conquest must be as a feast and a blessing of grace."

"The Scindee, strong and handsome, is indolent from the combined effect of heat and slavery ; but he has fine natural qualities, and his bondage being of recent date he may be reclaimed and fitted for independence — to him also the conquest is a blessing, and it shall be my business to make it a feast."

" The Beloochee, though fierce and habituated to acquire property by violence, is shrewd, and has a strong though savage sense of dignity and honour according to the customs of his race. A combination of coercion, of respectful treatment, of generosity and temptation, may therefore bend him to better habits, without breaking the chivalric spirit which is now his best quality. He fought desperately for the ameers, because to fight and plunder was his vocation ; but neither he nor his particular chief, nor the ameers, fought from national feeling ; education and habit have divested all three of patriotism in the European sense. The Beloochee warrior loves his race, his tribe, not the general community, which he regards but as a prey and spoil. The chief's allegiance to the sovereign

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being feudal is slight, and the more easily snapped, because CHAP. I. the ameers, personally odious, are captives ; a consider- 1843< ation of weight in all countries, but especially so in the East, where the fealty is to the throne not the person."

1 f Strongest of the influences which brought the warriors to battle was their natural fierceness, excited by unbounded confidence of success and the hope of plundering an army more affluent than that which had been despoiled the year before in Afghanistan. But there was also latent fear. For conscious of their own ferocious design to massacre every European in Scinde, they thought the English had discovered the project — as indeed they had — and meaned to revenge it in kind. They had seen them in peace, under the mask of treaties, seize Sukkur, Bukkur and Kurrachee, and naturally concluded they would go further in war, and either slay all the Beloochees or reduce them to the grovelling condition they had themselves reduced the Scindees. With men of this temper a change of dynasty will be little regarded if their own dignities and possessions are respected ; and as it is a desire to obtain property, and not any abstract love of glory which impels them to war, their contempt for industry may be abated by the attraction of honest gains — when debarred of profit by violence they will seek it in commerce and agriculture, if openings are famished to them."

' ' To meet the requirements of these different races in the present circumstances my policy must be, while fastening on the country a strong military gripe, to apply all' softening and healing measures to the vanquished race, all protective and encouraging measures to the liberated populations — to make strong even-handed justice be universally felt — to draw forth the abundant natural resources of the country, and repair the terrible evils of the ameers' misgovernment. The trading Hindoo will then attach himself to a system which protects his calling and opens a wider scope for its exercise. He will for his own sake give timely intelligence of designs to restore the oppressive yoke of the Beloochees, and the rich Banians have a wonderful knowledge of all that is passing."

CHAP. I. " The Scindian cultivator will not be less earnest to 1843 support a government which raises him to independence, and encourages his labour on a grateful soil ; and he is not deficient in strength of body or spirit to defend himself against attempts to renew his bondage. He may also be stirred if necessary against Belooch ascendancy through the Kallora prince, who is alive and not without influence over the former subjects of his family. Residing in the Punjaub, he has claimed of me the restoration of his dominions, offering half the revenues and magnificent presents ; but affairs not being in a state to require his interference, my reply was, ' When you can give back the lives of my soldiers who fell in battle to dethrone the ameers, can repay the expenses of the war and furnish a tribute, we will negotiate/"

With these views, Sir Charles Napier, who had all his life studied the great principles of government, and in Cephalonia tested his theoretic convictions by successful practice, soon framed a political edifice of which justice and diligence were the beams and jointings. Nor did he lose time in nice consideration of the ultimate appearance of his work ; for he thought delay in satisfying the minds of the Scindian and Belooch races as to their condition under the conquest, might produce a partisan warfare more costly and dangerous than any momentary defect in his plan of government. Hence, while his cannon still resounded on the banks of the Indus, he had made known that all persons, whether of high or low degree, were confirmed for the time, and would be so permanently, according to their behaviour, in the employments they held under the ameers ; and that all rights and possessions would be safe from confiscation, save those of the people who contrary to the faith of nations had assailed the residency. Then as governor he made his proclamation of conquest, short and decisive. "The Talpoors have been overthrown by the British and are dethroned — Scinde belongs to them no longer. All revenues paid to the ameers are now to be paid to the English. Hitherto armed men have been treated as soldiers fighting by the orders of their masters.

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From this time forward armed men assembled shall be CHAP. I. treated as robbers and outlaws. Slavery is abolished 1843 throughout the land, and all people are invited to return and live peaceably at their homes.-" And this well-judged general system of conciliation was supported by a very subtle and sagacious stroke of policy ; for finding the numerous tenants and debtors of the ameers were influential persons, he released them from their liabilities, observing, that " between a ruler with a sponge and one with an iron sceptre there would be no hesitation, and the cause of their creditors would be permanently abandoned."

Lord Ellenborough, judging that a government springing from conquest and to be administered by the conqueror should for a time at least be sustained by the sword, made that of Scinde military and despotic ; and the new governor immediately announced "that the conquest of a country was sufficient convulsion for any people to endure, without adding thereto abrupt innovations on their social habits ; wherefore no avoidable change was to be made in the laws and customs. The executive officers were only to correct those evils which the tyrannical Belooch conquerors had inflicted, thus teaching the people that the coming of the British was a redemption from slavery and not a mere change of masters."

This was a wise measure that could not have been effected by a civil government, which must have had its own disturbing organization with great expenses, and would thus have planted the seeds of discontent, to grow into insurrection, as happened afterwards in the Punjaub ; but a despotic military government was no disturbing event, being only the substitution of an English for a Belooch master, with the accompaniment of justice and wisdom instead of cruelty and oppression. The dulness of Indian official forms was however disturbed, and severe censures were passed by men, who blinded with going round in a political mill, imagine there is no other road of governing and regard vigour on great occasions as the sign of indiscretion. The abolition of slavery, proclaimed in obedience to Lord Ellenbor ough's orders, was condemned with peculiar vehechap. I. mence. " It would produce discontent — it was unwise — 1843> why vex the people with such spurious philanthropy?"

Such were the cries of men startled from their monotonous self-sufficiency by the rustling wing of genius passing over their official dormitories. Their opinions were not shared by the slave-girls of the harems in Scinde, who all rushed forth to liberty and their homes ; nor during the whole of the subsequent administration was any resistance made, or even a complaint uttered against the edict, though at first infractions happened and were punished.

The new governor was very desirous < to be known to the people as a peaceable ruler, but withheld for some time after the battle of Hyderabad, the full action of his authority,. because the flitting operations of the Lion gave the robber bands in the Delta an excuse for calling themselves his soldiers. Hence the English leader, knowing what force there is in a name, would not apply a corrective until he had put down the ameer himself ; observing that while those bands had a nominal sovereign they would have moral strength, and using his name might raise their predatory hostility to the dignity of insurrectional warfare. Then the Lion, active and hardy, would shift his operations to the Delta where he was most to be feared ; and where, besides the force he could bring with him, he had four thousand feudatories, and could rally twenty thousand fierce Beloochee swordsmen, roving since the battles about Scinde and ready for any mischief.

This also was the time when the factious enemies of Lord Ellenborough at Bombay were most active to make their foul prognostications, of evil, realities, urging the Beloochees to insurrection and the sepoys to mutiny; but the English general's resources and energy went beyond their ken, and as they made their malignant hopes their guides they were signally foiled. The crisis was however dangerous ; for though the Delta could have been surrounded and the Juts and Khosas — two tribes driven by the ameers' tyranny to live as outlaws in the great desert — could have been brought against it, a horrible war of extermination would have ensued, and reinforcements must have been

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drawn from India when all Lord Ellenborough's vigour CHAP. I. could scarcely keep down insurrection there. In fine, fifty thousand men would have been required to crush an insurgent warfare in the Delta, and meanwhile the hill tribes on the north-western frontier of Scinde, robbers by vocation, would have poured down on the plains like streams of lava.

It was this danger, lurking in the swamps of the Delta, that had induced Sir C. Napier to brave the deadly sun of Scinde in June, when despite of a heat which the Beloochees vainly imagined no European could support he finally crushed the Lion, and forced him to fly across the Indus to the mountains of Kkelat, which ended the insurrectional danger. But, as the Lion, accompanied by the Lhugaree chief, Ahmed Khan, both having treasure, then endeavoured to stir up the mountain Beloochee tribes and the AfTghans of Candahar to war on Scinde, the Bombay faction clamorously and joyfully pointed to their efforts as certain to produce a partisan warfare which would finally deprive the British government of the recently conquered kingdom.

But when the Lion was driven from Scinde the disorders of the Delta were corrected with martial severity and promptitude. No longer able to call themselves the ameeiV soldiers, they were hunted down as robbers by those very villagers who would have joined them in arms under the Lion's orders — so imposing is established government even under the most revolting forms. The prisoners were punished more or less severely at the places they had plundered ; and those who had perpetrated murders were hanged with labels on their breasts, bearing legends in three languages, to the effect that they were put to death, not for opposing the British but for killing villagers. Amongst those executed was the murderer of Captain Ennis, and it was the general's intention to hang the Ameer Shadad, having full proof that he was the instigator of that barbarous action ; but Lord Ellenborough forbade the punishment, and that high-born ruffian and loathsome sensualist became the cherished favourite of the Bombay

CHAP. I. faction for having cruelly murdered a sick and defenceless 1843 British officer.

While thus displaying his power and sternness against criminals. Sir C. Napier restored to the chieftains and sirdars who made salaam their rich swords, as he had before restored those of the ameers. They belonged to him of right, and their aggregate value was great, seeing that four hundred chiefs had submitted and many others were ready to do so ; but between gain and greatness it was never in his nature to waver : the fiercest chief however trembled when his weapon was restored with this stern, though flattering admonition. " Take back your sword. You have used it ivith honour against me, and I esteem a brave enemy. But if forgetful of this voluntary submission you draw it again in opposition to my government, I will tear it from you and kill you as a dog."