SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER.
§ 1. THE PERSIAN EXPEDITION, 1856-7. § 2. THE CHINESE AND JAPANESE EXPEDITIONS, 1856-7-8. § 3. ENGLISH PROSPECTS IN THE EAST.
Not the least among the many extraordinary circumstances connected with the Revolt in India was this—that England, at the very time when the Revolt began, had two Asiatic wars on her hands, one eastward and the other westward of her Indian empire. True, the Shah of Persia had consented to a treaty of peace before that date; true, the Emperor of China had not yet actually received a declaration of war; but it is equally true that British generals and soldiers were still holding conquered positions in the one country, and that hostilities had commenced in the other. We have seen in former chapters, and shall have occasion to refer to the fact again, that Viscount Canning was most earnestly desirous, when the troubles in India began, to obtain the aid of two bodies of British troops—those going to China, and those returning from Persia. It must ever remain an insoluble problem how the Revolt would have fared if there had been no Persian and Chinese expeditions. On the one hand, several additional regiments of the Company’s army, native as well as European, would have been in India, instead of in or near Persia. On the other hand, there would not have been so many disciplined British troops at that time on the way from England to the east. Whether these two opposing circumstances would have neutralised each other, can only be vaguely guessed at.
There are other considerations, however, than that which concerns the presence or absence of British troops, tending to give these two expeditions a claim to some brief notice in the present work. The Persian war, if the short series of hostilities deserve that name, arose, mainly and in the first instance, out of apprehensions for the future safety of British India on the northwest. The Chinese war arose, mainly and in the first instance, out of that opium-traffic which had put so many millions sterling into the coffers of the East India Company. Other events, it is true, had tended to give a different colour and an intricate complication to the respective quarrels; but it can hardly be doubted that the India frontier-question in the one case, and the India opium-question in the other, were the most powerful predisposing causes in bringing about the two wars. Two sections of the present chapter are appropriated to such an outline of these two warlike expeditions as will shew how far they were induced by India, and how far they affected India, before and during the Revolt. Any detailed treatment of the operations would be beyond the scope of the present volume. The expedition to Japan will claim a little notice as a peaceful episode in the Chinese narrative.