4. The conquest of the Punjab was followed by its annexation. The Sikhs were informed that they must henceforth regard themselves as British subjects, and the Land of the Five Rivers as a part of British India. Two famous brothers, Henry and John Lawrence, were appointed to set things in order in this great province and to establish a firm and just government. The Sikh soldiers readily took service under our flag. They were proud to be enlisted in the regiments that had so well beaten them. Forts were built to defend the new frontier, the taxes were lightened and made more even, canals were cut, roads laid out, criminals punished, and honest labour protected; in fact, in a few short years the latest British conquest became the best managed, the most contented, and the most loyal of all the British provinces in India.
5. Three years after the annexation of the Punjab, war broke out at the opposite end of the Indian Empire, in what was then called Further India. It is known as the Second Burmese War (1852). Burma was at that time under the rule of an upstart king, whore throne was at Ava. He seems to have been as ignorant and arrogant as the King of Ava in the First Burmese War (1824), who on being requested by the governor-general of India to withdraw his troops from Assam, which they had invaded, ordered his commander-in-chief to proceed to Calcutta, arrest the governor-general, and bring him to Ava, bound in golden fetters, for execution. As a result of that First Burmese War Assam had been added to the empire. It now forms the great tea-plantation of India.
6. The spoils of the Second Burmese War were still more valuable. The most brilliant feat of arms in that war was the storming of Rangoon. The Burmese troops held the city and pagoda of Rangoon with 18,000 men; the British could only bring one-third that number to the attack. Among the Burmese were the picked guards known as "The Immortals of the Golden Country," whose military oath compelled them to conquer or die at their posts. The courage of the ordinary troops was also insured, as their women and children were fastened up at the back of the fort to incite the valour of their husbands, sons, and brothers. But all to no purpose. The headlong rush of our troops, and the fierce cheer with which they came on, seemed to take the heart out of the defenders, and when the storming party entered at one gate the garrison fled by the opposite one, the brave Immortals in their gilt lacquer accoutrements leading the way.
7. Before the end of the year the whole of Lower Burma was at our disposal. As the people of that province everywhere greeted us as friends, and besought us to deliver them from the tyranny of their king, there was good reason to believe that it could be held by a small number of troops. It was, accordingly, annexed to our Indian Empire. Rangoon has become one of the great ports of the empire. In thirty years its population increased fifteen-fold, and its trade grew in the same proportion. The rest of Burma was annexed as the result of another war some years later.
8. The British India which Lord Dalhousie left to his successor was more than one-third larger than the India of which he had received charge seven years before. The great changes which he had made produced a spirit of unrest among the inhabitants. The native princes naturally felt their thrones insecure; the introduction of railways and telegraphs was to the old-fashioned native a sign that a new era had begun, and that old customs were giving place to new; whilst many began to fear that even their religion was in danger of being supplanted.
9. Lord Canning, the next governor-general, seems to have seen signs of the coming upheaval; for on taking office, he said at the send-off banquet in London, "We must not forget that in the sky of India, serene as it is, a small cloud may arise, at first no bigger than a man's hand, but which growing bigger and bigger may at last threaten to overwhelm us with ruin." He knew that the same instrument that we had used to help us to conquer India might be turned against ourselves. And what made our position the more serious was the fact that the Sepoys in our army—who constituted that instrument—were five times as numerous as our own troops, and that the native gunners outnumbered ours by two to one.
10. On reaching India, Lord Canning heard the first muttering of the storm which threatened to drive the British out of India. There had long been a prophecy among the natives that British rule would come to an end at the close of a hundred years from its commencement. The fateful year (1857) had now come, and with it came the great mutiny of our Sepoy regiments. England, in her hour of danger, has never lacked brave and patriotic sons to defend and maintain her cause, and never has this been more conspicuously the case than in the Sepoy Mutiny.
(India).
1. The Sepoy Mutiny had its centre at Delhi, where lived the old emperor in great state and luxury, but without a vestige of power or authority. The mutineers placed this shadow of an emperor at their head, making him their centre of union, and his sovereignty a cause to fight for. The great powder-magazine within the city was luckily in British hands. Of the garrison in charge of it were two British officers, who, at the sacrifice of their own lives, applied a torch to the powder, and in a moment the building, with hundreds of Sepoy mutineers, was sent flying into the air.