A history of England

by Charles Oman

Hastings began his rule by placing in English hands all the posts in the administration of justice and the collection of the taxes, which had hitherto been in the charge of natives. This led to increased revenue and pure law. But the Bengalis did not at first understand the methods of the new courts, which in some ways worked harshly enough. When Sir Elijah Impey, the first Chief Justice, hung for forgery the great Calcutta banker, Nandukumar (Nuncomar), they could only believe that he suffered because he had offended the Governor-General by intriguing with Francis and the other discontented members of council. Hence came a most unjust accusation against Hastings and Impey, of having committed a judicial murder.

The Rohilla war.

The worst trouble which Hastings experienced was the continual cry for increased dividends with which the directors of the East India Company kept plaguing him. They were not particular as to the way in which money was to be earned, and the Governor-General sometimes tried strange expedients to satisfy them. The worst was the hiring out to Asaf-ud-Dowlah, the Nawab of Oude, of English troops for use in wars with his neighbours. By such aid that prince subdued the Rohillas, an Afghan tribe on his northern frontier. The only excuse that Hastings could plead for this undignified traffic was that the Rohillas were a race of plunderers and a public nuisance to Northern India (1774).

The Mahratta war, 1778.

A little later an attempt to extend the English influence in Western India involved Hastings in a dangerous war. The Bombay government wished to acquire over its neighbours the Mahrattas the same sort of suzerainty which Madras exercised over the Nawab of the Carnatic, and Bengal over the Nawab of Oude. With this object a treaty was concluded with a prince named Raghonath Rao, who claimed to be Peishwa, or head of the Mahratta confederacy, by which he was to be lent troops, and to pay in return a large subsidy to the Company. But the other Mahratta chiefs, headed by Scindiah, the most powerful of their race, refused to acknowledge Raghonath, and attacked the Company. They utterly defeated the Bombay army, and the credit of the British arms was only saved by a daring experiment of Hastings, who made an English army march from Bengal right across Northern India. This force took Gwalior, Scindiah's capital, and overran the province of Gujarat. The Mahrattas made peace, ceding to Hastings the island of Salsette; but the attempt to make them into vassals had distinctly failed, and had to be postponed for twenty years.

Haider Ali.

But the greatest danger which Hastings had to face came from the outbreak of the war with France in 1778. It is true that his troops easily captured Pondicherry and the other French settlements, but they could not prevent their enemies from stirring up against them a very dangerous enemy. This was Haider Ali, a Mohammedan military adventurer who had built up an empire for himself in Southern India. He had usurped the throne of his master, the Rajah of Mysore, and had conquered all his neighbours by the aid of a great mercenary army of fanatical Mussulmans. While Hastings was still engaged in the dangerous Mahratta war, the French easily induced the ruler of Mysore to interfere in the struggle, for he coveted the rich dominions of our vassal, the Nawab of the Carnatic.

Hastings' extortions.

Haider Ali poured his hordes of predatory horse down from the plateau of Mysore into the Carnatic. They swept over the whole country, and burnt the villages at the very gates of Madras. Hastings, already involved in one war, and vexed by a French fleet under De Suffren which was hovering about, felt himself at his wits' end for troops and money to resist the 100,000 men whom Haider had sent against the southern presidency. To raise new resources he harshly fined Cheyte Singh, Rajah of Benares, a vassal prince who was slack in contributing to the war. For failing to give £50,000, the unfaithful rajah was mulcted in the sum of £500,000. When this was unpaid, Cheyte Singh was deposed from his throne. More funds were procured from our ally, the Nawab of Oude, in a not very reputable way. When Hastings asked him for aid, Asaf-ud-Dowlah answered that he was penniless at the moment, because his late father had illegally left the state-treasure to the Begums, his widow and mother. He asked permission from Hastings to extract the hoard from the old ladies, and did so by the cruel imprisonment and torture of their servants. Of course the Governor-General was not responsible for the Nawab's methods. But he profited by them: more than £1,000,000 was torn from the Begums, and served to pay the expenses of the Mysore war.