1843

TO CARRY on the British war with Afghanistan it was necessary to pass troops through Scinde. The Ameers remonstrated. Emaun-Ghur, in the Desert Napier's desert march of Beluchistan, was a stronghold where the Ameers could gather a numerous army unobserved by the English. Sir Charles Napier determined to strike for this point with a small force, capable of speedily traversing the desert. On the night of January 5, he commenced his perilous adventure. With 360 Irish soldiers on camels, with 200 of the irregular cavalry, with ten camels laden with provisions, and with eighty carrying water, he set forth.

When the fortress, which no European eye had before seen, was reached, it was found deserted. Immense stores of ammunition had been left behind. Emaun-Ghur reduced Napier mined Emaun-Ghur in twenty-four places, and blew up all the mighty walls of its square tower. After great privations on the march back, Napier and his men rejoined the main army on the 23d near Hyderabad. The Duke of Wellington said that the march to Emaun-Ghur was one of the most arduous military feats of which he knew. On February 12, the Ameers at Hyderabad, who, according to the British Resident himself, had been "cruelly wronged," came to terms. On the day after their apparent submission the British Resident, Major Outram, was attacked by the infuriated Beluchees. With a hundred followers he barely succeeded in fighting his way through to two British war steamers lying in the river. Napier, with his 2,600 men, now moved against the Beluchee army, numbering nearly 10,000. On February 17, the day of the battle of Meanee, Napier wrote in his journal: "It is my first battle as a commander. It may be my last. At sixty it makes little Battle of Meanee difference what my feelings are. It shall be do or die." It proved an all-day fight. Most of the white officers fell. In the end, Napier closed the doubtful struggle by a decisive cavalry charge. The Sepoy horsemen charged through the Beluchee army and stormed the batteries on the ridge of the hill of Meanee.

Napier followed up his victory the next day by a message sent into Hyderabad that he would storm the city unless it surrendered. Six of the Ameers came out and laid their swords at his feet. Another enemy remained—Shere Mahomed of Meerpoor. On March 24, Napier, with 5,000 Hyderabad troops, attacked this chief, who had come with 20,000 Beluchees before the walls of Hyderabad. Napier won another brilliant victory, which was followed up by the British occupation of Meerpoor. The spirit of the Beluchees was so broken that after two slight actions in June, when Shere Mahomed was routed and fled into the desert, the war was at an end. Scinde was annexed to the British Empire.

At home, in the meanwhile, the Chartist agitation, with its "sacred month" strike, was carried over into this year, while the leaders were tried before the Lancashire Assizes. Popular meetings were held at Birmingham, English free-trade agitation Manchester and London. O'Connor, after his suspension of sentence in court, made the mistake of setting himself against the anti-corn law agitation led by Cobden and Bright. To most Englishmen of the day the free-trade issue appeared the most momentous. O'Connor's star paled accordingly. Early in the year a new free-trade hall had been opened in London, the largest room for public meetings in the United Kingdom. A dozen lecturers were kept busy. Cobden alone addressed some thirty great country meetings during the first half of the year. At the same time the Irish agitation for repeal of Irish disaffection the legislative union with England assumed formidable proportions. The Irish secret society of the "Molly Maguires" spread alarmingly. On March 16, Daniel O'Connell addressed 30,000 persons at Trim, urging repeal of the act of united legislation for Ireland and Great Britain. A few months later several hundred thousand people gathered on the hill of Tara to listen to O'Connell arrested his eloquent words. As a result of this agitation, O'Connell, with several of his followers, was arrested, in October, on charges of sedition. Simultaneously with this the so-called "Becca Riots" against turnpikes broke out in Wales. One month after O'Connell's arrest the greatest free-trade meeting of the year was held at Manchester. Both Cobden and Bright made speeches against the corn laws. One hundred thousand pounds were collected on the spot from wealthy manufacturers who attended the Anti-corn law league meeting. This opened the eyes even of the editors of the London "Times." Under the caption "The League is a Great Fact," it announced that a new power had arisen in the State. This reluctant concession of the leading Tory paper of England caused a great sensation. Other events that excited the attention of Englishmen were the erection of the great Nelson column in Trafalgar Square and the opening of the Thames tunnel for pedestrians. Mill's "System of Logic" Thousands of curious Londoners passed through its shaft, measuring 1,300 feet in length. Nasmyth invented his steam hammer. Mill published his "System of Logic." The event of the year in English letters was the death of Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate. During the last few years his brain had softened, and his mind had become enfeebled. Southey was born at Death of Southey Bristol in 1774. He was educated at Westminster School and Baliol College, Oxford. While still at college he brought out two volumes of poems, together with Robert Lovell. His first long narrative poem, "Joan of Arc," was written at the age of nineteen, and gave him, as he called it, "a Baxter's shove into the right place in the world." At the opening of the Nineteenth Century, he published the "wild and wondrous song" of "Thalaba, the Destroyer," founded on Moslem mythology. "Kehema," founded on Hindu lore, followed. In 1803, after some years of wandering, the poet went to live at Greta Hall, near Keswick, which remained his home until his death. Besides a long line of prose works, Southey wrote innumerable short poems. Famous among them is the ballad of the battle of Blenheim, with its homely irony:

"With fire and sword the country round
Ballad of Blenheim Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then
And new-born baby died;
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory."

Southey nourished a passionate hatred against Napoleon Bonaparte. Again and again he invoked the Muse against the world conqueror. Thus he wrote to Landor in 1814: "For five years I have been preaching the policy, the duty, Brilliant occasional pieces the necessity of declaring Bonaparte under the ban of human nature." Under this stress of feeling he wrote his great "Ode During the Negotiations for Peace." It was the most powerful of his occasional pieces. In 1813, he was made Poet Laureate. As such, it fell to him to write another occasional piece on the death of the Princess Charlotte. The grace and beauty of his lines on this occasion have long outlived the memory of that lamented princess. Unlike his great contemporaries, Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, Southey never achieved a great material success. Having married young, he often walked the streets, so he himself confessed, "not having eighteen pence for a dinner, nor bread and cheese at his lodgings." In 1835, when he Southey's works was sixty-one years old, he wrote to Sir Robert Peel while declining the offer of a baronetcy, "Last year for the first time in my life I was provided with a year's expenditure beforehand." Yet his works at this time filled nearly a hundred volumes. In the words of his brother poets:

"Southey's epics crammed the creaking shelves."

It was in his declining age that he wrote the prophetic "Stanzas Written in My Library":

My days among the Dead are passed:
"Stanzas in My Library" Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The almighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day. My hopes are with the Dead, anon
My place with them will be,
And I with them shall travel on
Through all Futurity;
Yet leaving here a name, I trust,
That will not perish in the dust.