But if a weak man, by favour, fraud, or collusion, gets possession of a small estate, as he often does, the consequences are more serious than where the strong man gets it. The ousted proprietors fight "to the death" to recover possession; and the new man forms a gang of the most atrocious ruffians he can collect, to defend his possession. He cannot afford to pay them, and permits them to subsist on plunder. In the contest the estate itself and many around it become waste, and the fellow who has usurped it, often—nolens-volens—becomes a systematic leader of banditti; and converts the deserted villages into strongholds and dens of robbers. I shall have occasion to describe many instances of this kind as I proceed in my Diary.
Dursung Sing was strong both in troops and Court favour, and he systematically plundered and kept down the great landholders throughout the districts under his charge, but protected the cultivators, and even the smaller land proprietors, whose estates could not be conveniently added to his own. When the Court found the barons in any district grow refractory, under weak governors, they gave the contract of it to Dursun Sing, as the only officer who could plunder and reduce them to order. During the short time that he held the districts of Gonda and Bahraetch in 1836, he did little mischief. He merely ascertained the character and substance of the great landholders, exacted from the weaker all that they could pay, and "bided his time." When he resumed the charge in 1842, the greater landholders had become strong and substantial; and he was commanded by the Durbar to coerce and make them pay all the arrears of revenue due, or pretended to be due, by them.
Nothing loth, he proceeded to seize and plunder them all, one after the other, and put their estates under the management of his own officers. The young Rajah of Bulrampoor had gone into the Goruckpoor district, to visit his friend, the Rajah of Basee, Mahpaul Sing, when Dursun Sing marched suddenly to his capital at the head of a large force. The garrison of the small stronghold was taken by surprise; and, in the absence of their chief, soon induced to surrender, on a promise of leave to depart with all their property. They passed over into a small island in the river, which flows close by; and as soon as Dursun Sing saw them collected together in that small space, he opened his guns and musketry upon them, and killed between one and two hundred. The rest fled, and he took possession of all their property, amounting to about two hundred thousand rupees. The Rajah was reduced to great distress; but his personal friend, Matabur Sing, the minister of Nepaul, aided him with loans of money; and gave him a garden to reside in, about five hundred yards from the village of Maharaj Gunge, in the Nepaul territory, fifty-four miles from Bulrampoor, where Dursun Sing remained encamped with his large force.
The Rajah had filled this garden with small huts for the accommodation of his family and followers during the season of the rains, and surrounded it with a deep ditch, knowing the unscrupulous and enterprising character of his enemy. In September 1843, Dursun Sing, having had the position and all the road leading to it well reconnoitred, marched one evening, at the head of a compact body of his own followers, and reached the Rajah's position at daybreak the next morning. The garden was taken by a rush; but the Rajah made his escape with the loss of thirty men killed and wounded. Dursun Sing's party took all the property the Rajah and his followers left behind them in their flight, and plundered the small village of Maharaj Gunge; but in their retreat they were sorely pressed by a sturdy landholder of the neighbourhood, who had become attached to his young sporting companion, the Rajah, and whose feeling of patriotism had been grievously outraged by this impudent invasion of his sovereign's territory; and they had five sipahees and one trooper killed. The Bulrampoor Rajah had been plundered in the same treacherous manner in 1839, by the Nazim, Sunkersahae and Ghalib Jung, his deputy or collector. He had invited them to a feast, and they brought an armed force and surrounded and plundered his house and capital. He escaped with his mother into British territory; and tells me, that he was a lad at the time, and had great difficulty in making his mother fly with him, and leave all her wardrobe behind her.
The Court of Nepaul complained of this aggression on their territory, and demanded reparation. The Governor-General Lord Ellenborough called upon the Oude government, in dignified terms, to make prompt and ample atonement to that of Nepaul. "Promptness," said his Lordship, "in repairing an injury, however unintentionally committed is as conducive to the honour of a sovereign, as promptness in demanding reparation where an injury has been sustained." The Nepaul Court required, that Dursun Sing should be seized and sent to Nepaul, to make an apology in person to the sovereign of that state; should be deprived of all his offices, with an assurance, on the part of Oude, that he should never be again employed in any office under that government; and, that the amount of injury sustained by the subjects of Nepaul should be settled by arbitrators sent to the place on the part of both States, and paid by the Oude government. The Governor-General did not insist upon Oude's complying with the first of these requirements; but Dursun Sing was dismissed from all employments, arbitrators were sent to the place, and the Oude government paid the nine hundred and fourteen rupees, which they decided to be due to the subjects of Nepaul.
Dursun Sing at first fled in alarm into the British territory, as the Nepaul government assembled a large force on the border, and appeared to threaten Oude with invasion; while the Governor-General held in readiness a large British force to oppose them; and he knew not what the Oude government, in its alarm, might do to the servant who had wantonly involved it in so serious a scrape. His brother, Bukhtawar Sing, the old courtier, knew that they had enemies, or interested persons at Court, who would take advantage of the occasion to exasperate the King, and persuade him to plunder them of all they had, and confiscate their estates, unless Dursun Sing appeared and pacified the King by his submission, and aided him in a judicious distribution of the ready money at their command; and he prevailed upon him to hasten to Court, and throw himself at his Majesty's feet.
He came, acknowledged that he had been precipitate in his over-zeal for his Majesty's service; but pleaded, in excuse, that the young Rajah of Bulrampore had been guilty of great contumacy, and owed a large balance to the Exchequer, which he had been peremptorily commanded to recover; and declared himself ready to suffer any punishment, and make any reparation or atonement that his master, the King, might deem proper. The British and Nepaul governments had expressed themselves satisfied; but other parties had become deeply interested in the dispute. The King, with many good qualities, was a very parsimonious man, who prided himself upon adding something every month to his reserved treasury; and he thought, that advantage should be taken of the occasion, to get a large sum out of so wealthy a family. Three of his wives, Hoseynee Khanum, Mosahil Khanum, and Sakeena Khanum, had at the time great influence over his Majesty, and they wished to take advantage of the occasion, not only to screw out of the family a large sum for the King and themselves, but to confiscate the estates, and distribute them among their male relations. The minister, Menowur-od Dowlah, the nephew and heir of Hakeem Mehndee, who has been and will be often mentioned in this Diary, thought that, after paying a large sum to gratify his Majesty's ruling passion, and enable him to make handsome presents to the three favourites, Dursun Sing ought to be released and restored to office, for he was the only man then in Oude capable of controlling the refractory and turbulent territorial barons; and if he were crushed altogether for subduing one of them, the rest would all become unmanageable, and pay no revenue whatever to the Exchequer. He, therefore, recommended the King to take from the two brothers the sum of twenty-five lacs of rupees, leave them the estates, and restore Dursun Sing to all his charges, as soon as it could be done without any risk of giving umbrage to the British Government.
The King thought the minister's advice judicious, and consented; but the ladies called him a fool, and told him, that the brothers had more than that sum in stores of seed-grain alone, and ought to be made to pay at least fifty lacs, while the brothers pleaded poverty, and declared that they could only pay nineteen. The minister urged the King, to take even this sum, give two lacs to the three females, and send seventeen to the reserved treasury; and called upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give in his accounts of the actual balance due by the two brothers, on their several contracts, for the last twenty-five years. He, being on good terms with the minister, and anxious to meet his wishes, found a balance of only one lac and thirty-two thousand due by Dursun Sing, and one of only fifteen lacs due by his brother, Bukhtawar Sing, in whose name the contracts had always been taken up to 1842. The King, sorely pressed by the females, resolved to banish Dursun Sing, and confiscate all his large estates; but the British Resident interposed, and urged, that Dursun Sing should be leniently dealt with, since he had made all the reparation and atonement required. The King told him, that Dursun Sing was a notorious and terrible tyrant, and had fearfully oppressed his poor subjects, and robbed them by fraud, violence, and collusion, of lands yielding a rent-roll of many lacs of rupees a-year; and, that unless he were punished severely for all these numerous atrocities, his other servants would follow his example, and his poor subjects be everywhere ruined!
The Resident admitted the truth of all these charges; but urged, in reply, that the Oude government had, in spite of all these atrocities, without any admonition, continued to employ him with unlimited power in the charge of many of its finest districts, for twenty-five or thirty years; and, that it would now be hard to banish him, and confiscate all his fine estates, when his Majesty had so lately offered, not only to leave them all untouched, but to restore him to all his charges, on the payment of a fine of twenty-five lacs. The King was perplexed in his desire to please the Resident, meet the wishes of his three ladies, and add a good round sum to his reserved treasury; and at last closed all discussions by making Dursun Sing pay the one lac and thirty-two thousand rupees, found to be due by him, and sending him into banishment; holding Bukhtawar Sing responsible for the fifteen lacs due by him, and seizing upon his estates, and putting them under the management of Hoseyn Allee, the father of Hoseynee Khanum, the most influential of the three favourites, till the whole should be paid. She satisfied herself that she should be able to make the banishment of the man and the confiscation of the estate perpetual; and, before he set out, she secured the transfer of the strong fort of Shahgunge, with all its artillery and military stores, from Dursun Sing's to the King's troops. Dursun Sing went into banishment on the 17th of March 1844; but before he set out he addressed a remonstrance to the British Resident, stating—"that he had paid all that had been found to be due by him to the Exchequer, and made every atonement required for the offence charged against him; but had, nevertheless, been ordered into banishment—had all his charges taken from him, and his lands, houses, gardens, &c., worth fifty lacs, taken from him, and made over to strangers and Court favourites."
Hoseyn Allee had promised to pay to the Exchequer one lac of rupees a-year for these estates more than Dursun Sing had paid. He had paid annually for the Mehdona estates two lacs and eight thousand two hundred and seventy-six; and for the Asrewa estates, in the same district of Sultanpoor, one lac thirty-one thousand and eighty-nine-total, three lacs and thirty-nine thousand three hundred and sixty-five; and they probably yielded to him an annual rent of nearly double that sum, or at least five lacs of rupees. Hoseyn Allee, however, found it impossible to fulfil his pledges. The landholders and cultivators would not be persuaded that the sovereign of Oude could long dispense with the services of such a man as Dursun Sing, or bring him back without restoring to him his landed possessions; or that he would, when he returned, give them credit for any payments which they might presume to make to any other master during his absence. They, therefore, refused to pay any rent for the past season, and threatened to abandon their lands before the tillage for the next season should commence, if any attempt were made to coerce them. All the great revenue contractors and other governors of districts declared their inability to coerce the territorial barons into paying anything, since they had lost the advantage of the prestige of his great name; and the minister found that he must either resign his office or prevail upon his sovereign to recall him. The King, finding that he must either draw upon his reserved treasury or leave all his establishments unpaid under such a falling off in the revenue, yielded to his minister's earnest recommendation, and in May 1844, consented to recall Dursun Sing from our district of Goruckpoor, in which he had resided during his banishment.