march to the palace of Ramnagur, opposite to Benares, whither Cheyte Sing had betaken himself, and secure him. Natives as these men were, and many of them subjects of Cheyte Sing, they duly obeyed orders; and Hastings then dispatched a message to his wife at Monghir, assuring her that he was safe. He wrote to other quarters, ordered troops to march to his aid, and, as if to show his perfect coolness, addressed a dispatch to the officer who was negotiating with the Mahrattas, giving him some instructions. The means by which he sent his messages through the furious crowd which besieged his house, were ingenious. The hircarrahs, or couriers of India, when they travel, lay aside their enormous ear-rings, and put a quill or bit of paper, rolled like a quill, into the orifice, to prevent it growing up. These rolls, on (his occasion, were the besieged governor's dispatches. Some of them were detected, but more passed safely.
But the situation of Hastings was at every turn becoming more critical. The sepoys, sent to seize Cheyte Sing in the palace of Ramnagur, were repulsed, and many of them, with their commander, killed. The multitude were now more excited than ever, and that night would probably have seen the last of Warren Hastings, but he contrived to make his escape from Benares, and to reach the strong fortress of Chunar, situated on a rock several hundred feet above the Ganges, and about seventeen miles below Benares. Cheyte Sing, for a moment, encouraged by the flight of Hastings, put himself at the head of the enraged people, and, appealing to the neighbouring princes on his treatment, declared he would drive the English out of the country. But troops and money were speedily sent to Hastings from Lucknow, others marched to Chunar from their cantonments, and he found himself safe amid a sufficient force commanded by the brave major Popham, the conqueror of Gwalior, to defy the thirty thousand undisciplined followers of Cheyte Sing. From the 29th of August to the 20th of September, there were different engagements betwixt the English and the forces of Cheyte Sing; but on every occasion, though the Indians fought bravely, they were worsted, and on the last-named day, utterly routed at Pateeta. Cheyte Sing and his family fled to the fortress of Bidjegur, about fifty miles from Benares. Thither Hastings sent Popham to besiege him, having in his letters intimated to that officer that the treasures of the rajah would serve to pay the troops, who had long been in arrears of their pay.
Cheyte Sing did not wait for the arrival of the English troops: he fled into Bundelcnud, and never returned again to Benares. He was supposed to have carried the greater part of his wealth with him in jewels, but in the fortress he left his wife—a woman of amiable character—his mother, all the other women of his family, and the survivors of the family of his father, Bulwant Sing. The ladies capitulated on condition of safety to the men, and safety and freedom from search for the women. Three hundred women, besides children, then came out of the castle; but no sooner were they without the gates, than the capitulation was violated. The ladies were plundered of everything valuable, and their persons otherwise rudely and disgracefully treated by the solders and followers of the camp. Major Popham exerted himself to defend the unhappy women from the insulting outrage, but Hastings had himself sanctioned it in a note, suggesting that, without examination, the women might contrive to carry off the treasure. The sum of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which the ranee, the mother of Cheyte Sing, claimed as her own, was seized, and which she in vain demanded to be restored, as her own private property, guaranteed by the terms of the capitulation. She implored in vain, Popham and the officers divided the whole amongst themselves and the army. Hastings was confounded! He had run all these dangers, and created all these troubles, in the hope of securing this booty, but the army had taken him at his word, and paid themselves with the whole. It is the only consolation in this detestable affair, that he missed the plunder of the rajah, and received the severe censure of the court of directors, and afterwards of parliament, for this monstrous conduct. Hastings afterwards endeavoured to compel Popham and the officers to disgorge the treasure by law, but in vain.
Deeply chagrined, he now returned to Benares at the head of his victorious force, where he soon restored order, and set up another puppet rajah, a nephew of Cheyte Sing, but raised the annual tribute to forty lacs of rupees, or four hundred thousand pounds a-year, and taking the mint and the entire jurisdiction of the province into the hands of his own officers.
Having failed in his attempt to screw sufficient money from Cheyte Sing, and undeterred by the perils he had run, he next determined to experiment on the nabob of Oude. This nabob, Asoff-ul-Dowlah, was an infamously dissipated prince, spending his own money in licentious pleasures, and extorting what he could from the begums, his mother and grandmother. The old ladies lived at the palace of Fyzabad, or the "Beautiful Residence," situated in a charming district, amid hills and streams, about eighty miles from Lucknow. The nabob's father had left them large sums of money and extensive jaghires, so that they kept a handsome court, and yet had the reputation of having accumulated about three million pounds sterling. The nabob had compelled them, by coercive means, to let him have, at different times, about six hundred thousand pounds, and he thirsted exceedingly for more. To defend themselves from his rapacity, the begums appealed earnestly to the English governor-general, who, in conjunction with the council, Francis, Barwell, and Wheler, in 1778, compelled the nabob to enter into a solemn engagement not to violate any further the rights of these ladies, either in their money or their jaghires. The council expressed their lively sense of the disgraceful conduct of the nabob in thus extorting their property from these ladies, and talked much of the honour and reputation of the company being implicated by it.
But there is no doubt that the existence of this wealth being thus brought to the knowledge of Hastings, had determined him, spite of his moral vows to the nabob, to seize it for the purposes of conducting the war in Madras. There was nothing so easy as to frame reasons why he should have this money, notwithstanding his own affected sense of indignation at the idea of the son and grandson getting it by pressure. The nabob had requested the service of a brigade of British troops to secure him against his own people, whose disaffection he had excited by his oppressions. Hastings had
