GOP
582
of the Tundeeawun or Bangur district met on his border, that he was too weak to enforce the king's orders, or to collect his revenues that he had with him one efficient company of Captain Bunbury's corps, with one gun in good repairs and provided with draft-bullocks, in good condition and that this was the only force he could rely upon while the landholders were strong and so leagued together for mutual defence, that, at the sound of a matchlock, or any other concerted signal, all the men of a dozen large villages would, in an hour, concentrate upon and defeat the largest force the king's officers could assemble that they did so almost every year, and often frequently within the same year that he had nominally eight guns on duty with him, but the carriage of one had already gone to pieces and those of the rest had been so long without repair that they would go to pieces with very little firing that the draft-bullocks had not had any grain for many years, and were hardly able to walk and he was in consequence obliged to hire " plough-bullocks, to draw the gun required to salute the Resident "A large portion of the surface is covered with jungle, useful only to robbers and refractory landholders who abound in the pargana of Bangur. In this respect it is reported one of the worst districts in Oude. Within the last few years the king's troops have been frequently beaten and driven out with loss even when commanded by an European officer. The landholders and armed peasantry of the different villages unite their quotas of auxiliaries, and concentrate upon them on a concerted signal, when they are in pursuit of robbers and rebels. Almost every able-bodied man of every village in Bangur is trained to the use of arms of one kind or another, and none of the king's troops save those who are disciplined and commanded by European officers, will venture to move against a landholder of this district and when the local authorities cannot obtain the aid of such troops, they are obliged to conciliate the most powerful and unscrupulous by reductions in the assessment of the lands or additions to their nankar." "
and
The Nazim me,
told
"
"
To
illustrate the spirit and system of union among the chief landholders Bangur district, I may here mention a few facts within my own knowledge, and of recent date. Bhugwunt Sing, who held the estate of Etwa Peepureea, had been for some time in rebellion against his sovereign; and he had committed many murders and robberies, and lifted many herds of cattle within our bordering district of Shahjehanpoor and he had givea
of the
shelter,
on his own
estate,
to
a good
many
atrocious criminals, from that had, too, aided and screened
and others of our bordering districts. He many gangs of budhuks or dacoits by hereditary profession. The Resident, Colonel Low, in 1841, directed every possible effort to be made for the arrest of this formidable offender, and Captain HoUings, the second
command of the second battalion of gencers to trace him, in
Oude Local
Infantry, sent
intelli-
" They ascertained that he had, with a few followers, taken up a position two hundred yards to the north of the village of Ahroree in a jungle of palas trees and brushwood in the Bangur district, about twenty-eight miles to the south-west of Seetapoor, where that battalion was cantoned, and
,
