While Clive was laying the foundation-stones both of the Indian Empire and the Indian Civil Service in Bengal, Madras had had its share of wars and rumours of wars. It will be impossible, however, to treat of them in detail. All that can be done is to pick out of the seething mass of intrigue, of incident, those things which are necessary to be known, in order that future events shall find their proper pigeon-hole.
The Peace of Paris, signed in 1763, gave back to France her possessions on the Coromandel Coast, and further stipulated that the English nominee, Mahomed-Ali, Nawâb of Arcot, should be recognised by both parties as lawful Nawâb of the Carnatic, and Sâlabut-Jung, the French nominee, as Nizâm of the Dekkan.
Regarding the latter, there is grim humour in the fact, that three years before the Peace was signed poor Sâlabut had been ousted and imprisoned by his brother Nizâm-Ali, and that he was promptly murdered by him the moment news of the treaty reached India! It is not always safe to have the support of the ignorant!
But the Treaty of Paris did more mischief than the murder of the poor prince. It put wind into Mahomed-Ali's head, embroiled him with the Nizâm, led to complications with the Madras Company, which in the year 1765 found itself in the unenviable position of having to pay £900,000 to the Nizâm as tribute for the Northern Circars, instead of holding them rent free from the Great Moghul, as arranged for by Lord Clive. It was a gross piece of mismanagement, and carried with it the perfectly monstrous provision that the Company should furnish troops ready to "settle, in everything right and proper, the affairs of His Highness's government." That is to say, the Nizâm had the right to call the tune without paying the piper!
The very first thing he did was to involve England in a war with Hyder-Ali, an adventurer pur et simple who, beginning by being an uncontrolled youth divided between licentious pleasure and life in the woods, free, untamed as any wild creature, forced himself up from one position to another till he held half the territories of the Râjah of Mysore, and had usurped the whole government of that country. Lawless, fierce, without any scruples of any kind, he sided first with one ally then with another, until finally, in 1766, he found himself faced with the fact that Mâhdu Rao the Mahratta, the Nizâm, and the Company, were leagued together for his destruction. The latter had, some time previously, tried to bribe him to proper behaviour, but had failed; for he was, briefly, quite untamable.
Hyder-Ali set to work with his usual fierce energy. He first deliberately bought off the Mahratta mercenaries by parting with certain outlying portions of his stolen territories, and the gift of £350,000 out of his bursting treasures. It was a big bribe, but Hyder-Ali's finances could stand it; for he was a super-excellent robber, with a well-organised army of free-lances for backers.
Meanwhile, the Nizâm's forces and those of the Company under Colonel Smith were approaching Mysore from different sides. It was agreed, however, that the two armies should, when they reached fighting distance, join forces in one camp, so as to show their inviolable unity. But alas! when this happy consummation was reached, the English troops had the mortification of seeing the Nizâm's troops march out as they marched in!
Hyder had been successful with his money-bags once more, and after an absurd and futile farce of palavering on the part of the Company, Colonel Smith prepared to face the enemy's seventy thousand men and one hundred and nine guns with his own meagre seven thousand and sixteen guns. It is astonishing to think how he won his battle and managed to retreat in safety, though he had against his poor thousand of cavalry over forty-two thousand of mounted men, pure freebooters by trade. He seems to have had mettle, this almost unheard-of Colonel Smith, for immediately he received reinforcements he resumed the offensive, and after a time completely defeated Hyder and the Nizâm at Trincomalee. Concerning this battle a nice little story is told. The Nizâm, as is the custom of Eastern potentates, had taken his favourite women with him to the fight mounted on elephants, which stood in line at the rear. The Nizâm, seeing the tide of war going against him, gave orders for the elephants to turn and retire, when from one howdah arose a clear, scornful, feminine voice: "This elephant has not been taught so to turn; he follows the standard of Empire."
And follow it he did, standing alone amid shot and shell, till the royal standards, flying in hot haste, gave him the lead.
But not even this sort of thing could avail. And Hyder's money-bags failed him also in an attempt to suborn an English commandant, who replied to the second flag of truce sent in with a bribe, that if Hyder-Ali wished to spare the lives of his ambassadors, he had better refrain from sending more, as they would be hanged in his sight.
Still, bursting money-bags do much, and ever since the sacking of Bednore, an ancient Hindu city where he had found treasures worth over £12,000,000, Hyder had never been crippled by any lack of gold. Nothing held him. He was here, there, everywhere. Recovering lost territory one day, losing it the next, fighting everybody, even the Mahrattas, like a wild cat, and inwardly raging at his failure to crush the English, who had just entered into a new treaty with his former ally the Nizâm, by which the latter again acknowledged the rights of the Company to the Northern Circars, and further ceded to it, for the annual payment of £700,000, the whole district of Mysore. Thus Madras gained its diwâni as well as Bengal.
There is something almost ludicrous in the ease with which territory changed hands in those days, and we are left with the picture in our mind's eye of a be-jewelled potentate and a be-stocked officer hobnobbing over bags of rupees, silk-paper documents, and large seals.
This treaty was a bitter pill to Hyder, who retaliated in every possible way, until one day, by deft stratagem, he took his enemies in the rear, appeared by forced marches before the very walls of Madras, so, with the pleasure-gardens and houses of the councillors at his mercy, almost compelled a treaty of mutual aid and defence.
A volte face indeed! Small wonder that the Directors at home, who had been complaining ineffectively of the expenses of the war, became bewildered by the sudden change of venue. The general public also, seeing the price of East India stock go down 60 per cent., became uneasy; there is nothing like a drop in Trust-Securities for rousing the national conscience! Dividends were declining, debts were increasing, the glorious hopes of unbounded riches from India had faded; actuaries, nicely balancing debit and credit against the Company, discovered that no less than one and a quarter million of the original stock of four and a quarter of millions had gone, disappeared!
Fateful disclosures these! Public outcry rose loud; voices that had kept discreet silence while profit seemed the certain result of wars, and treaties, and giftings, were now uplifted against rapacity, misconduct, corruption; in the midst of which the alarming discovery was made that the Company required a loan of £1,000,000 from this same public in order to carry on the business. Yet, unless the business was carried on, how could the yearly payments of £400,000 to the royal exchequer, on which the public had insisted, be continued?
Could mismanagement further go?
So three supervisors, vested with full powers, were appointed, and set sail for India in one of His Majesty's frigates. But Fate intervened. They passed the Cape in safety, but were never heard of again.
This was too much. A victim must be found. Therefore Clive was arraigned. That story has already been told, so we can pass on to the mutual recriminations in Parliament, the growing determination on the part of John Bull, honest and dishonest, that something must be done, which found fruit in the first Regulating Act "for the better management of the affairs of the East India Company as well in India as in Europe." By this Act a governor-generalship with a salary of £25,000 was created, together with four councillorships of £8,000. Bombay and Madras were made subordinate to Calcutta, and a Supreme Court of Judicature, appointed by the Crown, was established at the latter place. All the other appointments were to be subject to the confirmation of Parliament, and all the holders of these offices were excluded from commercial pursuits.
The scheme sounded well, but it provided very little aid in reforming the abuses which undoubtedly existed.
It increased the charges upon revenues already overburdened, and the attempt to introduce English ideas of law was calculated to produce more injustice, more oppression, and rouse more alarm and distrust than the previous absence of it had done.
But the dividend for the year 1773 had sunk to 6 per cent.
It was manifestly time to be up and doing--something!