THE EARL OF MAYO

London
HENRY FROWDE

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
AMEN CORNER, E.C.




[All rights reserved]

RULERS OF INDIA

THE EARL OF MAYO

BY SIR WILLIAM WILSON HUNTER, K.C.S.I.: C.I.E.
M.A.: LL.D.

OXFORD

CONTENTS

The orthography of proper names follows the system adopted by the Indian Government for the Imperial Gazetteer of India. That system, while adhering to the popular spelling of very well-known places, such as Punjab, Lucknow, &c., employs in all other cases the vowels with the following uniform sounds:—

a, as in woman: á, as in father: i, as in police: í, as in intrigue: o, as in cold: u, as in bull: ú, as in sure: e, as in grey.

THE EARL OF MAYO

CHAPTER I

The Life of Dalhousie dealt with the last accessions made to the British dominions in India under the East India Company. The present volume exhibits a memorable stage in the process by which those dominions, old and new, were welded together into the India of the Queen.

Between the two periods a time of trial had intervened. Northern India, drained of its European regiments in spite of the protests of Dalhousie, seemed during the agony of 1857 to lie at the mercy of the revolted native troops. The Mutiny left behind it many political lessons, and two historical facts. These facts were that the Sepoys in whom the East India Company gloried as its chief strength had proved its chief danger, and that the ruling princes of India, whom the Company always regarded as a main source of danger, had proved a source of strength.

I say the ruling princes of India. For besides the reigning families there were certain ex-ruling Houses who furnished leaders and rallying-names to the revolt. The Muhammadan lapsed dynasties were represented in the Mutiny by the titular majesty of the King of Delhi and his sons. The great Hindu power, the Maráthás, who seemed destined in the last century to build up an indigenous Indian empire out of the wreck of the Muhammadan dynasties, stood forward against us in the persons of Náná Sáhib the adopted son of the deposed Peshwá, and his military follower Tántia Topi. The lesser ex-ruling Houses, whose states had come under the British Government on failure of direct male heirs, supplied an equally vindictive and a more heroic leader in the Rání or pensioned princess of Jhánsí. But the great body of the reigning Feudatories in India held aloof from the Mutiny. Many of them cast in their lot with us in our hour of direst need. The story of the loyal Punjab Chiefs who helped us to retake Delhi is known to all Englishmen. But the succour, the shelter, the aid, rendered by scores of the Native Princes throughout India, find but a passing mention in history. Of the 150 principal Feudatories and Chiefs, we can count the disloyal ones on the fingers of one hand. Local leaders, like Koer Singh the Behár landholder, were mostly bankrupt or ruined men.

One result of the Mutiny of 1857 was to profoundly modify the attitude of the British Government to the Native Princes. The East India Company had