people on the walls continually threw down upon the heads of their assailants heavy pieces of timber, great stones, flaming bales of cotton, previously dipped in oil, and pots filled with gunpowder and other combustibles. At last Colonel Monson gave up the case as hopeless, recalled the storming parties, and returned to the trenches. This time the loss in killed and wounded seems to have exceeded 1000 of English officers alone five were killed and twelve wounded. In Lake's several attempts to carry the fortress of Bhurtpore by storm, 3100 men, and a very great number of officers, had been killed or wounded. His lordship now converted his siege into a blockade. His guns, which were nearly all blown at the touch-hole, were withdrawn (there appears to have been a want of artillery and engineering skill and science), detachments were sent off for supplies and for fresh guns, and parts of the army were moved to other positions to block up the roads leading into the town-a difficult undertaking, for the cavalry of the enemy was still very numerous, and Lake's cavalry was absent with General Smith, who had not yet returned from pursuing Meer Khan. But, when the Rajah of Bhurtpore saw that convoys, with supplies of all kinds from different parts, and battering guns and ammunition from Futtyghur and Allyghur were arriving daily in camp; that the old guns which had been blown were repaired and rendered efficient; that he had little or no assistance to expect from his allies, Holkar and Meer Khan; that new batteries were erecting, and that nothing seemed likely to shake the determination or interrupt the perseverance of the British, he lost faith in his lucky star, and sent vakeels to negotiate for a peace. But these negotiations were suspended by the re-appearance of Holkar in great force about eight miles to the westward of Bhurtpore. Fortunately, however, at this moment, the British cavalry, which had been pursuing Meer Khan, arrived at the camp; and after resting a few days it marched silently out by night, headed by Lord Lake himself, who intended to beat up the quarters of Holkar. But the Mahratta got information of this intended visit, and was in full flight before his lordship could reach the spot. Some 200 of the fugitives were overtaken and slain, their camp was destroyed, and some elephants, horses, and camels were captured. Still, however, Holkar lingered in the neighbourhood, and was joined by Meer Khan with the fragment of his force, as well as by some bands of Pindarries, who rarely lost many men in action, because they never stayed to fight when they could gallop away. This accession of force seems to have made Holkar careless; for on the 2nd of April he was charged in front and on both his flanks by Lake's cavalry, and put to the rout with a terrible loss. He fled across the Chumbul river with about 8000 horse, 5000 foot, and 20 or 30 guns, the miserable remains of the great army with which he had opened the campaign, threatening to annihilate the British do

minion in Hindustan. Some troops that were advancing to his succour were beaten and scattered by a British detachment which marched out of Agra. Holkar then fled to join Scindiah, who, notwithstanding the dreadful chastisement he had received at the hands of General Wellesley, and the treaty he had concluded in December, 1803, was contemplating a renewal of the war with the English. But the Rajah of Bhurtpore was in no condition to wait the effects of a new confederacy; and on the 10th of April he repaired in person to Lake's camp and implored for peace. This was granted by Lord Lake upon the following terms :1. The fortress of Deeg was to remain in the hands of the English till they should be assured of the rajah's fidelity, who pledged himself never to have any connexion with the enemies of Great Britain, and never to entertain, without the sanction of the Company, any Europeans in his service. 2. He was to pay the Company by instalments twenty lacs of Furruckabad rupees, and to give up some territories which the Company had formerly annexed to his dominions. 3. As a security for the due execution of these terms, he was to deliver up one of his sons as a hostage, to reside with the British officers at Delhi or Agra. Having received the first instalment of the money, and the hostage required, the British forces broke up from before Bhurtpore, after lying there three months and twenty days. They began their march on the 21st of April, Lake going at once in search of Scindiah, who had expected that his lordship's army would be utterly ruined before Bhurtpore, for the losses which it had sustained in that siege had been reported, with due exaggeration, throughout the whole of the Mahratta territory. Scindiah and Holkar retreated with great precipitation towards Ajmeer; and several of the Mahratta chiefs came and joined Lord Lake, who found more reliable reinforcements in the arrivals of some divisions of British troops and Sepoys from Bundelkund and other quarters. At this juncture the Marquess Cornwallis arrived to succeed the Marquess Wellesley as governor-general, and began his second and brief career in India by pronouncing sentence of condemnation on the policy of his active and energetic predecessor. Cornwallis was now falling into the second childhood, and his attention had been too exclusively devoted to those who were murmuring about the expenses of a necessary war, and sighing for the easy happy days of peace and of full treasuries at Calcutta. As the rainy monsoon approached one part of Lake's army found shelter in the splendid but decayed palaces of the great Akbar at Futtypoor Sicree; another part quartered itself in the remains of the palaces of the ancient Mogul chiefs in and about Agra and Mutra; and two regiments of British dragoons found comfortable lodgings in the immense mausoleum of the Emperor Akbar, which is situated about seven miles from Agra, tethering their horses in the once splendid garden, and eating and sleeping and pursuing their

But

troopers' sports among the white marble tombs of Akbar and his family, and of the Mogul Omrahs, those mighty men of old, who, could they have started from the sound sleep of the grave, would have heard sounds and beheld sights most strange and marvellous to their ears and eyes. The men were rough dragooners, without the slightest pretensions to taste, or to reverence for works of art and antiquity; but they had the English feeling of respect for the dead, and they offered no violence to the sanctity of the tombs, and left the marble slabs and the ornamented Saracenic arches, the sculpture and carving, and the mosaic pavements, the cupolas and minarets, in as good a state as they found them. If two regiments of French dragoons had been quartered half the time in the mausoleum of Akbar, not a tomb would have been left unopened, nor an Omrah of them all undisturbed; hideous and obscene farces would have been played with the skulls and rattling bones of the Mogul emperor, and his wives and children. If we are to believe their own writers, intelligence and taste were widely, if not universally, diffused among the French soldiery; but, when those soldiers got possession of some of the splendid Moorish remains in Spain, and of the marble-lined Christian abbeys of Alcobaça and Batalha in Portugal, they gave no sign of this taste, but wantonly broke and defaced whatever they could.

As soon as the weather permitted, the Marquess Cornwallis quitted Calcutta to travel to the upper provinces and there confer with Lord Lake and others on the best means of terminating the war; but at his advanced age he could ill bear the fatigues of such a journey: he fell sick on the road and died at Gazipoor near Benares, within three months after his return to India. According to his own wish and command, that "where the tree fell, there it should lie," the marquess, who had seen so many vicissitudes in the west and in the east, and who had narrowly escaped death at York-town in America, and a grave on the bank of the Chesapeake, was buried at Gazipoor, on the banks of the Ganges. The government then devolved provisionally upon Sir George Barlow, who was equally anxious for peace, although he differed. from Cornwallis as to the best means of obtaining it. Lord Lake, who had had ample experience of the faithlessness of all Indian treaties, was of opinion that the British possessions in Hindustan would never be secured until Scindiah and Holkar were driven beyond the Indus and the Mahratta power annihilated. Scindiah, who received some information of the pacific disposition manifested at Calcutta, separated his forces from those of Holkar, and entered into negotiations with Lieutenant-Colonel (afterwards General Sir John) Malcolm, the political agent of the governor-general in the British camp. Holkar thereupon, declaring that he had no other estate or property left than what he carried upon the saddle of his horse, spurred away to the banks of the Indus to seek fresh allies and instruments among the chiefs of

the Seikhs, giving out that he expected to be joined by the hardy and warlike tribes of Affghanistan, and by the king of Caubul himself. He had still with him a few pieces of light artillery and some rabble; and in the country to the northwest of Delhi he found many adventurers quite ready to join him. He eluded Major-General Jones and Colonel Ball, who marched from different points to intercept him on his line of route. This induced Lord Lake to follow him himself with the cavalry of the British army and some of the best of his infantry, for it was imperative to prevent his calling the Seikhs to arms. Saluting that poor shadow of a grand mogul, the aged and blind Schah Allum, as he passed through Delhi, Lake, in an astonishing short time, got into the country of the Seikhs, driving Holkar before him, and obliging him to cross the Sutledjh. The ameers or chiefs of the Seikhs assured his lordship that their intentions were pacific: and so they were; but so they would not have been if Lake had allowed Holkar any rest or time. Still pressing forward in what had once been the track of the greatest general of the gigantic conqueror Timur or Tamerlane, Lake crossed the Sutledjh, and, skirting the great sandy desert which stretches from the left bank of the Indus to within 100 miles of Delhi, he plunged into the Punjab, or the country of the five rivers. On his way he was joined by Colonel Burn, who had brought up a detachment from Panniput by an entirely new route, and by one of those admirable marches which so often challenge admiration in these far-extended campaigns. And then, still pressing onwards, and pointing the heads of his columns towards the spot where the Macedonian conqueror stayed his advance and turned back from the inauspicious gods of India, Lake reached the banks of the Hyphasis (now the Beeah or Beas), the boundary of Alexander the Great's conquest, where his Greeks had erected twelve massive altars as a memorial. The British standard waved majestically over those waters, and the British troops eyed themselves in the same clear mirror which had reflected the Macedonian phalanges more than two thousand one hundred years ago. The scenery around was as sublime as the recollections. In the extreme distance, from north to east, towered the snowy ridge of old Imaus (a part of the Himalaya), whose loftiest peak exceeds the highest of the Andes by thousands of feet. The fleecy softness of this most faint and irregular outline rested upon immense masses of nearer mountains; still nearer were rugged eminences and pine-clad hills sloping down to a fine undulating country of hill and dale, covered with luxuriant vegetation, enlivened by numerous villages, dotted with temples, pagodas, tombs, and ruins, and bounded by the noble river which flowed immediately before the English army on its way to join the Indus and the ocean. Many thousands of the native inhabitants collected on the opposite bank of the Hyphasis to gaze upon our troops; but, as here, as during the whole

march, the strictest discipline had been observed, and no wrongs offered to the people, these astonished spectators soon drew nearer, and, mixing with the bazaar of the army, agreed to bring in supplies of fruits, vegetables, and other commodities.*

Holkar at this time lay encamped at a place about midway between Lord Lake's camp on the Hyphasis and Lahore, the capital of the Seikhs on the Ravee or Hydraotes (another of Alexander's rivers). In two days and nights of his forced marches Lake could have reached the spot and have annihilated him if he had stayed to fight; and if Holkar had continued his flight, which it is almost certain he would have done, in four days he would have been driven beyond the Hydraotes. But before this Sir George Barlow had concluded a peace with Scindiah, and had sent Lord Lake instructions not only to treat with Holkar, but also to grant him very favourable terms; and the chief of Lahore and of the whole Seikh confederacy, having called a great council, which unanimously agreed to withhold all aid from Holkar, and to interpose as mediators, as the best means of getting rid both of the Mahrattas and of the English, sent, on the 19th of December, a vakeel to the British camp. The negotiations were neither long nor difficult, though they must have been painful to his lordship, for he was bound by his instructions to reinstate Holkar not only in his own dominions, from which he had been driven, and which he had deserved to forfeit, but also to put him in possession • Major Thorn, Memoir of the War, &c.

of territory to which it was believed he never had any right. In conformity with the new system of policy which had been adopted of abandoning all connexion with the petty states, and, generally, with the territories to the westward of the Jumna, and of making the Jumna the boundary of the British possessions, Lord Lake was instructed to dissolve the defensive alliances which we had contracted with the Rajah of Gypore and other inferior powers who had rendered essential services to his lordship, and who looked upon their ruin at the hand of the Mahrattas as an inevitable consequence of their being abandoned by the English.

Although Holkar sent his own vakeel to the British camp, and although that negotiator agreed to the conditions, which were immeasurably more favourable than he had any right or reason to expect, Holkar withheld the ratification of the treaty, and had recourse to many objections and evasions. But Lord Lake told the Mahratta's vakeel that, if the papers were not presented duly signed within two days, he would cross the Hyphasis and continue his march against Holkar. And, to give more effect to this threat, his lordship marched his army down the left bank of the river to a ford or passage, and made his preparations for crossing over. This was on the 5th of January (1806), and in the afternoon of the 7th the treaty, properly ratified, was presented to Lord Lake with great ceremony.

Having gratified and in part terrified the Seikhs (they are said at the sight to have blessed their stars that they had not joined Holkar and gone to

war with the English) with a brilliant review on the banks of the Hyphasis, and with showing them some of the effects produced by our horse artillery, Lake struck his tents, and retraced his steps towards Delhi.*

By the treaty with Scindiah, which was concluded and signed on the 23rd of November, the treaty of Surjee Anjengaum made by General Wellesley was generally confirmed; but with this exception, that the Company explicitly refused to acknowledge the right of Scindiah to any claims upon Gwalior and Gohud, though, from friendly considerations, it was agreed to cede to him Gwalior and certain portions of Gohud. In case of any breach these said territories were to be resumed by the Company. The river Chumbul was to be the boundary line. Scindiah renounced certain jaghires and pensions which had been granted to some of his officers by the preceding treaty, and which amounted to fifteen lacs of rupees annually; but the Company granted to Scindiah personally an annual pension of four lacs, and assigned, within the British territories in Hindustan, a jaghire worth two lacs to his wife, and a jaghire worth one lac to his daughter. The Company further engaged not to interfere with any settlement or treaty which Scindiah might make with his tributary chiefs in Mewar and Marwar, and not to interfere in any respect with the conquests he had made between the rivers Chumbul and Taptee. Scindiah agreed not to entertain any Europeans in his service without the consent of the British government, and to dismiss from his service and his councils for ever his turbulent father-in-law Surjee-Row-Gautka, who had offered many insults and injuries to the English, and who was generally believed to have driven his son-in-law into the late hostility. Holkar was to be admitted into this treaty, and was to obtain restitution of territory, &c., provided his conduct should be such as to satisfy the English of his amicable intentions towards them and their allies.

By the treaty with Holkar, which, as we have seen, was not ratified until the 7th of January, 1806, that chief renounced all claims upon any territories lying on the northern or English side of the Chumbul, upon Poonah and Bundelkund (a renunciation which greatly affected his interests and his pride), and all claims whatsoever upon the British government and its allies. He bound himself never to admit Surjee-Row-Gautka into his service, and never to molest the territories of the Company or of its allies. But the Company agreed to restore, eighteen months after the conclusion of this treaty, Chandore, Galnauh, and other forts and districts south of the Taptee and Godavery, belonging to the Holkar family, provided

* Lord Lake quitted his command in India in February, 1807, leaving behind him a high and well-merited reputation, together with most affectionate remembrances. He appears to have had almost every one of the good qualities of a British officer and a gentleman. He died on the 21st of February, 1808, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and just six months previous to the death of his beloved and affectionate son and gallant companion in arms, Colonel George Lake, who, after sharing in the toils and dangers of his father's brilliant Indian campaigns, fell in Portugal.

that chief fulfilled his engagements, and remained in a friendly attitude. He was to be allowed to return immediately from beyond the Hyphasis and the country of the Seikhs into Hindustan, but by a route prescribed to him, by which he would avoid injuring the territory of the Company and its allies.*

The negotiation, in its kind, was far from being so good as the war, in its kind; and the new policy which was adopted was soon found to be impracticable. If the British had never crossed the Jumna and the Chumbul, and had never formed alliances and connexions in the countries beyond those rivers, there might have been a temporary but very brief chance of success for this new system; but after the campaigns they had made, and the connexions they had formed, there remained not the shadow of a chance; nor could the experiment be tried, or such treaties concluded, without diminution of credit and character-without a wound inflicted upon that moral force which must ever be our greatest force in India. With neighbours like the Mahrattas and their allies, the predatory Pindarries, there could not be any lasting peace in Hindustan, nor any permanent security to the Company's frontiers. By renouncing our connexions beyond the two rivers, we threw our peaceful allies into the arms of Scindiah and Holkar, or left them exposed to the rapacity, vengeance, and tyranny of those chiefs: we brought the Mahratta confederacy to press directly upon our own territory-we knocked down the out-works and bulwarks to the rich countries which were beginning to thrive and grow happy under our dominion. As Lord Lake, Sir John Malcolm, and every other enlightened man in India (whose eyes were not distracted by the prospect of a present saving of money) had clearly foreseen, these treaties, with their concessions and renunciations, gave only a transitory calm to the country. But the campaigns, we repeat, had been conducted in a glorious style; the reports of them in England came opportunely to revive the spirit of the nation-a nation which had little to fear, when it could breed and send forth such men as fought with Nelson at Trafalgar, and marched and fought with Wellesley and Lake in Hindustan.

A.D. 1806.-Parliament was appointed to meet on the 21st of January. Pitt's government had never been so weak as now, and the uneasiness of the king seemed to threaten another return of his distressing and incapacitating malady. The health of the premier had been visibly affected before the close of the preceding session. In the autumn he repaired to Bath; but the sanatory effect of those waters, and that genial air, was prevented by the dismal news of the surrender of Ulm, of the battle of Austerlitz, and of Austria's seceding from the coalition; and these calamities on the Continent appear to have assumed such a

*Sir John Malcolm, Sketch of the Political History of India. Sır John was himself the uegotiator and agent in all these transactions But grieved would he have been to take the responsibility of a diplo macy which had been imposed upon him by Sir George Barlow, ana of which, in nearly every particular, he disapproved.

magnitude in his eyes as almost to blind him to the gain, glory, and triumph of Trafalgar. He came up to town as the meeting of Parliament approached; but he was too ill to attend to much business, and on the appointed day, when the Houses met, he was lying in a dying state at his country-house at Putney. The royal speech was delivered not by the king in person, but by commission. It dwelt upon our great naval successes, and attempted to alleviate regret for the disasters of our continental allies with the assurances the Russian Emperor had given, that he would adhere to his alliance with Great Britain. It mentioned the application to the public service of 1,000,000/. out of the droits of admiralty accruing and belonging to the crown, but which his majesty gave up; and it asserted, with rather more point than truth, that nothing had been left undone to sustain the efforts of our allies. It was upon this last point that the opposition determined to make their stand, and amendments were read in both Houses; but they were not moved in consequence of the intelligence received from Putney. Two days after the meeting of Parliament, or on the 23rd of January, Pitt expired in the 47th year

of his age. * On the 24th Mr. Lascelles gave

notice that he should, on Monday next, bring for

On the 21st of January Horner writes from the gallery of the House of Commons:-" The increased illness of Pitt is the point which at present occupies every one's feelings and attention; for no one, even with all his party antipathies, or with all his resentment for the mischiefs which have been brought upon the country, can be iusensible to the death of so eminent a man. In the place where I am sitting now, I feel this more than seems quite reasonable to myself: I cannot forget how this space has been filled with his magnificent and glowing declamations, or reflect with composure that that fine instrument of sound is probably extinguished for ever. You observe, I speak as if he were already dead. The physicians at first suspected that his disease was scirrhus pylori, but they are of opinion now that it is not so. A stomach completely destroyed by his habits of living and labour, and at last, I suppose, by painful anxiety and mortification of mind, had reduced him to extreme emaciation and debility. He had been able to take no sustenance for some time but egg and brandy: on Saturday he was rather better, and ate some chicken-broth; but in the evening he became worse than ever. Wilberforce had gone to Putney in the morning, but could not see him: he had a conversation with the Bishop of Lincoln, who attends him constantly, and of course knows his constitution better than anybody. He said to Wilberforce, that he looked upon it as a breaking-up; this Wilberforce told to Stephens, who repeated it to Brougham. He continued very ill all Sunday; yesterday (Monday) morning Lord Chatham was sent for very suddenly. In the evening I met young Rose, who told us of a letter his fatlier had had from Sir Walter Farquhar (Pitt's physician), dated seven o'clock in the evening: he said, his hopes were not so good, but he did not quite despair. This was the first time Farquhar had acknowledged there was danger; Dr. Baillie, and, still more, Reynolds, pronounced it from the first a very bad case. I have heard, since I came into the gallery, that there are accounts this morning of his being still alive. And we must have heard, if it had been all over, for Billy Baldwin, the chronicle of the day, is writing his name at this moment for his seat."-Letter to J. A. Murray, Esq., in Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M.P., by his brother Leonard Horner, Esq. Horner, on starting in life, had attached himself to the Foxite party; and at this time he was too much an habitué and fondling of Holland-House to be a very impartial judge of the merits of Pitt. But he was a man of a kind heart and truly amiable nature, and therefore could not avoid those feelings in the gallery of the House of Commons which he briefly and touchingly describes.

According to Horner the illness of Pitt, and the belief that his life was despaired of, was not the only reason of putting off the moving of the amendment. He says it had been understood that the Addingtonians were to co-operate with the opposition; that in the course of Monday they sent notice that they could not support the amendment; and that, in consequence of this defection, it was probably deemed prudent not to push a division, especially as there was so good a reason for postponing the discussion for a few days. He adds, indeed, that one of the Foxites told him that the conduct of the Addingtonians had no effect in postponing the amendment; but we confess our doubts as to this fact, as well as in regard to Fox's delicacy and pathos about Pitt's condition. Friendly reports of what passed at private meetings are not to be accepted as contradictions of Fox's conduct and speeches in public.

ward a motion on a subject which had caused the greatest grief and melancholy throughout the country-the death of the late chancellor of the exchequer in the confident hope that some signal mark of public respect would be shown to the memory of that great man. It is difficult, on this occasion, as on several others, to reconcile the conduct of Fox with his reputation for magnanimity, generosity, and amiability. Surely it behoved him to be the first and the most eager in showing respect to the memory of his illustrious rival. But what did Fox? He rose and suggested that it would be more proper for Mr. Lascelles to postpone his motion until after the discussion of the motion proposed by his noble friend (Lord Henry Petty) for the amendment to the address, which, he said, naturally claimed the precedence; and he requested that Mr. Lascelles, and those who thought with him, would consider whether the motion which they meant to bring forward might not involve points the discussion of which would more properly belong to the question announced by his noble friend-whether, in fact, the motion for signal marks of public. respect might not be of such a nature as many gentlemen could not assent to without a gross violation of their public duty. All this meant that no honours should be voted to Pitt until the House had decided whether he had or had not done all that he could to sustain the efforts of our allies; and whether he was to blame for the calamities which had befallen the Continent, and for the great and manifold distresses which, according to the opposition, afflicted England. Now this debate might very possibly have been prolonged night after night, and the body of Pitt might have been left unburied, or have been buried in a village churchyard, before the House could get to the discussion of Mr. Lascelles's intended proposal, that he should be interred with all honours in Westminster Abbey. Was it magnanimous thus to deal with the rival of so many years, just after the breath of life had left his body? Was it generous to aim at producing charges against Pitt's foreign policy, when he could no longer raise his voice in his own defence-to provoke the batter animadversions of party over an unburied corpse? Was it amiable to renew this strife with the -to grudge the last honours to a statesman who, whatever may have been his errors, had an elevation of mind and a purity of intention altogether above the suspicion of any informed and lightened person? The Commons generally were more generous than Charles Fox: they were averse to the production of the amendment, which was heard of no more; and, on the Monday he had fixed upon (the 27th of January), Lascelles moved, "That an humble address! be presented to his majesty, that he would be raciously pleased to direct that the remains of` the late Right Honourable William Pitt be interred at the public expense, and that a monument be erected to his memory in the collegiate church of

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