212 BOOK odious light, the rapacity and avarice of the com XX. 1782. Death of mander. At this period the hopes of the English were Hyder Ally raised to the highest pitch by the death of Hyder Ally, a name ever memorable in the annals of India. He was succeeded by his son Tippoo Saib, who had already given proofs of valor and ability not unworthy his descent. Disasters From Onore general Matthews proceeded through the Ghauts, or the passes of the mountains, to Hydernagore, which surrendered to him without resistance. Here, as at Onore, the general was accused of combining the meanness of fraud with the ferocity of violence; and colonel Macleod, second in command, and several other officers, retired in disgust from the army. After this, Annampore by storm, Carwa and Mangalore by capitulation, were successively subdued. In the mean time Tippoo prepared for the relief in Mysore. of Mysore and Canara; and, leaving a strong force to guard his conquests in the Carnatic, he marched his army across the peninsula with unexpected and unexampled expedition, and arrived in the vicinity of Hydernagore in the month of April 1783. By a series of excellent military manoeuvres he made himself master of the Ghauts in the rear of general Matthews, by which means all communication with the sea was entirely cut off. The force of general Matthews being now centred in Hydernagore, this XX. 1782. city was invested by Tippoo with a vast army, com- BOOK puted at 150,000 men, covering the hills on every side as far as the eye could reach. The English, reduced to extremity, were soon obliged to surrender on capitulation, by the terms of which the public treasure was restored to the sultan; but not a rupee being found in the fortress, general Matthews was charged by the conqueror with gross collusion, and a direct infraction of the treaty; and being conducted in chains to Seringapatam, the capital of Mysore, he was thrown into a dungeon, and, with the greater part of his officers, perished miserably in confinement under various devices of torture. Notwithstanding the departure of Tippoo from the Carnatic, the presidency of Madras had still to cope with superior force. Although the utmost exertions of sir Eyre Coote had not been wanting, no decisive advantage had been gained in the last campaign with Hyder; and the ill state of health of this able commander obliged him to resign the army into the hands of general Stuart, and to retire at the conclusion of the year 1783 to Bengal. Early in the ensuing spring, believing himself somewhat recovered, he returned to Madras in order to resume his command; but two days only after his arrival he expired, in an advanced age, having acquired, in more than thirty years' military service in India, a reputation, the lustre of which could be BOOK deemed scarcely inferior to that of his predecessor lord Clive. The important settlement of Trin178 quemalé was retaken by M. Suffrein in the course of the last summer, and a very large reinforcement of French troops landed in the Carnatic under M. de Bussi, Notwithstanding all opposition, general Stuart invested Cuddalore, and made considerable progress in the siege, when an express arrived with the intelligence of a treaty of peace having been concluded between the belligerent powers, on which an immediate cessation of hostilities took place. After the conquest of Hydernagore, and the recapture of the inland country by Tippoo, he laid siege to Mangalore, the principal place yet remaining in the hands of the English, An obstinate resistance was made by the garrison; but a practicable breach being at length effected, a general assault was in contemplation, when news arrived of the pacification which had taken place in Europe; and the French troops and engineers in his service informed him, that they must immediately withdraw their assistance, Tippoo, after much passiorate expostulation, therefore assented to an armistice, in a few days after which event colonel Macleod arrived with powerful reinforcements from Bombay. A ne gotiation was immediately commenced for a definitive peace. This was accelerated by a declaration which the sultan received from the peishwa of the XX. Mahrattas, that if Tippoo did not consent to an BOOK immediate evacuation of the Carnatic, he would unite with the English against him. During the continuance of the truce and the negotiation, the Bibby, or princess of Cannanore, a district depending on the kingdom of Canara, having seized some boats with sepoys belonging to the garrison of Mangalore, accidentally forced by stress of weather on her coast, colonel Macleod attacked and stormed the fortress of Cannanore, making the princess herself prisoner. Although loud complaints were made by Tippoo of this violation of the armistice, it does not appear much to have retarded the negotiation, the articles of peace being signed at Mangalore, March 11th, 1784, on the terms of mutual restitution, and a renunciation on the part of the sultan of his claim to the sovereignty of the Carnatic. This claim, there is every reason to believe, would never have been enforced, or perhaps advanced, if the rash and violent conduct of the English government respecting the Mahrattas had not encouraged and incited the attempt. To this purpose Mr. Whitehill, president of Madras, in his exculpatory minute of November 1780, says, "The offensive line of conduct adopted against the Mahrattas threw them, i. e. the governor and council of Bengal, into a scene of action so extensive and so full of difficulty, that neither their forces nor their revenues were capable of 1782. XX. 1782. BOOK bearing them through with any possibility of success. Had the experience of former times been called into their aid, they would have seen that Aurengzebe, one of the most formidable monarchs that ever sat upon the throne of Dehli, was, after a twenty years' struggle with all the power and riches of Hindostan, obliged to abandon a similar attempt. The truth is, the Mahratta war has been the real source of all the mischief that hath befallen the Carnatic. Had peace existed in that quarter with the English, Hyder Ally Khan would never have ventured from his own dominions.-He saw the extremity to which we were reduced, and seized the occasion to distress us where he knew we were most vulnerable." But the conduct of Mr. Hastings, subsequent to the restoration of peace in India, is perhaps the most extraordinary, certainly the most mysterious part of his dark and inextricable policy. The peace concluded with the Mahrattas, it has been already re marked, was followed by an alliance of the most strict and confidential kind. And from that period it seemed to be the great and favorite object of the English governor-general to confirm and aggrandize the power of that state, which he had ever before affected to consider as most formidable and adverse to the English interests, and whom he had even styled the NATURAL ENEMIES of the Company." |