April 20.

As English history to the vast majority of Englishmen begins with the Norman, so does also the modern history of India begin with the Mohammedan, conquest. As early as in the eighth century Arab conquerors made incursions into Scinde as far as Hyderabad, only to be driven back by a revolt of Hindoos; but it was not until the eleventh century that Sultan Mahmoud, the second of the House of Ghuznee, established a Mohammedan garrison to the south of the Indus at Lahore, nor until the end of the twelfth century that Shahab-ud-din penetrated as far as Benares and fixed the seat of government at Delhi. It was at his death that India assumed the form of an independent kingdom distinct from the governments to the north of the Indus; and it was only a few years later that the invasion of the Moguls under Zinghis Khan heralded the approach of the race that was first to gather the greatest portion of the peninsula into a single empire, and to found a dynasty which should rule it. The battle of Delhi placed Baber, the first of this dynasty, in possession of the capital, and set up therein the throne of the Great Mogul. Baber\'s grandson, Akbar, after fifty years of conquest, wise policy and incessant labour, reduced the whole of Hindostan and great part of the Deccan under the Mogul Empire, dividing it for administrative purposes into eighteen provinces, each under the rule of a governor or subahdar. But the Deccan had never been firmly secured; and even after the Hindoos had submitted there were Mohammedan[168] chieftains who refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the Moguls. Too jealous, however, to unite in resistance, these chieftains allowed themselves to be crushed in detail; and in 1656 the Emperor Shah Jehan seemed to have established his authority over all the Mohammedan kingdoms of the Deccan. But even so the work of Shah Jehan did not endure. In the reign of his son Aurungzebe a new power appeared to dispute the rule of the Moguls in the Deccan. A race of Hindoo mountaineers, the Mahrattas, came down from their fastnesses in the Western Ghauts and hired themselves out as mercenary soldiers to the Mohammedan chiefs. Led by a man of genius, the famous Sevajee, the Mahrattas grew continually in strength, and at length fairly defeated the army of the Moguls in the open field. It was not until after the death of Sevajee that Aurungzebe was able to drive his followers back to the hills, and push his Empire to its farthest limits to southward, so far indeed as to include in it even a portion of Mysore. Never before, it should seem, had so much of the peninsula been united under the dominion of one man; but the Mahrattas none the less had laid the axe to the root of the Mogul Empire, and from the death of Aurungzebe the tree, though destined to totter for yet another fifty years, was already doomed. It must now be told how the foundation of a new Indian Empire fell not to the Mahrattas but to invaders from Europe.
1498.
1600,
Dec. 31.

The first of the European nations to gain a footing in the peninsula was of course the Portuguese. In 1493 Bartholemew Diaz doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and five years later Vasco da Gama arrived on the Western or Malabar coast, and after a second voyage obtained permission to establish a factory at Calicut. His work was continued by Albuquerque, under whose care the Portuguese power in India was more widely extended than at any time before or since. To him it was due that Goa was made the chief centre of Portuguese influence, and that Ceylon became tributary to[169] Portugal\'s king. It was not, however, conceivable that Portugal should long be allowed to enjoy the monopoly of this lucrative traffic; and competitors soon presented themselves from the maritime powers of Europe. Moreover, in 1580, Portugal passed under the crown of Spain, so that any encroachment on her East Indian trade inflicted also some damage on the detested Spaniard. In 1582 an Englishman, Edward Fenton, led the way by attempting a voyage direct to the east. The venture, however, was a failure, as was also a second attempt made by James Lancaster in 1589. Finally, a Dutchman, James Houtmann, sailed from the Texel in 1595, and presented himself as the first rival of the Portuguese by the establishment of a factory at Bantam in Java. But though thus distanced for a moment in the race for a new market the English speedily resolved to make up the lost ground; and in 1599 an association of Merchants Adventurers was formed in London with the object of prosecuting a voyage to the East Indies. In the following year they received a charter from Queen Elizabeth, and thus came into being the famous East India Company.
1607.
1611.
1612.
1628.
1651.

The two first voyages of the new Company followed the track of the Dutch to Sumatra and Java, but in the third the ships were driven by stormy weather into Sierra Leone, whence one of them under Captain Hawkins sailed direct to Surat, and found there good promise of opening trade. In 1609 Hawkins visited Agra in person and obtained privileges from the reigning Mogul, eldest son of the great Akbar; but his influence was soon undermined by Portuguese Jesuits, and he was fain to return with little profit. Two years later, however, an English vessel touched at Point de Galle, sailed up the Coromandel, or eastern, coast of India as far as Masulipatam and founded the nucleus of a factory at Petapolee, the germ from which was to spring the trade of England in the Bay of Bengal. The jealousy of Dutch and Portuguese had by this time risen so high that the Company was obliged to employ[170] force against them. In 1612 Captain Best boldly attacked a superior Portuguese fleet in the Bay of Surat, and defeated it so thoroughly that the reigning Mogul disallowed the Portuguese claim to a monopoly of the trade, agreed to a treaty granting important privileges to the English, and consented to receive an ambassador from them at his Court. One formidable rival was thus crippled, but the Dutch were not so easily to be dealt with, more particularly since the troubles which followed on the accession of Charles the First in England left them little to fear from an armed force. The affairs of the Company began to languish, but fresh outlets for trade were none the less sought for. One factory was definitely established at Masulipatam, a second on the coast further northward, and finally, in 1640, a third was settled at Madras under the name of Fort St. George. This was the one gleam of sunshine at that period amid all the troubles of England at home and abroad. Then at last the cloud of the Civil War passed away; the power of England began to revive, and the Company addressed a petition to Parliament for redress of injuries received from the Dutch. Thereupon followed the Dutch war and the seven furious actions of Blake and Monk, which dealt Dutch maritime ascendency a blow from which it never recovered. A piece of unexpected good fortune, namely the recovery of Shah Jehan\'s daughter from dangerous sickness under the care of an English surgeon at Surat, procured for the Company free trade with Bengal. At the close of the Protectorate the Company had organised its markets into three divisions. A supreme presidency was established at Surat with special charge of the Persian trade, a subordinate presidency at Madras with control of the factories on the eastern coast and in Bengal, and a third presidency at Bantam for direction of the traffic with the Eastern Islands.
1660.
1661.

Then came the Restoration, and with it a new charter empowering the Company to send ships of war, men, and arms to their factories for defence of the same,[171] and to make peace or war with any people not Christians. Authority was also granted for the fortification of St. Helena, which since 1651 had become the port of call on the voyage to India, and stringent provision was made for the maintenance of the Company\'s monopoly. The following year brought Bombay by dowry to the British Crown, and in 1662 Sir Abraham Shipman was sent out with four hundred soldiers to take possession and to remain as governor. These were the first British troops to land in India, but as there was a dispute with the Portuguese as to whether the word Bombay, as inscribed in the treaty of marriage, signified the island only or included its dependencies also, the poor fellows were landed on the island of Anjediva, near Goa, where they at once began to sicken. In 1664 they were transferred to Madras, in view of the war with Holland; but by the end of the year Shipman and a vast number of the men were dead, and when at last they landed in Bombay, in March 1665, the four hundred had dwindled to one officer and one hundred and thirteen men. Such was the first experience of the British Army in India.[235]
1668.

In 1668 Bombay, together with the whole of its military stores, was made over to the Company for a rent of ten pounds a year; and authority was also given for the Company to enlist officers and men for their own service, as well as to call in certain garrisons of the King\'s troops at Bombay and Madras to fill up vacancies. Further, in order to form a local militia, half-pay was granted to all soldiers who would settle on the island, new settlers were promised from England, and a rule was made that not more than twenty soldiers should return to Europe in any one year. The men and officers of the King\'s troops at once took service with the Company under its own military code and articles of war, and thus was founded the first military establishment in Bombay. The men agreed, it seems,[172] to serve for three years only, which gives them an additional interest as the first English soldiers ever enlisted for short service. Having thus provided itself with men the Company proceeded next to the improvement and fortification of Bombay itself, and with such vigour that by 1674 no fewer than one hundred cannon were mounted for its defence. Finally, in 1683-84 the garrison was increased from four hundred to six hundred men, two companies of Rajpoots were embodied as an auxiliary force, and Bombay was made the headquarters of the Company in India.
1685.

The Company thus strengthened forthwith became ambitious. Hitherto it had addressed the native princes in terms of humble submission: it now assumed the tone of an equal and independent power, able to command respect by force of arms. It also equipped a fleet of twelve powerful men-of-war, which was first to capture Chittagong and then to proceed up the eastern branch of the Ganges to seize Dacca. Hostilities were precipitated by a quarrel between English and native soldiers in the bazaar at Hooghly, wherein the forces of the nabob of the province were defeated. The nabob, however, avenged himself by pouncing upon the British factory at Patna; and the approach of Aurungzebe caused the British to withdraw from Hooghly to Chuttamuttee, the site of the present Calcutta. Thus the war against the Moguls ended in the utter humiliation of the Company. The period of conquest was not yet come.
1642.
1668.
1669.
1697.
1701.

Meanwhile a new rival had sprung up in the East Indies. In 1609 a French East India Company had been formed, which after thirty years of ineffectual life at last gave definite evidence of vitality by the formation of a settlement at Madagascar. The venture was not a success; but the great minister Colbert, quickly awake to the advantages of an Indian trade, granted the help of the Government to form a new Company, which, after wasting some time and money on a second experiment in Madagascar, sent an expedition[173] to Surat. There in 1668 was established the first French factory in India, which was quickly followed by the erection of a second at Masulipatam. But, if the Company were to prosper, something more than a factory with a rival factory alongside it was needed; and this want was made good by the foundation of Pondicherry by Fran?ois Martin in 1674. Two or three years later a French fleet entered the Hooghly and disembarked a body of settlers at Chandernagore, which was finally granted to them by Aurungzebe in 1688. Meanwhile the foolish quarrel of the English Company with the Moguls had given the French an opportunity to take a share of the Indian trade, of which they did not fail to make good use. Their further progress was, however, checked for the moment through the capture of Pondicherry by the Dutch in 1693; but the settlement was restored at the Peace of Ryswick, and no time was lost in improving and fortifying it. Shortly afterwards the French abandoned their factory at Surat and transferred their headquarters to Pondicherry. On the whole they had made good use of their time. The settlements of the British Company after one hundred years of existence were set down, in contemporary spelling, as follows: Bombay, with factories at Surat, Swally, Broach, Amadavad, Agra, and Lucknow; on the Malabar coast the forts of Carwar, Tellicherry, and Anjengo, with the factory of Calicut; on the Coromandel coast Chinghee, Orixa, Fort St. George or Madras, Fort St. David (which had been purchased in 1692 as a counterpoise to Pondicherry), and the factories of Cuddalore, Porto Novo, Petapolee, Masulipatam, Madapollam, and Vizagapatam; in Bengal, Fort William (Calcutta), with factories at Balasore, Cossimbazar, Dacca, Hooghly, Moulda, Rajahmaul, and Patna. The French could show Pondicherry, with a factory at Masulipatam on the eastern coast, and Chandernagore and Cossimbazar on the Hooghly as the result of barely five-and-thirty years of work.

Such competition as this might not at first appear[174] formidable to the English, but the comparative strength of the rival nations in India was not to be measured by mere counting of forts and factories. Fran?ois Martin had shown considerable dexterity in handling the native authorities during the negotiations by which he acquired Pondicherry, and had established good traditions for the management of similar business in future. All Frenchmen had and still have a passion for interference with the internal politics of any barbarous or semi-civilised races with which they may be brought into contact, and will spare no pains to gratify it. The emissaries of the most insolent nation in Europe approached the Indian princes with flattery of their self-esteem, deference for their authority, respect for their prejudices, conformity with their customs and imitation of their habits; while the French love of dramatic action and of display brought them at once into touch with the oriental character. They gave sympathy, sometimes in reality, always in appearance; and they obtained in return not only toleration but friendship and influence. Mere trading was sufficient for the English; it was not so for the French. Their ambition rose above the mere bartering of goods to the governing of men and the swaying of them by subtle policy to the glory of France. It was no ignoble aim, and might well lead to the making, if not to the keeping, of an Empire.
1707.
1719.

Aurungzebe at his death divided his dominions among his three sons, who at once fell to fighting for the succession to the entire realm. The contest was decided after a year in favour of the eldest of them, Bahadur Shah, who hastened to make terms with the Mahrattas in the south, but secured a precarious peace in that quarter only to find himself confronted with an insurrection of Rajpoots and with the sudden and alarming rise of the Sikhs in the Punjaub. He died in 1712, when the succession after the inevitable dispute passed to his grandson Farokshir, who succeeded in crushing the Sikhs but made little head against the Mahrattas, whose territory continued to increase in the[175] south. Finally, on Farokshir\'s death in 1719 Nizam-ul-Mulk, the Governor of Malwa, rose in revolt against his successor, made terms with the Mahrattas, and was soon virtually master of the Deccan; to which, after a short-lived reconciliation with the Court of Delhi, he returned in 1724, openly and avowedly as an independent monarch.
1725.
1735.

During this period the English Company acquired from Farokshir an extension of territory on the Hooghly, amounting to a tract of nearly ten miles on both sides of the river. The French, on the other hand, were declining owing to the virtual insolvency of the Company; nor was it until 1723, five years after the reconstruction of a new Company, that their prospects in India began to revive. But already, in 1720, a man had been appointed to high station in Pondicherry who was destined to raise French influence in India to a height undreamed of by friend or foe. This was Joseph Fran?ois Dupleix, son of a director of the French East India Company, who, though in boyhood averse to a mercantile life, had been converted by travel at sea to a passion for commercial enterprise and to a longing for a field wherein to indulge it. Such a field was now opened to him, when no more than twenty-three years of age, in India. His idea was to extend the operations of the Company beyond the mere trade between Europe and Pondicherry, and, by opening up traffic with the cities both inland and on the coast, to make Pondicherry the centre of the commerce of Southern India. To show, by example, that such a scheme was feasible, he embarked his own fortune in the trade and made a handsome profit. In 1731 he was sent to Chandernagore, then fast sinking into stagnation and decay, and by his energy soon raised it to the most important European centre in Bengal. Concurrently a second great Frenchman, who was also to leave his mark on India, had made his appearance in 1725. The occasion was the capture of Mahé, a little town on the western coast, where the French desired a[176] port to compensate them for the abandonment of Surat. The feat was accomplished by a captain in the French navy named Bertrand de la Bourdonnais. His next duty, though not performed in India, was none the less of high importance to it, namely the improvement of the island of Mauritius. The French attempts at colonisation in Madagascar had been foiled alike by the climate and by the hostility of the natives; and the settlers had perforce betaken themselves to the adjacent island of Bourbon. La Bourdonnais found Mauritius a mere forest, yet within two years he converted it into a flourishing settlement, well cultivated and well administered, with arsenals, magazines, barracks, fortifications, dockyards, and all that was necessary to make it not only a commercial station but a base for military operations in India.

Meanwhile the confusion that accompanied the gradual dissolution of the Mogul Empire was turned to useful account by yet another Frenchman, Dumas, the Governor of Pondicherry. In 1732 the Nabob of the Carnatic died and was succeeded by his nephew Dost Ali, who however was on such ill terms with his superior, the viceroy Nizam-ul-Mulk of the Deccan, that he could not obtain from him authentic confirmation of his succession. He therefore courted the support of the Governor of Pondicherry, conceding to him substantial privileges in return, and soon formed intimate relations with him. Dost Ali, moreover, had a son, Sufder Ali, and two sons-in-law, Mortiz Ali and Chunda Sahib, of whom the last named was imbued with a particular admiration for the French. The extension of French influence through these new friendships advanced rapidly. In 1735 the death of the Hindoo Rajah of Trichinopoly was followed, as usual, by a quarrel over the succession. The widow of the Rajah, who was one of the claimants, took the fatal step of invoking the help of Dost Ali, who sent Chunda Sahib with an army to her assistance. Chunda Sahib, however, once admitted to the city refused to leave it,[177] but assumed the government in the name of Dost Ali; and thus Trichinopoly passed into the hands of a friend to the French. Adjoining Trichinopoly and between it and the eastern coast lay the Hindoo kingdom of Tanjore; the Coleroon river, which formed its northern boundary, running within thirty miles of Pondicherry. Here again the death of the Rajah in 1738 led to a dispute over the succession, and one of the competitors, named Sauhojee, offered Governor Dumas the town of Carical in the delta of the Cauvery and Coleroon, as the price of French assistance. Dumas promptly supplied money, arms, and ammunition; and when Sauhojee, having thus gained his kingdom, declined to fulfil his agreement, Chunda Sahib stepped in unasked to compel him. Thus Carical also was added to the French settlements in India.
1739.
1740.
1741,
March.

But now the Mahrattas, jealous of the advance of the Mohammedans in the south, gathered themselves together for the conquest of the Carnatic, defeated and killed Dost Ali, and spread panic from end to end of the province. Sufder Ali, thus become Nabob, and Chunda Sahib fell back on their French allies and sent their families and goods for security to Pondicherry. Dumas gave them asylum without hesitation, nor could all the threats of the Mahrattas shake his loyalty to his friends. He answered their menaces by strengthening the defences of the town, formed a body of European infantry, and by a happy inspiration armed four or five thousand Mohammedan natives and trained and drilled them after the European model. Thus was conceived in danger and emergency the embryo, now grown to such mighty manhood, of a Sepoy Army. Meanwhile Sufder Ali, after the Oriental manner, succeeded in purchasing immunity from the Mahrattas by secretly betraying Chunda Sahib into their hands; but none the less his gratitude to the French was extreme. He declared that from henceforth they should be as much masters of the Carnatic as himself, and granted to them additional territory on the southern bounds of Pondicherry.[178] The Mahrattas, pursuant to their agreement with Sufder Ali, then beleaguered Chunda Sahib in Trichinopoly, captured the city after a siege of three months, and carried him off as their prisoner. This done they turned again upon Dumas, and required of him, among other demands, the surrender of Chunda Sahib\'s property. Dumas received the Mahratta envoy with courtesy but refused inflexibly to comply; and having shown him the preparations which he had made for the defence of Pondicherry he dismissed him with the assurance that he would stand by the city so long as a man was left with him. This resolute bearing had its effect. The further wrath of the Mahratta chief was allayed by a present of French liqueurs; and the danger passed away. Dumas, as the man who had defied the dreaded Mahrattas, became the hero of Southern India. Presents and eulogies were showered on him by Sufder Ali and Nizam-ul-Mulk; and even the effete Mogul Emperor at Delhi conferred on him the title of Nabob, adding thereto the favour, conferred at Dumas\'s own request, that the rank should descend to his successor.
Oct.

Dumas then resigned and returned to France, leaving Dupleix to reign in his stead. The latter, after ten years\' administration of Chandernagore, had raised it to the head of the European settlements in Bengal, and had concurrently amassed for himself an enormous fortune by private trading. He at once assumed all the pomp and circumstance of his rank of Nabob, caused himself to be installed with great ceremony at Chandernagore, and took pains to impress upon the neighbouring princes that he was one of themselves and armed with like authority from the court of Delhi. He could wear the dignity of his position the more naturally since he had an innate passion for display, and could turn the outward glitter to the better account for that he loved it for its own sake. But his was no spirit to be content with the mere robes of royalty. The weakness of the court of Delhi and his own[179] remoteness from it left him free from all restraint. He had the power, and he knew how to use it; and it had come to him in the nick of time, when hostilities between France and England were hastening to their development into avowed and open war.
1742,
Sept.
1744.

But meanwhile native affairs had undergone their usual swift changes in the Carnatic. Sufder Ali, once established as Nabob, refused to pay the revenue due from him to the viceroy Nizam-ul-Mulk, and, having little hope of French support in such defiance of authority, transferred his treasures from Pondicherry to the custody of the English at Madras. Shortly afterwards he was assassinated by his brother-in-law, Mortiz Ali, who thereupon proclaimed himself Nabob. His principal officers then appealed to the Mahratta chief, Morari Rao, to drive him out, and Mortiz Ali fled, leaving Sufder Ali\'s infant son to reign in his place. The whole province fell into anarchy, and in 1743 the viceroy Nizam-ul-Mulk appeared with a large army to restore order. The Mahrattas therefore retired from Trichinopoly; and, the infant ruler having been made away with, Anwarudeen, one of the viceroy\'s officers, was installed as Nabob. By this time Dupleix had received intelligence that war had been decl............