Chapter 17 — Annals of Mewar

Whilst his satraps were thus contending for the viceroyalty of Hindustan, Daulat Rao Sindhia was pursuing his schemes against Holkar for the supremacy of the Dekhan, and the British were gradually preparing to extinguish the whole mighty conflagration. The battle of Indore in 1802, where 150,000 men were assembled to dispute the claims to the predatory empire, wrested the ascendency from Holkar, who lost his guns, his equipage, and his capital. He fled to Mewar, plundering Ratlam on his way, and was only prevented from visiting Udaipur by the rapidity of Sindhia's pursuit. He pushed on to Nathdwara, about 25 miles north of Udaipur, and the shrine of the Hindu Apollo. It was here that this active soldier first showed signs of mental derangement. He upraided Krishna while prostrate before his image for the loss of victory, and levied three lakhs of rupees on the priests of the temple and the inhabitants of the town. Fearing that the portal of the god would prove no bar to the impious Mahratta, the high priest caused the deity to be removed from his pedestal, and sent him with his establishment to Udaipur. The chief of Kotario, in whose estate the sacred fane was situated, undertook the escort, and conveyed the image through intricate passes to the capital. On his return he was intercepted by a band of Holkar's troops who demanded the surrender of his horses. But the chief was the descendant of the illustrious Prithvi Raj, and preferred death to dishonour. Dismounting, he hamstrung his steed, and, commanding his retainers to do the same, advanced on foot against his enemies. The conflict was short and unequal, and the Kontario, with all his gallant band, fell sword in hand. Holkar pursued his way to Ajmir, and thence to Jaipur. Sindhia's leaders, on reaching Mewar, renounced the pursuit, and for some days Udaipur was cursed with their presence, when three lakhs of rupees were extorted from the unfortunate Rana, raised by the sale of household effects and the jewels of the females of his family. Two years later, Holkar, having recruited his shattered forces, again left the south and entered Mewar, bent on vengeance for the non-compliance with his demands for money and assistance during his retreat after the battle of Indore. The rivalry of the clans had prevented any attempt on the part of the Rana or his ministers to recuperate the strength of the state. The Chondawats had the upper hand, and it was their ambassador, Ajit Singh, who was sent to meet the Mahratta as he approached Udaipur. The demand which was made was for no less a sum than 40 lakhs of rupees, or £ 500,000, of which one third was commanded to be instantly forthcoming. The palace was denuded of whatever could be converted into money; the females were deprived of every article of luxury and comfort; while hostages from the households of the Rana and the chief citizens were delivered as security for the remainder, and were immured in Holkar's camp. Having spent nearly eight months in his work of extortion, Holkar was about to depart, when the arrival of Sindhia in Mewar caused him to alter his plans. The hatchet was temporarily buried between these two predatory potentates, both of whom, in their efforts to cope with the British power, had suffered heavy losses and humiliation, and they now met to concert a joint plan of campaign against their common enemy. During the rainy season of 1805, both armies encamped in the plains of Mewar, desirous, but afraid, to seek revenge in the renewal of the war. Deprived of all power in Hindustan, and of their choicest territories north and south of the Narbadda, and each with a numerous and discontented army, inflamed by defeat and clamouring for pay, they had no alternative but to pacify their soldiery and replenish their own resources by indiscriminate pillage. The horrors that befell the defenceless state are indescribable, while the position was rendered still more hopeless by the return to India of Lord Cornwallis, and the consequent resumption by the British of the policy of " non-interference," which left these insatiable freebooters to continue their depredations unchecked. The Mahratta leaders had taken up their quarters in the district of Bednor, about ninety-six miles north of the capital, and their respective camps, some twenty miles distant from each other, became the rendezvous of the rival clans. Sirdar Singh, the organ of the Chondawats, represented the Rana at the court of Sindhia, at the head of whose councils was Ambaji, who had succeeded in displacing his late antagonist, Lakwa. But Ambaji had not forgotten the part played by Mewar in his downfall; and, with a view to satisfying his revenge, he now counselled the partition of the state between the Mahratta leaders. But whilst his baneful influence was preparing this result, the credit of Sangram, the Suktawat leader, with Holkar counteracted it. Even the hostile clans stifled their animosities when Ambaji's schemes became known, and Sirdar Singh left Sindhia's camp, and joined Sangram with Holkar. Together with the minister, the upright Kishen Das, they went before Holkar and demanded to know if he had given his consent to sell Mewar to Sindhia. Touched by the distress of the Rana and his country, Holkar swore it should not be; he counselled them to unity amongst themselves, and caused the representatives of the rival clans to "eat opium together." Nor did he stop here, but with the envoys repaired to Sindhia's tents, where he descanted on the Rana's high descent, urging that it did not become them to overwhelm him, and that they should even renounce the mortgaged lands which their fathers had too long unjustly held, himself setting the example by the restitution of Nimbhahaira. To strengthen his argument, he expatiated with Sindhia on the policy of conciliating the Rana, whose strongholds might be available in the event of a renewal of hostilities with the British. Sindhia appeared to convert to his views, and retained the envoys in his camp. During the next few days incessant torrents of rain fell and prevented all intercourse between the courts. In this interim Holkar received information that an envoy of the Rana was in Lord Lake's camp negotiating for the aid of the British troops, then at Tonk, to drive the Mahrattas from Mewar. Sending for the Rana's ambassadors, he assailed them with a torrent of reproach; accusing them of treachery, he threw the paper containing the information at Kishen Das, asking if that were the way in which a Rajput kept his faith. UI shrank not," he said, "from risking Sindhia's enmity by supporting your master; and now, in combating the Faringhis, when all Hindus should be as brothers, your sovereign the Rana, who boasts of never acknowledging the supremacy of Delhi, is the first to make terms with them. Was it for this that I prevented Ambaji being fastened on you?" Kishen Das attempted an explanation, but Holkar would hear none. Scenting danger on all sides, he determined to quit Mewar forthwith, though he had the generosity to stipulate, before his departure, for the security of the Rana and his country, telling Sindhia he should hold him personally responsible if the prince's independence were compromised. He crossed the boundary northward; but his sins were too great for even the policy of non-interference to cover. He was encountered and pursued to the Punjab by the British under the intrepid and enterprising Lake, and forced into submission at the altars of Alexander. Sindhia paid little attention to Holkar's warning, and a contribution of sixteen lakhs was at once levied on Mewar, and a brigade under Baptiste was detached from his camp for the purpose of enforcing payment. It would be imagined that the miseries of Rana Bhfm were not susceptible of aggravation, and that fortune had done her worst to humble him; but his pride as a sovereign and his feelings as a parent were destined to be yet more deeply outraged. Almost at the same time as the departure of Holkar, there arrived at Udaipiir a detachment of the troops of Jaipur, bringing proposals for the marriage of their prince with the Rana's daughter. The Jaipur cortege encamped near the capital, and the Rana's acknowledgments and acceptance of the proposal were despatched to Jaipur. But Raja Man of Marwar also advanced pretensions to the hand of the princess, on the ground that she had been actually betrothed to his predecessor. She had been betrothed, he said, to the throne of Marwar, not to the individual occupant; and he vowed resentment and opposition if his claims were disregarded. Krishna Kumari was the name of the lovely object, rivalry for whose hand assembled under the banners of her admirers, Jaggat Singh of Jaipur and Raja Man of Marwar, not only their native chivalry, but all the predatory powers of Hindustan. Sindhia, having been denied a pecuniary demand by Jaipur, opposed the nuptials, and aided the claims of Raja Man by demanding of the Rana the dismissal of the Jaipur embassy. This being refused, he advanced his brigades and batteries; and, after repulsing a fruitless resistance, in which the troops of Jaipur joined, he forced the pass into the valley of Udaipiir with a corps of 8,000 men, and encamped within cannon range of the city. The Rana had no alternative but to dismiss the nuptial cortege, and agree to whatever was demanded. Sindhia remained a month in the valley, during which an interview took place between him and the Rana at the shrine of Eklinga. To increase his importance, the Mahratta invited the British envoy and his staff, who had just arrived at his camp, to be present on the occasion. The princely bearing of the Rana and his sons made a great impression on the visitors, being in marked contrast to that of the Mahratta and his suite; while the regal abode of this ancient race acted with irresistible force on the cupidity of Sindhia, who aspired to, yet dared not, seat himself in "the palace of the Csesars." It was even surmised that his hostility to Jaipur was not so much from the refused warcontribution as from a mortifying negative to his own proposal for the hand of the Mewar princess. The heralds of Hymen being thus rudely repulsed, the Jaipur prince prepared to avenge his insulted pride and disappointed hopes, and, accordingly, arrayed a force such as had not assembled in Hindustan since the empire was in its glory. Raja Man eagerly took up the gauntlet, and headed the " swords of Maru." But dissension prevailed in Marwar, where rival claimants for the throne had divided the loyalty of the clans, introducing there also the influence of the Mahrattas. The marriage proposals gave the malcontents an opportunity for displaying their long curbed resentments, and, following the example of Mewar, they set up a pretender, whose interests were eagerly espoused, and whose standard was erected in the array of Jaipur. A battle was fought at Parbatsir on the common boundary of the two states; but the action was short, for while a heavy cannonade opened on both sides, the majority of the Marwar nobles went over to the pretender. Raja Man turned his poniard against himself, but some chiefs yet faithful to him wrested the weapon from his hand, and conveyed him from the field. He was pursued to his capital, which was invested and gallantly defended during six months. The town was at length taken and plundered; but the castle of Joda defied every assault, and in time the mightyhost of Jaipur, which had eaten the country bare for twenty miles round, began to crumble away; intrigue spread through its ranks, and the siege ended in pusillanimity and flight. Jaggat Singh, humbled and crestfallen, skulked from the desert retreat of his rival, indebted to a partisan corps for safety and convoy to his capital, around whose walls the wretched remnants of his ill - starred troops long lagged in expectation of pay, while the bones of their horses whitened the plain on every side. Raja Man owed his delivery to one of the most notorious villains that India ever produced, the Nawab Amir Khan. This man held command of a brigade of artillery and horse in Jaipur's army, but in the course of the siege he deserted to the side of Marwar; and he now offered, for a specific sum, to rid the Raja of the pretender and all his associates. The offer was accepted, and Amir Khan was not long in laying his plans. Like Judas he kissed whom he betrayed. He took service with the pretender, and, at a shrine of a saint of his own faith, exchanged turbans with his leaders, a ceremony equivalent to the most solemn oath of friendship. The too credulous Rajputs celebrated this acquisition to their party by feasting and revelry; but in the midst of dance and song, the tents were cut down, and the victims, enveloped in their toils, were slaughtered by the Khan's followers with showers of grape. Thus finished the under-plot; but another, and more noble, victim was demanded before discomfited ambition could repose, or the curtain drop on this eventful drama. Neither party would relinquish his claim to the fair object of the war; and it was the unhallowed suggestion of the same ferocious Khan that the blood of the princess could alone extinguish the torch of discord. We need not analyse the motives that prompted him to this devilish scheme. He had determined to make himself all-powerful in Marwar, and the alliance of Raja Man with Mewar was not calculated to further his object; nor was he anxious for a renewal of the war with Jaipur, which he knew to be inevitable unless the dispute were settled. Through the medium of the Chondawat, Ajit, whom a heavy bribe had made his accomplice, he revealed his design to the Rana, and induced him to believe that there were but two alternatives to his daughter's death. Either he must force her, already promised to the Jaipur prince, into a dishonourable marriage with Raja Man, or, by refusing to do so, draw ruin upon himself and his country. The fiat was passed that Krishna Kumari should die. Krishna Kumari Bai, the "virgin princess Krishna," was in her sixteenth year. Her mother was of the Chawura race, descended from the ancient kings of Anhulwara. Sprung from the noblest blood of Hind, Kumari added beauty of face and form to an engaging demeanour, and was justly celebrated as "the flower of Rajasthan." When the fatal cup was presented to her she received it with a smile, at the same time addressing words of comfort to her frantic mother; "Why afflict yourself, my mother, at this shortening of the sorrows of life? I fear not to die. We are marked out for sacrifice from our birth; let me thank my father that I have lived so long." Three times the nauseating draught failed in its object. A fourth, a powerful opiate, was prepared and administered, and " the desires of barbarity were accomplished. She slept." The wretched mother did not long survive her child; nature was exhausted in the ravings of despair; she refused food, and in a few days her remains followed those of Kumari to the funeral pyre. Even the Khan, when the instrument of his infamy, Ajt't, reported the issue, could not conceal his contempt, and tauntingly asked " if this were the boasted Rajput valour." But a yet sterner rebuke awaited the dishonoured Chondawat. Four days after the crime had been committed, Sangram reached the capital — a man in every respect the reverse of Ajit. Audaciously brave, the chief of the Suktawats feared neither the frown of his sovereign nor the sword of his enemy. Without introduction he made his way into the presence. "O dastard!" he exclaimed, "thou hast thrown dust on the Sesodia race; thou hast defiled by thy sin the blood which has flowed in purity for a hundred ages. Let no Sesodia ever hold up his head again ! The line of Bappa Rawul is at an end. Heaven has ordained this, a signal for our destruction." Then, turning upon Ajit, who was present, he continued: "Thou stain on the Sesodia race, thou impure of Rajput blood, dust be on thy head as thou hast covered us all with shame. May you die childless, and your name die with you." The traitor to manhood and his sovereign dared no reply. Sangram died not long afterwards, but his curse was fulfilled. The Rana had ninety-five children; but only one of his sons grew to manhood, and only two daughters reached the marriageable age. The latter were united to the princes of Jaisalmir and Bikanir, in which states the Salic law precludes all honour through female descent. With regard to Aji't, the curse was fully accomplished. Scarcely a month after it was uttered, his wife and two sons died. The traitor himself wandered from shrine to shrine performing penance, his beads in his hand, and Rama! Rama! ever on his lips. But enough of him! Let us dismiss him with the words of Sangram, " dust on his head." The mind sickens at the contemplation of these unvarying scenes of atrocity; but this unhappy state had yet to pass through two more lustres of aggravated sufferings. From the day when the embassy of Jaipur was expelled, that of the British was in the train of Sindhia, a witness to the evils described, but powerless to offer protection. In the spring of 1806, when the embassy entered Mewar, nothing but ruin met the eye — deserted towns, roofless houses, and uncultivated plains. Wherever the Mahratta encamped, annihilation was ensured — it was a habit — and twenty -four hours sufficed to give the most flourishing spot the aspect of a desert. His march was always to be traced for days afterwards by burning villages and destroyed cultivation. Some satisfaction may result from the fact that there was scarcely an actor in these scenes whose end was not fitted to his career. Ambaji was compelled to disgorge the spoils of Mewar, and his personal sufferings made some atonement for the ills he had inflicted on her. This satrap, who had almost established his independence in the fortress and territory of Gwalior, suffered every indignity from Sindhia. He was confined in a mean tent, manacled, and suffered the torture of small lighted torches applied to his fingers. He attempted suicide to avoid the surrender of his riches, but the instrument, a small English penknife, was insufficient for his purpose. The surgeon to the British embassy sewed up the wounds, and his coffers were eased of fifty-five lakhs of rupees. He died shortly after, and, if report be correct, the residue of his treasure was possessed by his ancient ally, Zalim Singh. In 1809, Amir Khan led his myrmidons to the capital, threatening the demolition of the shrine of Eklinga if refused a contribution of eleven lakhs of rupees. Nine were agreed to, but by no effort could the sum be raised; whereupon the Rana's envoys were treated with indignity, and Kishen Das, the minister, wounded. The passes to the valley of Udaipiir were again forced, Amir Khan entering by Dobari, and his son-in-law, the notorious Jamshid, by Chirwa. Their ruffianly Pathans were billeted on the city, which still bears traces of the barbarities they committed. In 181 1, Bappu Sindhia arrived with the title of Subhadar, and encamped in the valley, and from this to 18 14 these vampires possessed themselves of the entire fiscal domain, with many of the fiefs, often disputing with each other over the spoils. Mewar was fast approaching dissolution. Her fields were lying fallow, her cities in ruins, her inhabitants exiled, her chieftains demoralised, and her prince and his family destitute of the common comforts of life. But deliverance was at hand. In 1813, the Marquis of Hastings succeeded Lord Cornwallis as Governor-General of India, and the vigorous policy of Lord Wellesley was at once resumed. The Mahrattas were everywhere defeated, and in 1817 Mewar, in company with nearly every state in Rajputana, passed under the protecting arm of Great Britain. The articles of the treaty which was entered into were ten in number, and were as follows: — Treaty between the Honourable the English East India Company and Maharana Bhim Singh, Rana of Oudeepoor, concluded by Mr Charles Theophilus Metcalf on the part of the Honourable Company, in virtue of full powers granted by his Excellency the Most Noble the Marquis of Hastings, K.G., Governor - General, and by Thakoor Ajeet Sing on the part of the Maharana, in virtue of full powers confirmed by the Maharana aforesaid. First Article. — There shall be perpetual friendship, alliance, and unity of interests between the two states, from generation to generation, and the friends and enemies of one shall be the friends and enemies of both. Second Article. — The British Government engages to protect the principality and territory of Oudeepoor. Third Article. — The Maharana of Oudeepoor will always act in subordinate co-operation with the British Government, and acknowledge its supremacy, and will not have any connection with other chiefs or states. Fourth Article. — The Maharana of Oudeepoor will not enter into any negotiation with any chief or state without the knowledge and sanction of the British Government; but his usual amicable correspondence with friends and relations shall continue. Fifth Article. — The Maharana of Oudeepur will not commit aggressions upon any one; and if by accident a dispute arise with anyone, it shall be submitted to the arbitration and award of the British Government. Sixth Article. — One-fourth of the revenue of the actual territory of Oudeepur shall be paid annually to the British Government as tribute for five years; and after that term three-eighths in perpetuity. The Maharana will not have connection with any other power on account of tribute, and if any one advance claims of that nature, the British Government engages to reply to them. Seventh Article. — Whereas the Maharana represents that portions of the dominions of Oudeepur have fallen, by improper means, into the possession of others, and solicits the restitution of those places : the British Government from a want of accurate information is not able to enter into any positive engagement on this subject; but will always keep in view the renovation of the prosperity of the state of Oudeepur, and after ascertaining the nature of each case, will use its best exertions for the accomplishment of the object, on every occasion on which it may be proper to do so. Whatever places may thus be restored to the state of Oudeepur by the aid of the British Government, three-eighths of their revenues shall be paid in perpetuity to the British Government. Eighth Article. — The troops of the state of Oudeepur shall be furnished according to its means, at the requisition of the British Government. Ninth Article. — The Maharana of Oudeepur shall always be absolute ruler of his own country, and the British jurisdiction shall not be introduced into that principality. Tenth Article. — The present treaty of ten articles having been concluded at Dihlee, and signed and sealed by Mr Charles Theophilus Metcalfe and Thakoor Ajeet Sing Bahadoor, the ratifications of the same, by his Excellency the Most Noble the Governor-General, and Maharana Bheem Sing, shall be mutually delivered within a month from this date. Done at Dihlee, this thirteenth day of January, a.d. 1818.

Chapter 17 — Ruin and Rescue