XXII.] HOLKAR BESIEGES DELHI. 171 head-quarters at that station, and lost no time in summoning the various corps from their cantonments to repel this new and unexpected eruption. Meanwhile, Holkar planned the daring project of seizing the city of Delhi, and obtaining possession of the person of the emperor. Leaving the greater portion of his cavalry to engage the attention of General Lake, he started in great secrecy, with his infantry and guns, and suddenly appeared before the gates of the city on the 7th October. It was ten miles in circumference, defended only by dilapidated walls and ruined ramparts, and filled with a mixed population, not as yet accustomed to British rule. The garrison was so small as not to admit of reliefs, and provisions and sweetmeats were therefore served to them on the battlements, but the British Resident, Colonel Ochterlony, animated by the spirit of Clive, and nobly seconded by the commandant, Colonel Burn, defended the city for nine days, against the utmost efforts of the enemy, 20,000 strong, with 100 pieces of cannon. At length Holkar, despairing of success, drew off his army, and sending back his infantry and guns into the territory of his new ally, the raja of Bhurtpore, set out with his cavalry to lay waste the British territories in the Dooab, in the ancient style of Mahratta marauding. General Lake also divided his force; the main body was left under General Fraser to watch Holkar's battalions of infantry, while he placed himself at the head of six regiments of cavalry, European and Native, and his mounted artillery, and started in pursuit of him. In this expedition Holkar contrived invariably to keep twenty or thirty miles a-head, ravaging and burning the defenceless villages as he swept along. After a very harassing march of three hundred Pursued by Gen, Lake, 1804. and fifty miles in fourteen days, the General was so fortunate as to come up with his encampment at Futtygur, on the 17th November, having marched no less than fifty-six miles in the preceding twentyfour hours. Holkar had been led to believe from the report of his spies, that the British cavalry was a day's march behind him, and had retired to rest. The horses were at picket, and the men 172 BATTLE OF DEEG. [СНАР. lay asleep by their side, wrapped in their blankets, when several rounds of grape gave them the first intimation of the arrival of their pursuers. Holkar mounted his horse and galloped off with the few troopers around him, leaving the rest of his troops to shift for themselves, and they were either cut up or dispersed in all directions. He hastened back to rejoin his infantry, but found on re-crossing the Jumna, that Battle of Deeg, they had been subject during his absence to an 13th Nov. 1804. irreparable defeat. Four days before the action at Futtygur, General Fraser had encountered Holkar's army, consisting of fourteen battalions of infantry, a large body of horse, and a hundred and sixty guns, in the vicinity of Deeg. The English force did not exceed 6,000, but contained in its ranks the 76th Highlanders, the foremost in the path of honour and danger, and they again bore the brunt of the battle. The enemy was completely routed, and left eighty-seven pieces of cannon on the field. But the victory was dearly purchased by the loss of 643 killed and wounded, and more especially of the noble general, who died three days after of his wounds. On his removal from the field during the action, the command devolved on Colonel Monson, who maintained the conflict with the utmost gallantry, and had the satisfaction of recovering fourteen of the guns he had lost in his retreat. During the engagement a destructive fire was opened on the British troops from the fort of Deeg, which belonged to the raja of Bhurtpore. A battering train was immediately ordered up from Agra, and the fortress was captured on the 23rd December. Siege of Bhurt pore, 1805. The fortunes of Holkar were now at the lowest ebb. He had lost all his forts in the Deccan. General Jones, who, under the advice of General Wellesley, had been appointed in the room of the incompetent Colonel Murray to the Guzerat command, had taken all his fortresses in Malwa, and marched up through the heart of the Mahratta dominions, unmolested, and joined General Lake's camp. The vast army with which Holkar had proudly crossed the Jumna four months before, had dwindled away under repeated reverses, XXII.] SIEGE OF BHURTPORE. 173 and the entire destruction of his power appeared inevitable, when every advantage which had been gained in the campaign was thrown away by the fatal resolution of General Lake to invest Bhurtpore. It was a town and fortress eight miles in circumference, surrounded by the invulnerable bulwark of a lofty mud wall of great thickness, and protected by numerous bastions, and a deep ditch, filled with water. It was garrisoned by about 8,000 of the raja's troops, and the remnant of Holkar's infantry. General Lake refused to listen to any argument, and without a sufficient siege train, without an engineer officer of any experience, without even a reconnaissance, resolved, with breathless impetuosity, at once to besiege the town. This memorable siege commenced on the 4th January, 1805, and the army did not break up before the 21st April. Four unsuccessful attacks were made which entailed the unprecedented loss of 3,200 men in killed and wounded, of whom 103 were officers. The raja was joined at his own request during the siege by Ameer Khan, but the exorbitant demands of that chief speedily dissolved the union, on which he proceeded with his predatory horse into his native province of Rohilcund, in the hope of raising it against the English. General Smith was detached in pursuit of him, and after performing the extraordinary march of seven hundred miles in forty-three days, overtook him at the foot of the Himalayu, and chased him back across the Jumna. Though the siege of Bhurtpore had not been successful, the raja severely felt the loss of all his territorial revenues, and the exactions of Holkar, and became anxious to bring the war to a close. He therefore sent a vakeel to General Lake, ostensibly to congratulate him on his advance to the peerage, of which intelligence had just been received, but, in reality, to open negociations; and a treaty was speedily concluded on condition that he should pay twenty lacs of rupees towards the expenses of the war, in four instalments. But the submission of the raja, under such circumstances, could not repair the loss of reputation which the British Government Treaty with 174 DISSATISFACTION OF SINDIA. [CHAP. sustained by the notorious failure of the siege. Nothing ha filled the princes of India with greater dismay than the easy and rapid reduction of their strongest fortresses in positions which appeared to be absolutely impregnable. But in the present case, a British army, under the Commander-in-chief in person, had been foiled for several months in every attempt to capture a mud fort, situated in a plain, and the Native chiefs began to flatter themselves that our skill and our prowess were on the wane. The remembrance of our disgrace was perpetuated even in remote districts by rude delineations on the walls of British soldiers hurled from the battlements of Bhurtpore, nor was the impression created by this failure completely removed till the capture of the fort by Lord Combermere, twenty-one years afterwards. Attitude of Sin This accommodation with Bhurtpore was hasdia; Gohud, and tened by the menacing attitude of Sindia, to Gwalior, 1805. whose proceedings we now return. By the treaty of Sirjee Angengaom, he had engaged in general terms to relinquish all claim on the rajas and feudatories in the north, with whom the Governor-General had concluded defensive alliances. When the list of these chiefs was for the first time presented to him, in April, 1804, with the ratified treaty, he was mortified to find the name of the rana of Gohud, together with the fort of Gwalior, included in it, and he urged the most vehement objection to these alienations. Gwalior, on which he set a high value, was, he said, the personal gift of the emperor to him; and his servant, Ambajee Inglia, to whom it had been entrusted, had no right whatever to dispose of it, when he treacherously joined the English. As to the rana of Gohud, he scouted the idea of acknowledging the existence of such a being, whose power he had extinguished, and whose territories he had annexed to his own twenty years before. It was an unfortunate circumstance that General Lake in the north and General Wellesley in the south should have been making arrangements and alliances affecting the interest of Sindia, in total ignorance of the proceedings of each other. XXII.] GOHUD AND GWALIOR. 175 When General Wellesley negotiated the treaty with Sindia he was not aware that Lord Wellesley had determined to reestablish the principality of Gohud, and to make the rana independent. Sindia deprecated the revival of these ancient and extinct claims, and justly observed that "it could not fail to weaken the fundamental rights of actual possession, as the greater portion of the Company's territories as well as his own had no other foundation." General Wellesley affirmed that Sindia had agreed to the treaty in the fullest confidence that Gwalior was to remain with him, and that, for his part, "he would sacrifice it and every other frontier town ten times over to preserve our credit for scrupulous good faith, and that the advantages and honour we had gained in the last war and peace must not be frittered away in arguments drawn from the overstrained principles of the law of nations, which was not understood in India." Major Malcolm, the envoy at the court of Sindia, entertained the same views, and anxiously laboured for the restoration of these possessions to Sindia. Lord Wellesley resented this opposition to his wishes, and when the Major pleaded, in extenuation of his conduct, that his sole object was to promote the public interests, remarked, Major Malcolm's business is to obey my orders and enforce my instructions; I will look after the public interests." The Governor-General was all the more pertinacious on this occasion from being entirely in the wrong, and his conduct cannot be more accurately described than by the expressive Indian word, zid. Sindia was obliged to yield to his imperious demand, and submit to the alienation of Gohud and Gwalior, but it continued to rankle in his bosom. 66 The disastrous retreat of Colonel Monson proHostility of Sindia, 1804-5. duced a profound sensation throughout Hindostan; it created an impression that fortune was at length deserting the standard of the Company, and it strengthened the hope that the Mahrattas might yet regain their former ascendency. Wittul Punt, Sindia's great minister, died in October, 1804, and was succeeded by Sirjee Rao Ghatkay, the invete |