the skirts of the mountains and the great proprietors in Bengal there had been chronic fighting from time immemorial, for all these Nepalese border chiefs had annexed strips of land in the plains immediately below them; but now the Gúrkhas had subdued all the highlands and the English had brought the low country under their authority. It followed that the constant quarrels over this debateable border soon embroiled the two governments. The Nepalese officers on the frontier encroached audaciously upon the lands of British subjects, occupied tracts belonging to Bengal, and refused to retire. At last, in 1814, when they seized two small districts, Lord Hastings sent to their government a peremptory demand that they should evacuate, and on receiving merely evasive replies he re-occupied these districts by a detachment of troops, before whom the Gurkha officers retired quietly. But so soon as the troops had been withdrawn the Gurkhas made a sudden attack upon our police stations and massacred some twenty men. Their government, after holding a formal council, had resolved upon war, being persuaded that the English could never penetrate into the mountains of Nepal.

Then ensued the first of those numerous expeditions into the interior of the great hill-ranges surrounding India, in which the Anglo-Indian government has ever since been at intervals engaged. The frontier which was to be the scene of war stretched a distance of about six hundred miles, and the enemy had the command of all the passes leading up into the highlands. The attack was made by the English at three separate points; and although General Gillespie was repulsed and killed in attempting to storm a fort, yet in spite of a brave and obstinate resistance our troops gained their

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footing within the hills, and drove the Gúrkhas out of all their positions on the west. The Nepalese government was compelled to sign a treaty ceding a long strip of the lower Himalayas, with most of the adjacent forest lands, extending from the present western frontier of the Nepal State north-westward as far as the Sutlej river. All the hill-country that now overhangs Rohilcund and the North-West Provinces up to the Jumna river with the valuable belt of low-lying forest that skirts the base of the outer ranges toward India-fell thus into our hands. By this cession of a Himalayan province the Anglo-Indian frontier was carried up to and beyond the watershed of the highest mountains separating India from Tibet or from Kathay; and the English dominion thenceforward became conterminous for the first time with the Chinese empire, whose government has ever since observed our proceedings with marked and intelligible solicitude. The Gurkha chiefs of Nepal, having been thus confined within a narrow belt of highland territory immediately overlooking our most valuable province, have nevertheless maintained, through several internal revolutions, their system of military domination, and have sedulously pursued a policy of training their troops upon the European model by discipline and the importation of arms.

SECTION III. The Peshwa and the Pindári War (1816-1818).

In the meantime the freebooting bands of central India were increasing in numbers and audacity. The Pindáris, who were openly disowned and secretly encouraged by the Maratha chiefs, had made an inroad into certain districts of the Madras Presidency, carrying

off great booty; they had also plundered on the frontier of Bengal. Amir Khan, the Pathán leader, was besieging Jeypore, whose Rája applied for succour to the English. After much negotiation Lord Hastings succeeded not only in bringing the Rájput State of Jeypore within the English protectorate, but also in concluding a subsidiary treaty with the Bhonsla Rája of Nágpore, whereby an important member was detached from the Maratha confederation. But this Rája soon repented an engagement which affected his complete independence; and under the influence of a party at his capital hostile to the English, he began to correspond secretly with the Peshwa at Poona, who had become restless, disaffected, and exceedingly impatient of British mediation in his dealings with feudatories or neighbouring States. The war in Nepal, which seemed likely to be long and troublesome, encouraged among the Marathas an inclination to try conclusions again with the English. The Peshwa began to assemble his troops and collect military stores; the British Resident replied by calling in the subsidiary force; and a kind of sporadic insurrection, privily fomented by the Poona authorities, was breaking out in the country. All these threatening symptoms reached a crisis when the Guicowar's envoy, who had been sent to Poona on a special mission under British guarantee, was assassinated, with the Peshwa's connivance, by one of his confidential favourites. The murderer's surrender was extorted from the Peshwa, with the greatest difficulty, by the British Resident, but he escaped from prison, and the Peshwa, who seemed about to take up arms in his defence, only lost courage and made terms just as an open rupture was becoming imminent. He signed, in 1817, a treaty making cessions of territory in exchange for

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overawed into signing a treaty of co-operation by the display of force. The Peshwa, galled by the yoke which the recent treaty had fixed upon him, collected his forces and broke out into open hostility, attacking the British troops at Poona1; while at Nágpore the Rája declared for him as the head of the Maratha nation, and sent his own troops against the British Residency. On both occasions the Marathas were repulsed, though not without stout fighting at Nágpore; and as Holkar's army, which attempted to join the Peshwa, had been defeated at Mehidpore 2, the opposition of the Maratha powers to the Governor-General's policy of pacification soon came to an end. The Peshwa, pursued by the British flying columns, fought one or two sharp actions; but his troops were at last scattered, his forts were taken, and he himself was pursued until he finally surrendered upon an assurance of suitable provision. Lord Hastings had determined to exclude him and his family from any further share of influence or dominion in the Dekhan; and the greater part of his territories passed under the British sovereignty. The State of Satára was reconstituted out of the Peshwa's domains, and placed under the descendant of Sivaji, the original founder of the Maratha empire, whose dynasty had been supplanted by the Peshwas, a line of hereditary prime ministers. The Nágpore State had also to cede several important districts; and its military establishments passed under British control. The group of ancient Rájput chiefships which had been spoiled and ransomed for years by the Marathas and Amir Khan, with a number of

1 November, 1817. See a picturesque description, by an eye-witness, of this action in Grant Duff's History of the Marathas, vol. iii. ch. 18. 2 December, 1816. 3 June, 1818.