Farzana Read online

  At the end of 1802 Farzana added a sixth battalion to the brigade, doubling the size of the army she had inherited from Reinhardt and bringing the number of her immediate dependents to more than 6,000. Including those residents of Sardhana who were not directly in her service she could now count some 20,000 people as her ‘subjects’. Indian maharanis and begums had (and still have, even after their formal derecognition) an extraordinary genius for majesty. No matter how small and insignificant their states, and whether the status had been theirs since birth or unexpectedly acquired, they could be as supercilious and as gracious as any empress. Farzana’s progress from slum to palace (or ‘From Slave to Princess’ as Cecil Burns would have it) had been as improbable as any, but so completely had she adapted to the role that to her subjects she was now simply ‘Her Highness’. In the McGonagall-esque translation of the verses of her munshi Gokul Chand:

  So does her bounty to her people shine,

  That many of them think she is divine.

  ….

  Of all the rulers that the world has seen

  Another like her there has never been.1

  Equally important to Farzana, however, were her imperial titles of Zeb-un-Nissa, Farzand-i-Azizi and Umdat-al-Arakin. Ever since the emperor’s blinding by Ghulam Qadir she had been scrupulous in her attentions to Shah Alam, which was more than could be said for others. When Daulat Rao Scindia inherited the role of regent of the empire from his uncle Mahadji, he also inherited the Scindias’ blood feud with the Holkars, resurgent under Tukoji’s son. So embroiled had Daulat Rao since become in what amounted to another Maratha civil war that he completely neglected his responsibilities to the emperor. Lonelier and more isolated than ever, Shah Alam valued the solicitude of his ‘beloved daughter’ as highly as did she his forgiveness for having married Levassoult.

  In stark contrast to the harmony that prevailed between the seventy-five-year-old monarch and the fifty-something begum, the rivalry between the syphilitic new Scindia and the drug-addicted new Holkar had become even more vicious than that between their predecessors. Despite the urgent warnings of their advisors that their actions were putting Maratha hegemony at risk, the armies of these two delinquents continued to slug it out across Malwa and Mewar until ‘a dark cloud of anarchy, rapine and suffering descended on the unhappy land’.2 This time the struggle for supremacy was won by Holkar, whose first act was to oust the existing Peshwa, an appointee of Scindia, and install an adopted brother in his place. The deposed Peshwa then fled into the arms of the only power strong enough to effect his restoration – the English East India Company.

  Under the Treaty of Bassein, signed in December 1802, the Peshwa agreed to cede lands worth 2.5 million rupees a year in return for a British protective force of six battalions of sepoys to be permanently stationed in his dominions. Brushing aside the petulant Holkar, whose army had been weakened by its endless clashes with Scindia, ‘British forces, under the leadership of the future Duke of Wellington, entered Poona on 20 April 1803 and the Peshwa was brought back and formally restored to his throne as a British puppet.’3

  Wellesley’s defeat of Tipu Sultan of Mysore, and the death of Tipu himself, at the battle of Seringapatam in May 1799 had eliminated one potential French ally. That left the Maratha ‘Confederacy’, with or without its Peshwa, as the only significant power in India with whom the French might attempt an alliance, a scenario made all the more likely, thought the Governor General, by the fact that the supreme commander of Scindia’s army was still the fanatically Napoleonic General Perron. But any hopes Marquess Wellesley might have had that the British treaty with the Peshwa would encourage supposedly subordinate Maratha leaders like Scindia and Holkar to accept a similar arrangement were short-lived. Scindia was making aggressive preparations for war in his fortress of Gwalior and Holkar was venting his umbrage in a raiding spree on his Malwa neighbours; neither was inclined to negotiate away his independence of action. So the Governor General, losing what little patience he had, ordered his brother Arthur, recently promoted to Major General, to open hostilities against the Marathas.

  If any one year marked the beginning of British rule throughout the Indian subcontinent, it was 1803. The outbreak of the Second Anglo-Maratha War heralded the first active intervention of the East India Company in the affairs of Agra, Delhi and the Doab and the last round of the ceaseless rivalry between Marathas, Afghans and Rajputs for control of the emperor. It would also prove a defining moment for all those units, like the Sardhana Brigade, that had prospered in such chaotic times. And it would be particularly testing of the loyalties and prospects of those European and ‘country-born’ freebooters who had not already made good their exit.

  One such was James Skinner, now a captain in Scindia’s army. Two of his fellow officers, ‘Captain Stewart, a country-born, and Captain Carnegie, a Scotchman’, told their commander General Perron that they were not prepared to fight against the British. This so enraged Perron that he discharged all the remaining British and Anglo-Indians in his army. ‘All of us,’ said Skinner, ‘nine in number, were summarily dismissed, our arrears were paid up and we were ordered to quit the Maratha country.’4

  Most of the sacked officers shrugged their shoulders and went to offer their services to the East India Company. But Skinner’s brother Robert opted for a less orthodox career by seeking enrolment under the celebrated ‘Begum Sumeroo’. James Skinner himself was in a quandary. His Rajput mother had committed suicide rather than see her daughters taken out of purdah to be sent to school, and when his Scottish father had died, the seventeen-year-old James had run away to join de Boigne’s brigade and had since known no other life. According to his biographer, Skinner saw himself as ‘a complete native’ who ‘had no tie to Britain’ and who sought ‘nothing better than to live and die in the service he had been brought up in’. Reluctant therefore to follow Stewart and Carnegie into British service, he went to Agra with the intention of finding Perron and ‘declaring his determination to stick by him to the last’. He did eventually find Perron, but would soon have to reconsider.

  The Second Anglo-Maratha War opened on two fronts – in the Deccan, where Arthur Wellesley, the future Wellington, would take the field against Daulat Rao Scindia, and in the Doab, where the no less formidable General Gerard Lake confronted the bulk of Scindia’s forces under General Perron. Lake struck first on 1 September 1803 with an attack on Perron’s headquarters at Aligarh. ‘The British Indian army, like a high-spirited hound so long straining at the leash, sprang forward immediately on being let loose, eager to win glory and wealth by facing danger and death,’ writes Jadunath Sarkar.5 Instead, they found themselves facing a miscellany of leaderless sepoys who were overpowered in a morning of heavy fighting.

  Perron, who had long been looking for an opportunity to abandon the Marathas, had already despatched his two best brigades under Louis Bourquien to protect the emperor in Delhi and had himself then fled to Agra with only one thought in his mind – to withdraw his family and treasure and escape to British protection without being hindered by his deluded troops. ‘In the space of three hours,’ says Sarkar, ‘the French military prestige in India had been destroyed and Perron publicly shown to be a coward.’6

  Skinner’s disgust at Perron’s perfidy was palpable. He waylaid his former commander just outside Agra and tried to reason with him; but Perron, ‘in confusion and without his hat’, just shook his head and rode off saying, ‘Goodbye Mr Skinner; no trust – no trust.’ Skinner roared in reply, ‘Then you may go to the devil!’7 And within a week he had offered his services to General Lake. Perron had likewise applied to the Governor General for permission to retire to Lucknow under British protection, and both applications had been welcomed. ‘I consider the retirement of General Perron to be an event highly favourable to the success of British arms and to the interests of the British Government in India,’ wrote Marquess Wellesley. ‘It must also diminish the confidence which the Native Powers of India have been accustomed to repose
in the fidelity of their French officers.’8

  Having achieved the first of his objectives by taking Aligarh, General Lake turned to the second – the possession of Delhi and the Mughal emperor, both now in the hands of Louis Bourquien. A plea from Shah Alam begging him to come to his rescue added to the urgency. For Bourquien, ‘as intoxicated by dazzling dreams of wealth and power as surely as if he had taken a dose of bhang’,9 had just staged a revolt of his own. Denouncing Perron as a traitor, the former pastry cook had taken control of Perron’s army and was bent on seizing the emperor with a view to securing for himself appointment as Mir Bakshi (military commander of the imperial forces). Having entered Delhi at the head of two brigades, Bourquien was even now bombarding the Red Fort with a battery of eight guns, while the emperor cowered inside ‘in fear of this second Ghulam Qadir at his gate’.

  The decisive battle for Delhi was fought 5 miles east of the city on the east bank of the Jumna on 11 September 1803. Almost before the first shot had been fired Bourquien had abandoned his dreams and, like Perron, surrendered himself to Lake. Abandoned by its leader and most of his officers, ‘Scindia’s army,’ wrote Perron’s biographer Alfred Martineau, ‘was easily defeated.’10 Since he had lost a total of 461 men (of whom 116 were Europeans), and 170 horses (of whom his own was one), Lake would hardly have described his victory as ‘easy’, but it completed the work begun at Aligarh by destroying Perron’s entire field army. Three days later the Company troops crossed the Jumna by the bridge of boats built and unaccountably left intact by Bourquien, entered Delhi ‘marching in state amidst the jubilation of the populace of the capital’ and set up camp on the parade ground outside the gate of the Red Fort. On 16 September General Lake paid his first visit to the Emperor.

  FRIEND OR FOE

  Farzana’s position was now an extremely delicate one. As always, the retention of her jagir was her first concern; and as always, her jagir was in the gift of whoever had control of the emperor. Anticipating that this might soon be the British, she had written to Governor General Wellesley six months previously offering to place her territory and her troops at his disposal in return for British protection. Since Wellesley was at that time still hoping to reach a peaceful settlement with Scindia and had no wish to provoke him by appearing to lure away a valuable component of his army, his reply had been polite but non-committal.

  Her offer of help was ‘acknowledged with pleasure’, but ‘owing to diplomatic reasons the British were unable to avail themselves of her forces immediately’.11Without a more positive response Farzana had had no alternative but to remain under the orders of Daulat Rao Scindia. Thus when Scindia had commanded her to send five of her six battalions to the Deccan to confront the British she had been legally obliged to obey. But Lake’s arrival in Delhi meant that control of the emperor, and therefore control of her jagir, was now about to pass into the hands of the very power against whom the bulk of her army was currently deployed.

  Having gone to Sardhana to introduce the newly enrolled Robert Skinner to her one remaining battalion, Farzana was not in Delhi to watch Lake’s triumphant cavalcade approaching the Red Fort. Nor did she witness the first meeting between the fragile king of the world and his robust English saviour. One of Lake’s officers, who did attend, described the meeting as ‘pathetic beyond words; the descendant of the great Akbar and Aurangdib [sic] was found blind and aged, stripped of authority and reduced to poverty, seated under a small tattered canopy, the fragment of regal state and the mockery of human pride’.12 Moved by this wretched apparition, Lake had assured Shah Alam that ‘everything would be done for his personal comfort and for the support of his dignity’.13

  ‘We are now complete masters of India,’ wrote East India Company officer Thomas Munro, ‘and nothing can shake our power if we take proper measures to confirm it.’14 This was a slight exaggeration. The war had still to be won. But at least the British presence in Delhi changed the balance of power. Delighted to see the Marathas sent packing, and eager to ingratiate themselves with the new ‘masters of India’, the Rajput rulers of Alwar, Jaipur and Jodhpur hurried to Delhi to congratulate Lake and offer their submission.

  Farzana, tempted to do the same but still cautious, sent Robert Skinner as an envoy to Delhi to find out how she would be received. Two days later Skinner returned with instructions from General Lake that she ‘stand fast and not move from Sardhana, in which case she should be treated favourably by the British government’.15Although generally positive, this response, like Wellesley’s, was somewhat non-committal. Farzana decided to take matters into her own hands. Despatching a crate of wine to Lake as proof of her pro-English credentials, she set off for Delhi. Of what followed there was no more gleeful witness than Robert Skinner, who relayed the story to his brother James at the first opportunity.

  She arrived at headquarters just after dinner, and being carried in her palankeen [sic] at once to the reception tent, his lordship [as Lake would soon become] came out to meet and receive her. Lord Lake was not a little pleased at the early demonstration of the Begum’s loyalty, and being a little elevated by the wine which had just been drunk, he forgot the novel circumstance of its being a native female he was about to receive. So he gallantly advanced, and to the utter dismay of her attendants, took her in his arms and kissed her.16

  Lake’s soldiers, who had thought the begum an enemy, were equally dismayed by their commander’s behaviour and Farzana herself might well have taken offence at such casual familiarity. ‘But,’ said Skinner, ‘the lady’s presence of mind put all right.’ Calmly receiving the English general’s embrace, she ‘declared to all within earshot that it was the kiss of a padre bestowing forgiveness’.17Since Farzana was known to be a Christian, this improbable explanation was accepted without question by onlookers on both sides.

  Despite having ordered her to stay in Sardhana, Lake would probably have welcomed this ‘bejewelled vision of delight’ even had he not been in his cups. For the situation had changed. Unbeknownst to Farzana, Governor General Wellesley in Calcutta had remembered her earlier offer of allegiance and had just instructed Lake to accept it on condition that the Sardhana Brigade be placed at the disposal of his brother General Arthur Wellesley in the coming conflict with Daulat Rao Scindia. He had also asked his brother to contrive some means whereby her battalions could be put to use as soon as they could detach themselves from the Marathas.

  Equally unbeknownst to the Governor General, and in an attempt to force Wellesley’s hand, Farzana had already given Saleur exactly that order. In fact the elderly captain was probably obeying it at the very moment of her meeting with General Lake. The 1803 battle of Assaye, between a 25,000-strong force under the command of Arthur Wellesley and a Maratha army twice that size under Scindia and the raja of Berar (a Bhonsle of Nagpur), would be remembered by Wellesley as ‘the bloodiest for the numbers [of casualties] that I ever saw’ – and that was after his victory at Waterloo.

  On a single day, 23 September 1803, in a tumult of cavalry charge and countercharge, relentless artillery fire and desperate hand-to-hand fighting, Wellesley lost in killed and wounded just under a quarter of the 6,000 men engaged in battle. Maratha losses were even heavier, with 1,200 dead and probably three times as many wounded, ‘but with their much greater numbers they could more easily afford them’, opines a British historian. ‘In the end the better discipline of the Company’s troops and Wellesley’s cool generalship told against the Marathas’ superior numbers; their line was driven back and they retreated across the river Juah, leaving nintey-eight of their guns in British hands. The victory was complete.’18

  In obedience to Farzana’s order, Captain Saleur had kept the Sardhana battalions away from the action on the pretext of having been commissioned to guard Scindia’s baggage train. Despite being charged by a British cavalry contingent unaware of the impending defection of the battalions, and despite the commander of the cavalry charge being killed by a volley of Sardhana grapeshot in the action, ‘it is a rem
arkable thing, and much to the credit of the Begum’s troops,’ wrote James Skinner, ‘that her battalions were the only part of Scindia’s army that went off unbroken from the field of Assaye.’19

  Back in Delhi, all this would be to Farzana’s advantage. Gratified by Lake’s all-too-obvious admiration, and encouraged by Wellesley’s interest, she must have been confident that confirmation of her jagir was hers for the asking. But it was not to be that easy. The victories at Aligarh, Delhi and now Assaye still did not signal the end of the war. Holkar was yet rampaging round Malwa and both Daulat Rao Scindia and his ally the Bhonsle rajah of Berar had survived the carnage of Assaye and were attempting to regroup in their respective strongholds near Poona. Leaving Colonel David Ochterlony in Delhi as provisional Resident with responsibility for the protection of the city and for ensuring the emperor’s safety, Lake headed for Agra where both the town and the fort were still in Maratha hands, while Wellesley prepared a renewed assault on Scindia and the raja of Berar.

  With the main players thus otherwise engaged and the Governor General out of reach in Calcutta, Farzana concentrated on cultivating Resident David Ochterlony. A veteran of the Company’s wars with Mysore and a prisoner for a while of Tipu Sultan, Ochterlony had served with the Company’s army for over quarter of a century and ‘having made India his home, vowed never to leave’.20 The epitome of the Indianized European, he was said to take the evening air in Delhi followed by thirteen wives on thirteen elephants.

  The nabob and the begum found much in common, and it was to Ochterlony that she turned when, in December 1803, she was finally notified of the Governor General’s decision on her future. The good news was that he had decided to accept her offer of allegiance. The bad news was that he had also decided that the whole Doab, including Sardhana, should come under direct British rule. Farzana must therefore surrender her estates, leave her home, and accept a jagir west of the Jumna and so beyond British jurisdiction by way of compensation.