stance, really, if not formally, on the defensive; and that it was in the overthrow of the coalitions formed for their destruction, or the necessary defence of the allies whom previous victory had brought to their side, that the real cause of all their Indian acquisitions is to be found."
It is demonstrative of this total absence of the spirit of aggression, that the Company continued not masters of a foot of Indian territory, beyond the walls of a few trifling factories, for 150 years, from their incorporation by Elizabeth down to the victory of Plassey; and that, in the year 1756, when their chief factory, Calcutta, was seized by Surajee Dowlah, the whole garrison, including clerks and servants, amounted to but 146 people, whom the tyrant flung into one dungeon to die. It is equally remarkable, that from this single act of barbarity followed the ruin of the tyrant and his dynasty; that the horror inspired by the compendious murder first turned the British eye on the East; and that, in the "Black-hole of Calcutta," may be said to have been moulded the massive diadem of our Indian empire.
But in the succession of those conquests the perseverance of the conquerors was as much to be tried as their ability or their courage. Within a few years the British possessions had begun to taste of opulence, and to excite the habitual propensities of the native powers to plunder. The character of gentleness has been unaccountably ascribed to the Indian; for of all the countries, even of the barbarian world, India has been the most embittered by faction, torn by civil war, and trampled by mutual invasion. The native chieftains, knowing no use of wealth but to waste it, of property but to plunder it, or of power but to turn it into an instrument of havoc, lived in constant war, or the preparation for war. Despising the British as merchants, and less fearing than detesting them in their capacity of warriors; and adding to all this the abhorrence created by the brute ferocity of Mahometanism, and the subtle bigotry of the Hindoo, war seemed to be the new, but natural element, in which the inhabitants and the strangers were to live. When the old dynasties were subverted by the sword of a general or the dagger of a slave, the new possessor of the throne immediately attempted to sustain at once his reputation and his power by war, and chiefly war against the British. Within twenty-four years from the attack on Calcutta, Hyder Ali invaded the presidency, beat the two armies of Baillie and Monro, who had been thrown in his way with singularly inadequate forces, and burned the country up to the gates of Madras. After a long succession of desperate actions, Hyder, at the moment when he had secured the aid of a French fleet, was fortunately swept away by an enemy which neither kings nor armies can resist. He died; yet this desperate warrior, whose life was one scene of stratagem, march, and battle, had survived till the age of eighty-two.
A more fortunate circumstance still was the character of his successor. Hyder Ali himself declared of his son Tippoo, that he would lose all the dominions which his own life of labour had gained. Tippoo had all the courage of his father without his understanding, and all his treachery without his knowledge of mankind. His ferocity plunged him into immediate conflict with the British, and his rashness ensured his ruin.
Mr Alison conceives that the chief part of this ruin was due to his having deserted the military tactics of his father. "He was not equally impressed as his great predecessor with the expediency of combating the invaders with the national arms of the East, and wearing out the disciplined battalions of Europe by those innumerable horsemen, in whom, from the earliest times, the real strength of Asia has consisted. Almost all Hyder's successes were gained by his cavalry. It was when severed from his infantry and heavy artillery, and attended only by a few flying guns, that his forces were most formidable; and it augments our admiration of the firmness and discipline with which the Sepoy regiments under Coote withstood his assaults, when we recollect that they had to resist, for days and weeks together, under the rays of a tropical sun, the incessant charges of a cavalry rivalling that of the Parthians in swiftness, equalling that of the Mamelukes in daring, and approaching that of the Tartars in numbers."
We shall not venture to lecture the clever author on tactics, nor do we
