With the exception, then, of Bhopál, now to be referred to, and Mehipur, that part of Central India represented by the dominions of Holkar had become hostile to the British from the 1st of July.
Bhopál, indeed, was a brilliant exception. The then reigning Begum, Sikandar Begum, had assumed office, in February 1847, as regent for her daughter. She was a very remarkable woman, possessing great resolution, and a more than ordinary talent for affairs. In six years she had paid off the entire public debt of the State, had abolished the system of farming the revenue, had put a stop to monopolies, had reorganised the police, and had reformed the mint. When she scented the breaking out of the rebellion of 1857, she at once made up her mind to fight for her trusted overlord. As early as April she communicated to the British Agent the contents of a lithographed proclamation, urging the overthrow and destruction of the English, which had been sent her. In June she expelled from her territories a native who was raising men for a purpose he did not care to avow. In July she afforded shelter to Durand and those whom he was escorting. She did all these things under enormous difficulties. Her nearest relations were daily urging upon her an opposite course; her troops mutinied, her nobles murmured. But Sikandar Begum never wavered. She caused the English fugitives to be escorted safely to Hoshangábád, she allayed the excitement in her capital, put down the mutinous contingent with a strong hand, restored, and then maintained, order throughout her dominions. Like Sindhiá, she clearly recognised that the safety of the native princes depended upon the maintenance of the beneficently exercised power of the British overlord.
But Bhopál was the exception. In the other portions of the dominions of Holkar the class whose taste is plunder
