and important part for these ten years, he is at once dreaded and idolised. Latterly, the very name of De Boigne conveyed more terror than the thunder of his cannon, a singular instance of which I will relate. Nujut Koolee Khan, in his last moments, advised his Begum to resist, in the fortress of Canonnd, the efforts of his enemies. "Re“sist them," he said; "but if De Boigne appears, yield." That this renown was not unfounded, may be gathered from the list of his victories at Agra, at Patun, at Mairtha, at Lukhairee, and many other fields of lesser importance: he never lost a battle. He will be long regretted in India. His justice was uncommon, and singularly well proportioned between severity and mildness; he possessed the art of gaining the confidence of both princes and subjects; active and persevering to a degree only to be conceived or believed by those who were spectators of his indefatigable labours, he continued at business of the most varied and important character from sunrise to midnight. and this without an European assistant-for he is diffident in placing his trust-and all this not for one day, but unremittingly for ten years. To this unceasing toil he sacrificed one of the most robust constitutions which ever nature formed. In person he is above six feet high, largelimbed, giant-boned, strong-featured, and with piercing eyes.

'He raised the power of Madhajee Sindhia to a pitch that chief could never have expected or seriously hoped for; and fixed it on the basis of a powerful, well-disciplined, and well-paid army. Dowlut Rao Sindhia now possesses the largest and best-disciplined troops that ever were under a native prince, in the European form; and he may defy, and has defied, the whole Mahratta empire. He has six regular brigades, besides detached battalions; they consist of thirty battalions of Sepoys, and ten of Nujeebs, of 700 men each; 2,000 regular cavalry, and 200 pieces of cannon; besides this, he has 100,000 Mahratta cavalry, and 2,000 irregular infantry. All other Europeans have failed in such attempts from want of funds for regular pay. De Boigne saw this error from the first, and prevailed on Sindhia to give over in Jaidad, Purgunnahs producing twenty lakhs, and these were increased to thirty lakhs, a year; and all these Purgunnahs were in the most thriving state from good management.

One trait of De Boigne should not be passed over in silence. It was his earnest aim to soften, in all ways, the horrors of war. Every officer and soldier, when wounded, received a present of a certain number of days' pay in proportion to the severity of his hurt, without any stoppage during the time of cure; and all disabled received a pension for life, besides an assignment in land, to which the relations of the killed succeed. No other native Power has ever done this.'

De Boigne's uniform success-for if once or twice repulsed, he never lost a battle-proves to demonstration the superiority of disciplined infantry, supported by guns, and well handled, even when armed with the very imperfect muskets of that period, over the largest bodies of the most gallant cavalry. In every one of De Boigne's encounters with the Rajpoots, they did all that the most determined horsemen could do to ride

down his battalions, charging up to the muzzles of his cannon, and cutting down his gunners. But he defeated them ou every occasion with terrible slaughter, though they once succeeded in almost exterminating one of his brigades, not being stopped by the showers of grape-shot which were poured upon them, but spurring their horses on and over the bayonets of the infantry. One of these scenes is well described in Fraser's 'Military Memoir of Colonel Skinner.'

'On the other side, 10,000 Rhatore (Jondpore Rajpoots) came thundering furiously upon De Boigne, charging up to the very guns, and cutting down the artillerists, in spite of immense carnage made in their own ranks. But the steadiness of the regular troops prevailed; the Rhatores, broken and greatly thinned, gave way, and the battalions advanced in their turn.'

Of the battle of Mairtha Colonel Tod says in his Annals ' of Rajpootana

'Had there been a reserve at this moment, the day of Mairtha would have surpassed that of Tonga. But here the skill of De Boigne, and the discipline of his troops, were an overmatch for valour, unsustained by discipline and discretion. The Rhatore band had no infantry to secure their victory; the guns were wheeled round, the line was re-formed, and ready to receive them on their return. Fresh showers of shot and grape met their thinned ranks, and scarcely one of the four thousand left the field.'

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De Boigne lived many years after his return to his native land in prosperity and honour. He had brought home a splendid fortune, and he spent it splendidly. The château which he built at Chamberri, and the gardens and plantations with which he adorned it, were equally magnificent. And honours,' says our authority, were not wanting. He received from his ' own sovereign, Victor Emanuel, the title and dignity of 'count, the rank of lieutenant-general, and the Grand Cross ' of the order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus, besides the 'distinction of having his bust in marble, sculptured by the 'king's order, placed in the public library of Chamberri. 'Louis XVIII. of France emulated the example of the Count's sovereign; he created him Maréchal de Camp, and gave him 'the cross of St. Louis, and that of the Legion of Honour.' He married a French lady of rank, who has left a name in Parisian society, for M. Guizot has written a memoir of her; but this alliance was not a happy one, and they seldom lived together. De Boigne was to the full as munificent in his benevolence and endowments-to which, and the embellishment of his native city, he devoted more than 150,0007.—as he was splendid in his own establishment. He employed well the wealth which

he had honourably acquired, not only from the surplus revenues of the districts assigned to him for the maintenance of his troops, but also from the commercial transactions at Lucknow, for which he supplied the capital. He reached the good old age of eighty, dying on June 21, 1830.

His successor in India, M. Perron, was a man of a very different order. De Boigne was eminently simple and straightforward; Perron was addicted to intrigue. De Boigne was fair and even-handed in his dealings with all who served under him, whatever their nationality. Colonel Skinner gives a very different account of Perron's conduct. He says, 'It became his 'policy or his pleasure to give the preference in his choice of 'officers to his own countrymen over all others, and this to 'such an extent as not only to disgust the Mahrattas, but to 'excite the jealousy of the English and country-borns against 'them.' De Boigne was so well disposed towards the English that he made it an express stipulation, and that in writing, when he engaged with Sindhia, that he should not be required to serve against them. Perron was uniformly and bitterly hostile against our Government, being stimulated by his enmity and his pride to send an ambassador to Napoleon I. But it was natural perhaps that the Savoyard and the Frenchman should have differed in this respect, and De Boigne had moreover received personal kindness at the hands of our GovernorGeneral.

The Rajah of Jypore, refusing to pay his stipulated tribute to the Mahrattas, a force was despatched to punish and coerce him. Perron did not command the army on this occasion, being absent in Hindostan, where his head-quarters were fixed, but Skinner, then a very young soldier, took part in the action, which he has described in very vivid language.

'The Rhatores, (he says), more than 10,000 in number, were seen approaching from a distance; the tramp of their immense and compact body rising like thunder above the roar of battle. They came on first at a hand-gallop, which increased in speed as they approached; the well-served guns of the brigade showered grape upon their dense mass, cutting down hundreds at each discharge; but this had no effect in arresting their progress; on they came, like a whirlwind, trampling on fifteen hundred of their own body, destroyed by the cannon of the brigade; neither the murderous volleys from the muskets, nor the serried hedge of bayonets could check or shake them; they poured like a torrent over the brigade' (that of Dudernaig, above alluded to), and rode it fairly down, leaving scarce a vestige of it remaining, as if the sheer weight of their mass had ground it to pieces. Then, as if they had but met with a slight obstacle, they looked not even behind them at the fallen, but went on unshaken, and still in their formidable

mass, to attack the cavalry in the second line. These (as Skinner says) ran like sheep, while the Rhatores pursued them, cutting them down for several miles.'

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Skinner adds that Dudernaig escaped only by throwing 'himself among the dead;' and he relates that after returning, with their kettle-drums beating, from chasing the runaway Mahrattas off the field, they twice charged the unbroken brigades, several of them breaking into the squares, and being bayoneted there.

They were most gallant soldiers, these Rajpoots, and it is really grievous to think how, by want of union and by bad policy, they permitted themselves to be trampled upon, bullied, and plundered by the Mahrattas, a people inferior to them in every respect. They had their vices-they were immoderately addicted to opium; and, far worse than that, their pride of caste and fear of social degradation impelled them to lay upon the altar of the demon who presides over those passions a sacrifice as precious as those offered in days of old to Moloch,-they withdrew the gift of life from their infant daughters. The British Government has been engaged for many years in the struggle against this abominable crime, and have met with a large measure of success; and we may hope with confidence that when the chiefs of Rajpootana are more generally brought, as they have been partially of late, within the influence, not of English statesmen only, but of English wives and mothers, a custom so hateful will be effectually swept away.

About this period Perron was brought into contact, and eventually into collision, with a man perhaps the most remarkable, in some respects, of all who figured at that time upon the stage of North-Western India. George Thomas, a native of Ireland, was, it is probable, the humblest in birth, and the least favoured by education, of the many soldiers of fortune of the day. Coming to India as a quartermaster in a man-of-war, some say as a common sailor, in the year 1771, he left his ship -probably deserted-and entered into the service of the Polygars, petty native chieftains, the wild rulers of wild hills and jungles to the southward of Madras. After some years spent in that quarter, he plunged boldly into the vast tract of country that lay between him and the object which he had in view, and arriving in the course of time at Delhi, he was taken into the service of the Begum Somroo.

There is no record of the adventures through which he passed on this perilous journey. Those who know what India was at that epoch, how the country swarmed with armed men, some in bands of hundreds or thousands, some in the shape of

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single or affiliated highwaymen (known as Cozaks'); how, in the words of the Song of Deborah, the highways were un 'occupied, and the travellers walked through byeways;' how no one dared to live in a detached house, and every village was fortified: will be able to estimate, in some measure, the difficulties and dangers of such an adventure. We know as little about the circumstances of his introduction to service in the north-west, as we do about his journey thither; and it is hardly less wonderful that a friendless European should have found congenial employment in that quarter, than that he should have lived to reach it. He remained for some years in the service of the Begum, fighting her battles successfully against the Sikhs and other assailants, until he was ousted by some other candidate for her favour, probably by Levasso, the person whom she unwisely took for her second husband. But he was too useful a man to be long out of employ. He was shortly retained by Appa Kandarow, an officer of Sindhia, was employed to reduce refractory Zemindars, and had licence given him to fight himself into possession of a fief for the support of the troops which he had been directed to enlist. Appa Kandarow is stated to have drowned himself in the river Jumna, under the pressure of a mortal disease; and from that time forth Thomas appears to have acknowledged no master. Overtures were made to him, more than once, to enter the service of Dowlut Rao Sindhia, and on one occasion Perron negotiated with him, whether sincerely or not, with that ostensible object, offering terms which would have tempted many men. But whether he distrusted Perron, or-as the event showed to be likely because he had other and more ambitious views, he broke off the conference, and marched back to his fief. For Thomas was distinguished from the other adventurers then in the field not only by his humble origin, and by the bold step that he had taken in traversing unaccompanied, as far as we know, the whole length of India in quest of employment, but also by the singular boldness of his aspirations, inasmuch as he alone appears to have entertained the idea of establishing himself as an independent prince. He had obtained dominion by force of arms over a tract of country which apparently ac knowledged no other ruler, and where every man did that which was right in his own eyes. This territory, or a part of it at least, had been ostensibly ceded to him by the Mahrattas, but, in fact, they pretended to grant what was not theirs to give, the inhabitants being virtually independent; and Thomas had to fight his way to supremacy against the formidable opposition of a very warlike population.