The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

by William Dalrymple

In April, Vansittart sent Hastings upriver to Monghyr and Patna in an attempt to defuse the growing crisis and restore harmony. On the way, Hastings wrote a series of letters, at once waxing lyrical about the beauty of Bengal, and expressing his horror at the way the Company was responsible for raping and looting it. On arrival in Monghyr, where ducks clustered on the marshes amid ‘beautiful prospects’, he wrote with eloquence and feeling of ‘the oppression carried out under the sanction of the English name’ which he had observed in his travels. ‘This evil I am well assured is not confined to our dependants alone, but is practised all over the country by people assuming the habit of our sepoys or calling themselves our managers …’ A party of sepoys who were on the march before us, afforded sufficient proof of the rapacious and insolent spirit of those people when they are left to their own discretion. Many complaints against them were made to me on the road; and most of the petty towns and serais were deserted at our approach, and the shops shut up, from apprehensions of the same treatment from us … Every man who wears a hat, as soon as he gets free from Calcutta becomes a sovereign prince … Were I to suppose myself the Nabob I should be at a loss in what manner to protect my own subjects or servants from insult.