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Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official by William Sleeman

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6. Pandit Saligram, who was Postmaster-General of the North-Western
Provinces some years ago, became one of these wandering friars, and
other similar cases are recorded.

7. Seet Buldee Ramesur in original edition. The temple alluded to is
that called Ramesvaram (Ramisseram) in the small island of Pamban at
the entrance of Palk's Passage in the Straits of Manaar, which is
distinguished by its magnificent colonnade and corridors. (Fergusson,
_Hist. Ind. and Eastern Arch._, vol. i, pp. 380-3, ed. 1910.) The
island forms part of the so-called Adam's Bridge, a reef of
comparatively recent formation, which almost joins Ceylon with the
mainland. A railway now runs along the 'bridge', and the pilgrims
have an easy task.

The Kedarnath temple is in the Himalayan District of Garhwal (United
Provinces), at an elevation of nearly 12,000 feet.

8. The author's other works show that the Thugs frequently assumed
the guise of ascetics, and much of the secret crime of India is known
to be committed by men who adopt the garb of holiness. A man
disguised as a fakir is often sent on by dacoits (gang-robbers) as a
spy and decoy. 'Three-fourths of these religions mendicants, whether
Hindoos or Muhammadans, rob and steal, and a very great portion of
them murder their victims before they rob them; but they have not any
of them as a class been found to follow the trade of murder so
exclusively as to be brought properly within the scope of our
operations. . . . There is hardly any species of crime that is not
throughout India perpetrated by men in the disguise of these
religious mendicants; and almost all such mendicants are really men
in disguise; for Hindoos of any caste can become Bairagis and
Gosains; and Muhammadans of any grade can become Fakirs.' (_A Report
on the System of Megpunnaism_, 1839, p. 11.) In the same little work
the author advises the compulsory registration of 'every disciple
belonging to every high priest, whether Hindoo or Muhammadan', and a
stringent Vagrant Act. His suggestions have not been acted on.

9. This incident still happens occasionally.

10. For the Raja, see _ante_, chapter 20, [6].




CHAPTER 75


The Begam Sumroo.

On the 7th of February [1836] I went out to Sardhana and visited the
church built and endowed by the late Begam Sombre, whose remains are
now deposited in it.[1] It was designed by an Italian gentleman, M.
Reglioni, and is a fine but not a striking building.[2] I met the
bishop, Julius Caesar, an Italian from Milan, whom I had known a
quarter of a century before, a happy and handsome young man--he is
still handsome, though old; but very miserable because the Begam did
not leave him so large a legacy as he expected. In the revenues of
her church he had, she thought, quite enough to live upon; and she
said that priests without wives or children to care about ought to be
satisfied with this; and left him only a few thousand rupees. She
made him the medium of conveying a donation to the See of Rome of one
hundred and fifty thousand rupees,[3] and thereby procured for him
the bishopric of Amartanta in the island of Cyprus; and got her
grandson, Dyce Sombre, made a chevalier of the Order of Christ, and
presented with a splint from the real cross, as a relic.

The Begam Sombre was by birth a Saiyadani, or lineal descendant from
Muhammad, the founder of the Musalman faith; and she was united to
Walter Reinhard, when very young, by all the forms considered
necessary by persons of her persuasion when married to men of
another.[4] Reinhard had been married to another woman of the
Musalman faith, who still lives at Sardhana,[5] but she had become
insane, and has ever since remained so. By this first wife he had a
son, who got from the Emperor the title of Zafar Yab Khan, at the
request of the Begam, his stepmother; but he was a man of weak
intellect, and so little thought of that he was not recognized even
as the nominal chief on the death of his father.

Walter Reinhard was a native of Salzburg. He enlisted as a private
soldier in the French service, and came to India, where he entered
the service of the East India Company, and rose to the rank of
sergeant.[6] Reinhard got the sobriquet of Sombre from his comrades
while in the French service from the sombre cast of his countenance
and temper.[7] An Armenian, by name Gregory, of a Calcutta family,
the virtual minister of Kasim Ali Khan,[8] under the title of Gorgin
Khan,[9] took him into his service when the war was about to commence
between his master and the English. Kasim Ali was a native of
Kashmir, and not naturally a bad man; but he was goaded to madness by
the injuries and insults heaped upon him by the servants of the East
India Company, who were not then paid, as at present, in adequate
salaries, but in profits upon all kinds of monopolies; and they would
not suffer the recognized sovereign of the country in which they
traded to grant to his subjects the same exemption that they claimed
for themselves exclusively; and a war was the consequence.[10]

Mr. Ellis, one of these civil servants and chief of the factory at
Patna, whose opinions had more weight with the council in Calcutta
than all the wisdom of such men as Vansittart and Warren Hastings,
because they happened to be more consonant with the personal
interests of the majority, precipitately brought on the war, and
assumed the direction of all military operations, of which he knew
nothing, and for which he seems to have been totally unfitted by the
violence of his temper. All his enterprises failed--the city and
factory were captured by the enemy, and the European inhabitants
taken prisoners. The Nawab, smarting under the reiterated wrongs he
had received, and which he attributed mainly to the counsels of Mr.
Ellis, no sooner found the chief within his grasp, than he determined
to have him and all who were taken with him, save a Doctor Fullarton,
to whom he owed some personal obligations, put to death. His own
native officers were shocked at the proposal, and tried to dissuade
him from the purpose, but he was resolved, and not finding among them
any willing to carry it into execution he applied to Sumroo, who
readily undertook and, with some of his myrmidons, performed the
horrible duty in 1763.[11] At the suggestion of Gregory and Sombre,
Kasim Ali now attempted to take the small principality of Nepal, as a
kind of basis for his operations against the English. He had four
hundred excellent rifles with flint locks and screwed barrels made at
Monghyr (Munger) on the Ganges, so as to fit into small boxes. These
boxes were sent up on the backs of four hundred brave volunteers for
this forlorn hope. Gregory had got a passport for the boxes as rare
merchandise for the palace of the prince at Kathmandu, in whose
presence alone they were to be opened. On reaching the palace at
night, these volunteers were to open their boxes, screw up the
barrels, destroy all the inmates, and possess themselves of the
palace, where it is supposed Kasim Ali had already secured many
friends. Twelve thousand soldiers had advanced to the foot of the
hills near Betiya, to support the attack, and the volunteers were in
the fort of Makwanpur, the only strong fort between the plain and the
capital. They had been treated with great consideration by the
garrison, and were to set out at daylight the next morning; but one
of the attendants, who had been let into the secret, got drunk, and
in a quarrel with one of the garrison, told him that he should see in
a few days who would be master of that garrison. This led to
suspicion; the boxes were broken open, the arms discovered, and the
whole of the party, except three or four, were instantly put to
death; the three or four who escaped gave intelligence to the army at
Betiya, and the whole retreated upon Monghyr. But for this drunken
man, Nepal had perhaps been Kasim Ali's.[12]

Kasim Ali Khan was beaten in several actions by our gallant little
band of troops under their able leader, Colonel Adams; and at last
driven to seek shelter with the Nawab Wazir of Oudh, into whose
service Sumroo afterwards entered. This chief being in his turn
beaten, Sumroo went off and entered the service of the celebrated
chief of Rohilkhand, Hafiz Rahmat Khan. This he soon quitted from
fear of the English. He raised two battalions in 1772, which he soon
afterwards increased to four; and let out always to the highest
bidder--first, to the Jat chiefs of Dig, then to the chief of Jaipur,
then to Najaf Khan, the prime minister, and then to the Marathas. His
battalions were officered by Europeans, but Europeans of
respectability were unwilling to take service under a man so
precariously situated, however great their necessities; and he was
obliged to content himself for the most part with the very dross of
society--men who could neither read nor write, nor keep themselves
sober. The consequence was that the battalions were often in a state
of mutiny, committing every kind of outrage upon the persons of their
officers, and at all times in a state of insubordination bordering on
mutiny. These battalions seldom obtained their pay till they put
their commandant into confinement, and made him dig up his hidden
stores, if he had any, or borrow from bankers, if he had none. If the
troops felt pressed for time, and their commander was of the
necessary character, they put him astride upon a hot gun without his
trousers. When our battalion had got its pay out of him in this
manner, he was often handed over to another for the same purpose. The
poor old Begam had been often subjected to the starving stage of this
proceeding before she came under our protection; but had never, I
believe, been grilled upon a gun. It was a rule, it was said, with
Sombre, to enter the field of battle at the safest point, form line
facing the enemy, fire a few rounds in the direction where they
stood, without regard to the distance or effect, form square, and
await the course of events. If victory declared for the enemy, he
sold his unbroken force to him to great advantage; if for his
friends, he assisted them in collecting the plunder, and securing all
the advantages of the victory. To this prudent plan of action his
corps afterwards steadily adhered; and they never took or lost a gun
till they came in contact with our forces at Ajanta and Assaye.[13]

Sombre died at Agra on the 4th of May, 1778, and his remains were at
first buried in his garden. They were afterwards removed to the
consecrated ground in the Agra churchyard by his widow the Begam,[14]
who was baptized, at the age of forty,[15] by a Roman Catholic
priest, under the name of Joanna,[16] on the 7th of May, 1781.

On the death of her husband she was requested to take command of the
force by all the Europeans and natives that composed it, as the only
possible mode of keeping them together, since the son was known to be
altogether unfit. She consented, and was regularly installed in the
charge by the Emperor Shah Alam. Her chief officer was a Mr. Paoli, a
German, who soon after took an active part in providing the poor
imbecile old Emperor with a prime minister, and got himself
assassinated on the restoration, a few weeks after, of his rival.[17]
The troops continued in the same state of insubordination, and the
Begam was anxious for an opportunity to show that she was determined
to be obeyed.

While she was encamped with the army of the prime minister of the
time at Mathura,[18] news was one day brought to her that two slave
girls had set fire to her houses at Agra, in order that they might
make off with their paramours, two soldiers of the guard she had left
in charge. These houses had thatched roofs, and contained all her
valuables, and the widows, wives, and children of her principal
officers. The fire had been put out with much difficulty and great
loss of property; and the two slave girls were soon after discovered
in the bazaar at Agra, and brought out to the Begam's camp. She had
the affair investigated in the usual summary form; and their guilt
being proved to the satisfaction of all present, she had them flogged
till they were senseless, and then thrown into a pit dug in front of
her tent for the purpose, and buried alive. I had heard the story
related in different ways, and I now took pains to ascertain the
truth; and this short narrative may, I believe, be relied upon.[19]

An old Persian merchant, called the Aga, still resided at Sardhana,
to whom I knew that one of the slave girls belonged. I visited him,
and he told me that his father had been on intimate terms with
Sombre, and when he died his mother went to live with his widow, the
Begam--that his slave girl was one of the two-that his mother at
first protested against her being taken off to the camp, but became
on inquiry satisfied of her guilt--and that the Begam's object was to
make a strong impression upon the turbulent spirit of her troops by a
severe example. 'In this object', said the old Aga, 'she entirely
succeeded; and for some years after her orders were implicitly
obeyed; had she faltered on that occasion she must have lost the
command--she would have lost that respect, without which it would
have been impossible for her to retain it a month. I was then a boy;
but I remember well that there were, besides my mother and sisters,
many respectable females that would have rather perished in the
flames than come out to expose themselves to the crowd that assembled
to see the fires; and had the fires not been put out, a great many
lives must have been lost; besides, there were many old people and
young children who could not have escaped.' The old Aga was going off
to take up his quarters at Delhi when this conversation took place;
and I am sure that he told me what he thought to be true. This
narrative corresponded exactly with that of several other old men
from whom I had heard the story. It should be recollected that among
natives there is no particular mode of execution prescribed for those
who are condemned to die; nor, in a camp like this, any court of
justice save that of the commander in which they could be tried, and,
supposing the guilt to have been established, as it is said to have
been to the satisfaction of the Begam and the principal officers, who
were all Europeans and Christians, perhaps the punishment was not
much greater than the crime deserved and the occasion demanded. But
it is possible that the slave girls may not have set fire to the
buildings, but merely availed themselves of the occasion of the fire
to run off; indeed, slave girls are under so little restraint in
India, that it would be hardly worth while for them to burn down a
house to get out. I am satisfied that the Begam believed them guilty,
and that the punishment, horrible as it was, was merited. It
certainly had the desired effect. My object has been to ascertain the
truth in this case, and to state it, and not to eulogize or defend
the old Begam.

After Paoli's death, the command of the troops under the Begam
devolved successively upon Baours, Evans, Dudrenec, who, after a
short time, all gave it up in disgust at the beastly habits of the
European subalterns, and the overbearing insolence to which they and
the want of regular pay gave rise among the soldiers. At last the
command devolved upon Monsieur Le Vaisseau, a French gentleman of
birth, education, gentlemanly deportment, and honourable
feelings.[20] The battalions had been increased to six, with their
due proportion of guns and cavalry; part resided at Sardhana, her
capital, and part at Delhi, in attendance upon the Emperor. A very
extraordinary man entered her service about the same time with Le
Vaisseau, George Thomas, who, from a quartermaster on board a ship,
raised himself to a principality in Northern India.[21] Thomas on one
occasion raised his mistress in the esteem of the Emperor and the
people by breaking through the old rule of central squares: gallantly
leading on his troops, and rescuing his majesty from a perilous
situation in one of his battles with a rebellious subject, Najaf Kuli
Khan, where the Begam was present in her palankeen, and reaped all
the laurels, being from that day called 'the most beloved daughter of
the Emperor'.[22] As his best chance of securing his ascendancy
against such a rival, Le Vaisseau proposed marriage to the Begam, and
was accepted. She was married to Le Vaisseau by Father Gregoris, a
Carmelite monk, in 1793, before Saleur and Bernier, two French
officers of great merit. George Thomas left her service, in
consequence, in 1793, and set up for himself; and was afterwards
crushed by the united armies of the Sikhs and Marathas, commanded by
European officers, after he had been recognized as a general officer
by the Governor-General of India. George Thomas had latterly twelve
small disciplined battalions officered by Europeans. He had good
artillery, cast his own guns, and was the first person that applied
iron calibres to brass cannon. He was unquestionably a man of very
extraordinary military genius, and his ferocity and recklessness as
to the means he used were quite in keeping with the times. His
revenues were derived from the Sikh states which he had rendered
tributary; and he would probably have been sovereign of them all in
the room of Ranjit Singh, had not the jealousy of Perron and other
French officers in the Maratha army interposed.[23]

The Begam tried in vain to persuade her husband to receive all the
European officers of the corps at his table as gentlemen, urging that
not only their domestic peace, but their safety among such a
turbulent set, required that the character of these officers should
be raised if possible, and their feelings conciliated. Nothing, he
declared, should ever induce him to sit at table with men of such
habits; and they at last determined that no man should command them
who would not condescend to do so. Their insolence and that of the
soldiers generally became at last unbearable, and the Begam
determined to go off with her husband, and seek an asylum in the
Honourable Company's territory with the little property she could
command, of one hundred thousand rupees in money, and her jewels,
amounting perhaps in value to one hundred thousand more. Le Vaisseau
did not understand English; but with the aid of a grammar and a
dictionary he was able to communicate her wishes to Colonel McGowan,
who commanded at that time (1795) an advanced post of our army at
Anupshahr on the Ganges.[24] He proposed that the Colonel should
receive them in his cantonments, and assist them in their journey
thence to Farrukhabad, where they wished in future to reside, free
from the cares and anxieties of such a charge. The Colonel had some
scruples, under the impression that he might be censured for aiding
in the flight of a public officer of the Emperor. He now addressed
the Governor-General of India, Sir John Shore himself, April
1795,[25] who requested Major Palmer, our accredited agent with
Sindhia, who was then encamped near Delhi, and holding the seals of
prime minister of the empire, to interpose his good offices in favour
of the Begam and her husband. Sindhia demanded twelve lakhs of rupees
as the price of the privilege she solicited to retire; and the Begam,
in her turn, demanded over and above the privilege of resigning the
command into his hands, the sum of four lakhs of rupees as the price
of the arms and accoutrements which had been provided at her own cost
and that of her late husband. It was at last settled that she should
resign the command, and set out secretly with her husband; and that
Sindhia should confer the command of her troops upon one of his own
officers, who would pay the son of Sombre two thousand rupees a month
for life. Le Vaisseau was to be received into our territories,
treated as a prisoner of war upon parole, and permitted to reside
with his wife at the French settlement of Chandernagore. His last
letter to Sir John Shore is dated the 30th April, 1795. His last
letters describing this final arrangement are addressed to Mr. Even,
a French merchant at Mirzapore, and a Mr. Bernier, both personal
friends of his, and are dated 18th of May, 1795.[26]

The battalions on duty at Delhi got intimation of this
correspondence, made the son of Sombre declare himself their
legitimate chief, and march at their head to seize the Begam and her
husband. Le Vaisseau heard of their approach, and urged the Begam to
set out with him at midnight for Anupshahr, declaring that he would
rather destroy himself than submit to the personal indignities which
he knew would be heaped upon him by the infuriated ruffians who were
coming to seize them. The Begam consented, declaring that she would
put an end to her life with her own hand should she be taken. She got
into her palankeen with a dagger in her hand, and as he had seen her
determined resolution and proud spirit before exerted on many trying
occasions, he doubted not that she would do what she declared she
would. He mounted his horse and rode by the side of her palankeen,
with a pair of pistols in his holsters, and a good sword by his side.
They had got as far as Kabri, about three miles from Sardhana,[27] on
the road to Meerut, when they found the battalions from Sardhana, who
had got intimation of the flight, gaining fast upon the palankeen. Le
Vaisseau asked the Begam whether she remained firm in her resolve to
die rather than submit to the indignities that threatened them.
'Yes,' replied she, showing him the dagger firmly grasped in her
right hand. He drew a pistol from his holster without saying
anything, but urged on the bearers. He could have easily galloped
off, and saved himself, but he would not quit his wife's side. At
last the soldiers came up close behind them. The female attendants of
the Begam began to scream; and looking in, Le Vaisseau saw the white
cloth that covered the Begam's breast stained with blood. She had
stabbed herself, but the dagger had struck against one of the bones
of her chest, and she had not courage to repeat the blow. Her husband
put his pistol to his temple and fired. The bail passed through his
head, and he fell dead on the ground. One of the soldiers who saw him
told me that he sprang at least a foot off the saddle into the air as
the shot struck him. His body was treated with every kind of insult
by the European officers and their men;[28] and the Begam was taken
back into Sardhana, kept under a gun for seven days, deprived of all
kinds of food, save what she got by stealth from her female servants,
and subjected to all manner of insolent language.

At last the officers were advised by George Thomas, who had
instigated them to this violence out of pique against the Begam for
her preference of the Frenchman,[29] to set aside their puppet and
reseat the Begam in the command, as the only chance of keeping the
territory of Sardhana.[30] 'If', said he, 'the Begam should die under
the torture of mind and body to which you are subjecting her, the
minister will very soon resume the lands assigned for your payment,
and disband a force so disorderly, and so little likely to be of any
use to him or the Emperor.' A council of war was held--the Begam was
taken out from under the gun, and reseated on the 'masnad'. A paper
was drawn up by about thirty European officers, of whom only one,
Monsieur Saleur, could sign his own name, swearing in the name of God
and Jesus Christ,[31] that they would henceforward obey her with all
their hearts and souls, and recognize no other person whomsoever as
commander. They all affixed their seals to this _covenant_; but some
of them, to show their superior learning, put their initials, or what
they used as such, for some of these _learned Thebans_ knew only two
or three letters of the alphabet, which they put down, though they
happened not to be their real initials. An officer on the part of
Sindhia, who was to have commanded these troops, was present at this
reinstallation of the Begam, and glad to take, as a compensation for
his disappointment, the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand rupees,
which the Begam contrived to borrow for him.

The body of poor Le Vaisseau was brought back to camp, and there lay
several days unburied, and exposed to all kinds of indignities. The
supposition that this was the result of a plan formed by the Begam to
get rid of Le Vaisseau is, I believe, unfounded.[32] The Begam
herself gave some colour of truth to the report by retaining the name
of her first husband, Sombre, to the last, and never publicly or
formally declaring her marriage with Le Vaisseau after his death. The
troops in this mutiny pretended nothing more than a desire to
vindicate the honour of their old commander Sombre, which had, they
said, been compromised by the illicit intercourse between Le Vaisseau
and his widow. She had not dared to declare the marriage to them lest
they should mutiny on that ground, and deprive her of the command;
and for the same reason she retained the name of Sombre after her
restoration, and remained silent on the subject of her second
marriage. The marriage was known only to a few European officers. Sir
John Shore, Major Palmer, and the other gentlemen with whom Le
Vaisseau corresponded. Some grave old native gentlemen who were long
in her service have told me that they believed 'there really was too
much of truth in the story which excited the troops to mutiny on that
occasion--her too great intimacy with the gallant young Frenchman.
God forgive them for saying so of a lady whose salt they had eaten
for so many years'. Le Vaisseau made no mention of the marriage to
Colonel McGowan; and from the manner in which he mentions it to Sir
John Shore it is clear that he, or she, or both, were anxious to
conceal it from the troops and from Sindhia before their departure.
She stipulated in her will that her heir, Mr. Dyce, should take the
name of Sombre, as if she wished to have the little episode of her
second marriage forgotten.

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Anyone who knows Plath's poetry will see the connection between Three Women and Plath's subsequent poems, particularly in the way she talks about the agony of childbirth, the rush of love for this tiny alien being, and both the wonder and wounded rawness of motherhood. It is a beautiful piece, full of startling imagery that draws you in through the sheer intensity of its femaleness, and because it so precisely articulates the emotions that are often thought but seldom voiced by women - certainly not in the early 1960s - about men, motherhood and our relationship to our bodies.

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