Rajah's troops, captured fort after fort, drove the Rajah to take
refuge in Bundelcund, and brought the city and district of Benares
under British rule again. Hastings immediately declared that the
fugitive Rajah's estates were forfeited, and he bestowed them upon the
Rajah's nephew upon tributary terms which bound him faster to the
Company, and exacted double the revenue formerly payable into the
Company's exchequer.

But the money which Hastings so urgently needed, the money for which he
had struck his bold stroke at Benares, was still lacking. All the
booty gained in the reduction of Benares had been divided among the
victors; none of it had found its way into the Company's coffers. The
Vizier of Oude was deeply in the Company's debt, but the Vizier of Oude
was in desperately straitened circumstances, and could not pay his
debt. Knowing Hastings's need, the Vizier exposed to him certain plans
he had formed for raising money by seizing upon the estates of the two
{271} Begums, his mother, the widow of the late Nawab, and his
grandmother, the late Nawab's mother. The Vizier may have had just
claims enough upon the Begums, but it was peculiarly rash and
unjustifiable of Hastings to make himself a party to the Vizier's
interests. Hastings, unhappily for himself, lent the Vizier the aid of
the Company's troops. The Begums, who were quite prepared to resist
their feeble-spirited relation, did not go so far as to oppose the
Company in arms. Their palace was occupied, their treasure seized,
their servants imprisoned, and they themselves suffered discomforts and
slights of a kind which constituted very real indignities and insults
in the eyes of Mohammedan women. This was practically the last, as it
was the most foolish, act of Hastings's rule. It had the misfortune
for him of stirring the indignant soul of Burke.

{272}

CHAPTER LIX.

THE GREAT IMPEACHMENT.

[Sidenote: 1785--Burke's knowledge of India]

Burke's spacious mind was informed by a passion for justice. He was
not cast in the mould of men who make concessions to their virtues or
compacts with their virtues. He could not for a moment admit that the
aggrandizement of the empire should be gained by a single act of
injustice, and in his eyes Warren Hastings's career was stained by a
long succession of acts of injustice. He certainly would not do evil
that good might come of it. If the Rohilla war was a crime, if the
execution of Nand Kumar