t release the convoy.
They did so, and not a piece of the cloth was lost. This bhumiawat is
supposed to have cost the Jhansi chief above twenty lakhs of
rupees,[11] and his subjects double that sum.

Gopal Singh, a Bundela, who had been in the service of the chief of
Panna,[12] took to bhumiawat in 1809, and kept a large British force
employed in pursuit through Bundelkhand and the Sagar territories for
three years, till he was invited back by our Government in the year
1812, by the gift of a fine estate on the banks of the Dasan river,
yielding twenty thousand rupees[13] a year, which his son now enjoys,
and which is to descend to his posterity, many of whom will, no
doubt, animated by their fortunate ancestor's example, take to the
same trade. He had been a man of no note till he took to this trade,
but by his predatory exploits he soon became celebrated throughout
India; and, when I came to the country, no other man's chivalry was
so much talked of.

A Bundela, or other landholder of the Hindoo military class, does not
think himself, nor is he indeed thought by others, in the slightest
degree less respectable for having waged this indiscriminate war upon
the innocent and unoffending, provided he has any cause of
dissatisfaction with his liege lord; that is, provided he cannot get
his land or his appointment in his service upon his own terms,
because all others of the same class and clan feel more or less
interested in his success.

They feel that their tenure of land, or of office, is improved by the
mischief he does; because every peasant he murders, and every field
he throws out of tillage, affects their liege lord in his most tender
point, his treasury; and indisposes him to interfere with their
salaries, their privileges, or their rents. He who wages this war
goes on marrying his sisters or his daughters to the other barons or
landholders of the same clan, and receiving theirs in marriage during
the whole of his bhumiawat,[14] as if nothing at all extraordinary
had happened, and thereby strengthening his hand at the game he is
playing.

Umrao Singh of Jaklon in Chanderi, a district of Gwalior bordering
upon Sagar,[15] has been at this game for more than fifteen years out
of twenty, but his alliances among the baronial families around have
not been in the slightest degree affected by it. His sons and his
grandsons have, perhaps, made better matches than they might, had the
old man been at peace with all the