The system now to be adopted was one of universal intimidation and coercion. Along the whole line of country which the armies were to traverse, the will and pleasure of the British Government was to be the only principle of action recognisable in all our transactions with the weaker States, which were now to be dragooned into prompt obedience. Their co-operation was not to be sought, but demanded. Anything short of hearty acquiescence was to be interpreted into a national offence. The Khan of Bahwulpore and the Ameers of Sindh were ordered not only to suffer the passage of our troops through their dominions but also to supply them on their way. The former had ever been regarded as one of the staunchest friends of the British Government; but when he was called upon to collect camels and to place supplies at the different stages for the use of the army, the work was carried on with obvious reluctance. It was found necessary to remind the Khan of his “obligations” and “responsibilities.” His officers affected to believe that the British force would not march, and, whilst laying in supplies for the Shah’s troops, hesitated to make an effort in behalf of our supporting columns. The “obstinacy and perversity”—the “duplicity and equivocation”—the “neglectful, if not reckless conduct of the Bahwulpore authorities,” was severely commented upon by our political officers;[281] and it was apprehended that the march of the army would be delayed by the misguided conduct of our respectable ally.
The reluctance of the Bahwulpore authorities was soon overcome; but the demands made upon the forbearance of the Ameers of Sindh were of a more oppressive and irritating character. The Bahwul Khan has ever been held up to admiration as the most consistently friendly of all the allies of the British Government; but the expedition was distasteful to him and his people, and the real feeling broke out in the beginning, though, after a while, it was suppressed. It is not strange, therefore, that the Talpoor Ameers, of whom so much more was demanded, should have co-operated somewhat unwillingly in a measure which had openly exacted from them a large amount of treasure, and was not unlikely in the end to deprive them of all that they possessed. Interpreted into homely English, the language now to be addressed to these unhappy Princes was simply, “Your money or your life.” Colonel Pottinger was the agent employed, in the first instance, to dictate terms to the Court of Hyderabad; but he was too clear-headed and too high-minded a man not to perceive the injustice of the course prescribed by his government, and to feel painfully unwilling to pursue it. The instructions he had received, divested of the specious outside dress of diplomatic phraseology, and rendered in plain English by Colonel Pottinger himself, were truly of a startling character. The British agent was directed to tell the Ameers that “the day they connected themselves with any other power than England would be the last of their independence, if not of their rule.” “Neither,” it was added, “the ready power to crush and annihilate them, nor the will to call it into action, were wanting, if it appeared requisite, however remotely, for the safety or integrity of the Anglo-Indian Empire or frontier.” The Ameers were known to be weak; and they were believed to be wealthy. Their money was to be taken; their country to be occupied; their treaties to be set aside at the point of the bayonet—but amidst a shower of hypocritical expressions of friendship and good-will.