inflicted on their female members; and still more had been reduced by them to utter destitution, and driven in despair into other districts.  To use his own words—­“The once flourishing districts of Gonda and Bahraetch, so noted for fertility and beauty, are now, for the greater part, uncultivated; villages completely deserted in the midst of lands devoid of all tillage everywhere meet the eye; and from Fyzabad to Bahraetch I passed through these districts, a distance of eighty miles, over plains which had been fertile and well cultivated, till Rughbur Sing got charge, but now lay entirely waste, a scene for two years of great misery ending in desolation.”

Rajah Hurdut Sahae, the proprietor of the Bondee estate, was the head of one of the oldest Rajpoot families in Oude.  Having placed the most notorious knaves in the country as revenue collectors over all the subdivisions of his two districts, Rajah Rughbur Sing, in 1846, demanded from Hurdut Sahae an increase of five thousand rupees upon the assessment of the preceding year.  The Rajah pleaded the badness of preceding seasons, and consequent poverty of his tenants and cultivators; but at last he consented to pay the increase, and on solemn pledges of personal security he collected all his tenants, to take upon themselves the responsibility of making good this demand.  To this they all agreed; but they had no sooner done so, than Rughbur Sing’s agent, Prag Pursaud, demanded a gratuity of seven thousand rupees for himself, over and above the increase of five thousand upon the demand of the preceding year.  The Rajah would not agree to pay the seven thousand, but went off to request some capitalists to furnish securities for the punctual payment of the rent.

The agent sent off secretly to Rughbur Sing to say, that unless he came at the head of his forces he saw no chance of getting the revenues from the Rajah or his tenants, who were all assembled and might be secured if he could contrive to surprise them.  Rughbur Sing came with a large force at night, surrounded his agent’s camp, where the tenants and the Rajah’s officers were all assembled, and seized them.  He then sent out parties of soldiers of from one hundred to two hundred each, to plunder all the towns and villages on the estate, and seize all the respectable residents they could find.  They plundered the town of Bondee, and pulled down all the houses of the Rajah, and those of his relatives and dependents; and, after plundering all the other towns and villages in the neighbourhood, they brought in one thousand captives of both sexes and all ages, who were subjected to all manner of torture till they paid the ransom demanded, or gave written pledges to pay.  Five thousand head of cattle were, at the same time, brought in and distributed as booty.