One of the latest acts of Warren Hastings's administration was also one of the acts that most provoked the indignation and the resentment of those who in England were watching with hostile eyes the progress of his career. {269} Chait Singh, the Rajah of Benares, held authority at first under the ruler of Oude, and afterwards under the government of the East India Company, to whom the sovereign of Oude had transferred it. The Rajah of Benares paid a certain tribute to the Company. The heavy necessities of the war compelled Hastings to call upon the Rajah for a larger sum. The step was not unusual. In time of war a vassal of the Company might very well expect to be called upon for an increased levy. But the Rajah of Benares was very unwilling to give this proof of his devotion to the Company. He demurred, temporized, promised aid of men and arms, which was never rendered. Hastings seems to have been convinced, first of all, that the Rajah was possessed of enormous wealth, and could well afford to pay heavily for the privilege of being ruled over by the Company, and in the second place that it was necessary for the power and influence of the Company to force the almost mutinous Rajah to his knees. He made a final demand for no less than fifty lakhs, or half a million pounds, and set off himself for Benares to compel the Rajah to obey. Hastings never wanted courage, but his Benares expedition was certainly the most daring deed of his whole life. He entered the sacred city of Benares attended by an escort of a mere handful of men, and in Benares, in the midst of a hostile population, and practically in the power of the Rajah, he acted as if he were the absolute master of prince, people, and city. He insisted upon his full demands being complied with, and as the Rajah's reply appeared to be unsatisfactory he immediately ordered his assistant, Mr. Markham, to place the Rajah under arrest. The audacity of the step was so great as to suggest either that Hastings was acting with the recklessness of despair, or had formed no thought as to the not merely possible but probable result of his action. The Rajah accepted the confinement to his palace with a dignified protest. Two companies of sepoys were placed to guard him. These sepoys had no ammunition; they were surrounded by swarms of the Rajah's soldiery raging at the insult offered to their lord. The Rajah's men fell upon the sepoys and cut them {270} and their English officers to pieces. The Rajah lowered himself to the river by a rope of turbans, crossed the Ganges, and shut himself up in his stronghold of Ramnagar. Hastings's life was in imminent peril. Had he remained where he was he and his thirty Englishmen and his twenty sepoys would have been massacred. He fled in the darkness of the night to the fortress of Chunar, about thirty miles from Benares, where there was a small garrison of the Company's troops. [Sidenote: 1781--The Vizier of Oude and the Begums]