CiiAP. ITT.] THE TYRA^'T. 87 



presents a picture of tyrannous atrocity unsurpassed, a.d. 

 if it be even paralleled, in its savage excesses, by any 1^^^- 

 recorded example of human depra\dty. Distracted be- 

 tween the sense of possessing regal power and the con- 

 sciousness of inabihty to wield it, he was at once tyran- 

 nous and timid, suspicious and revengeful. Insmi^ec- 

 tions were excited by liis cruelties, and the chiefs who 

 remained loyal became odious from possessing the 

 influence to suppress them. The forced labour of the 

 people was expended on works of caprice and inutihty ^ ; 

 and the courtiers who ventured to remonstrate were dis- 

 missed and exiled to their estates. At length, the often- 

 baffled traitor, Pilame Talawe, was detected in an at- 

 tempt to assassinate the king, and beheaded in 1812, a.d. 

 and his nephew, Eheylapola, raised to the office of ■'^^•^^• 

 Adigar. 



But Eheylapola inlierited with the power all the 

 ambitious duplicity of his predecessor ; and avaihng a.d. 

 himself of the universal horror with which the king 

 was regarded, he secretly sohcited the connivance of the 

 Governor, Sir Eobert Browm^igg, to the organisation of 

 a general revolt. The conspiracy was discovered and 

 extinguished with indiscriminate bloodshed ; whilst the 

 discomfited Adigar was forced to fly to Colombo, and 

 supphcate the protection of the British.^ And now fol- 

 lowed an awful tragedy, which cannot be more vividly de- 

 scribed than in the language of Davy, who collected the 

 particulars from eye-witnesses of the scene. "Hurried 

 along by the flood of his revenge, the tyrant, lost to every 

 tender feehng, resolved to punish Eheylapola who had 

 escaped, through liis family, who still remained in his 

 power : he sentenced his wife and children, and his 

 brother and his w^ife, to death ; the brother and chiklren 

 to be beheaded, and the females to be drowned. In front 

 of the queen's palace, and between the Nata and Maha 



^ The ornamental lake at Kandy was formed about the year 1809, by 

 order of the king. 2 i„ ]\jj,y^ jgi^ 



G 4 



