Blood on Thunder Fording the Red Sea
This print shows Warren Hastings on the shoulders of Lord Chancellor, Edward Thurlow wading through the red sea of Indian victims described in the opening charges of Hastings impeachment hearings. Hastings is, here, called "blood" because of the blood shed by the East India Company under his leadership. Thurlow is called Thunder for the characteristically strong language he was accustomed to using from his position on the Chancellor's woolsack.
© National Portrait Gallery, London
The much anticipated trial of Warren Hastings had begun two weeks earlier on February 13, 1788. The prosecution of the case was led by some of the most talented (and histrionic) speakers in the house of commons, including Edmund Burke, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Charles James Fox. The opening reading of the charges against Hastings by Burke is supposed to have taken place over four sitings, and included these famous lines from Burke:
I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors. I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights and liberties he has subverted; whose properties he has destroyed; whose country he has laid waste and desolate. I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated. I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life.
Hastings himself is said to have remarked: "for the first half hour, I looked up to the orator in a reverie of wonder, and during that time I felt myself the most culpable man on earth."
The print represents a considerable change of view from Gillray's initial support of Hastings in The Political Banditti Assailing the Saviour of India. There, the attacks on Hastings were portrayed as criminal acts. Here, the suggestion is that Hastings may be paying off the Chancellor to ignore atrocities he has committed and get him through the trial to a safe haven on the other side.
The trial dragged on until April of 1795. Hastings was ultimately acquitted, but ruined financially.
Sources and Reading
- Commentary from the British Museum on Blood on Thunder Fording the Red Sea
- At the Trial of Warren Hastings
- Impeachment of Warren Hastings
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