Swartz found him seated on a couch suspended from pillars, and was placed opposite to him, on a seat.  The interpreter addressed him in Persian, and Swartz replied in the same; but, perceiving that the man omitted part of his speech, he asked leave to speak Tamul.

The Rajah asked questions, which led to an exposition of the Christian doctrine, and he listened with interest; and he likewise was struck when Swartz uttered a thanksgiving before partaking of the sweets that were carried round on trays.  He showed himself so much disappointed when he learnt that the Padre had left Tanjore, that it was resolved that Swartz should return thither again; and for some days there were out-of-door preachings on the glacis of the fort, where, in spite of clouds of dust brought by the land wind, the people collected in crowds to hear him, and expressed ardent wishes that the Rajah would become a Christian, when they all could do the same.  The Prince himself was much drawn towards the missionary; but it was the old story,—he was surrounded with ministers and courtiers who feared any change, above all any plain-speaking truth, and therefore did their best to keep the new light at a distance.  However, Tuljajee called Swartz “his padre,” and gave him free entrance to his fort at Tanjore, where his arguments made a wide impression, and still more his example.  “Padre,” said a young Nabob, “we always regarded you Europeans as ungodly men, who knew not the use of prayers, till you came among us.”

He continued to go backwards and forwards between Trichinopoly and Tanjore, in both which places he began to gather catechumens round him.  Unfortunately his Protestant principles brought him into collision with the Roman Catholics at the former place.  A young Hindoo, of good birth, seems to have had one of those remarkable natures that cannot rest without truth.  He had for seven years wandered to all the most famous pagodas and most sacred rivers, seeking rest for his soul, but in vain.  Some Roman Catholics had given him a little brass crucifix, which he used to set up before him as he prayed; but he had learnt little more of them, and he was mournfully gazing at “the pagodas of Sirengam” (in his own words), and thinking, “What is all this? what can it avail?” when some of Swartz’s catechists began to speak.  “Will this be better than what I have found?” he said to himself.  He listened, was asked to remain a fortnight at the station, and soon had given his whole soul to the faith.  He was baptized by the name of Nyána Prácasam, or Spiritual Light, and became a catechist.  His father and mother were likewise led to Christianity by him, but the Roman Catholics, having begun his conversion, considered that they had a right to him, and on one occasion, when he was found reading to a sick relative, probably a member of their Church, he was severely beaten, and was rescued by the heathen neighbours when nearly killed.

Swartz seems to have regarded the Roman Catholics as in almost as much need of reconversion as the Hindoos and Mahometans; and as in those days their Church shared in that universal religious torpor that had crept over the world, it is most likely that he found them in a very debased condition.

With the Mahometans he had some success, though he found, like all other missionaries, that their faith, being rather a heresy than a paganism, had truth enough in it to be much harder to deal with than the Hindoo polytheism.  Besides, they accepted the Persian proverb, “Every time a man argues, he loses a drop of blood from his liver.”  He was impeded also by the want of a Persian translation of the entire Bible, having no more than the Gospels to give the inquirers, and these badly translated; and with Mahometans the want of the real history of the Patriarchs was very serious.  Some, however, were convinced and baptized, though by far the greater number of his converts were Hindoos.

In 1776, a coadjutor, either German or Danish-trained, named Christian Pohlé, joined him at Trichinopoly, and thus he became free to reside more constantly at Tanjore, where the Rajah always protected him, though continually fluctuating in feeling towards Christianity, according to the influences of his ministers and the Brahmins who surrounded him, and the too frequent offences given by the godless officers of the European garrison which was stationed in the fort.

Mr. Swartz was anxiously soliciting for means to build a church for the use of this garrison, when he was summoned to Madras, to the governor, Sir Thomas Rumbold, who promised him a grant for his church; but, at the same time, informed him that he was to be sent on a mission to visit the formidable Hyder Ali in Mysore, in order to judge how far his intentions towards the English were pacific.  He was selected for the purpose on account of his perfect knowledge of Hindostanee, the simplicity of his manner of travelling, and his perfect immunity from any of the ordinary influences of interest or ambition; and he undertook it, as he tells the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, because he regarded it as conducing to peace, as opening fresh doors to the Gospel, and as a token of gratitude to the Honourable Company for kindness he had received; “but at the same time,” he says, “I resolved to keep my hands undefiled from any presents, by which determination the Lord enabled me to abide, so that I have not accepted a single farthing save my travelling expenses.”

On the 1st of July, 1779, he set out from Trichinopoly on this journey, taking one of his catechists, named Sattianadem, with him.  He travelled in a palanquin, and took six days to reach Caroor, on the Mysore frontier, forty miles off, where he stayed a month with a young Ceylonese Dutchman in Hyder Ali’s service, while sending to ask the Nabob’s permission to proceed.  All this time he and his catechist preached and gave instruction in the streets.  It is curious to find him, on his journey, contrasting the excellent state of Hyder Ali’s roads and bridges with the careless disorganization of the public works under the Company.  An epidemic fever was raging in Seringapatam, and Swartz pitched his tent outside, where he could conveniently visit the many-pillared palace of the sovereign.  He was much struck with the close personal supervision that Hyder Ali kept up over his officers, and with the terrible severity of the punishments.  Two hundred men were kept armed with whips, and not a day passed without many being scourged, no rank being exempt, the Nabob’s two sons and sons-in-law being liable to be whipped like the meanest groom.  Swartz was the unwilling spectator of the punishment of the collector of a district who was flogged with whips armed with nails.

A few hundreds of Europeans, English, German, and French, were in Hyder’s pay, encamped about the town, and a German captain lent his tent for public worship.  No molestation was offered to any instructions that Swartz attempted to give, and he was very courteously entreated by the Prince himself.  The conferences with him were generally held in a hall of marble columns, open to a garden adorned with fruit trees, rows of cypresses, and fountains.  Hyder Ali sat on rich carpets, covering the floor, and the Padre was placed next to him.  He spoke in general terms of his desire to keep the peace, though the British had violated their engagements, referring to an attempt that had newly been made to march troops through his territory without his permission.  To Swartz he was gracious in speech, but the letter he entrusted to him was full of threatening for this and other acts which he considered aggressive; and the general impression brought back by the missionary was that a war was to be expected.

Hyder Ali had presented him with a bag of three hundred rupees for travelling expenses, which it would have been a great affront to return.  He, however, made it over to the Government at Madras, and when they would not take it, asked leave to use it as the foundation for a collection for an English orphan school at Tanjore.  This was granted, and proved a success.  Finding that there was an intention of voting a present to him, he begged instead that a salary might be given to Mr. Pohlé at Trichinopoly; and, in consequence, both were enabled to maintain catechists and schoolmasters; for of making a home for themselves, these devoted men never thought.  Moreover, Swartz obtained bricks and lime for the building of his English church within the fort; and he bought and enlarged a house half a mile from it, for his Malabar Christians to worship in.  His own observations of Hyder Ali’s warlike intentions led also to his purchasing 12,000 bags of rice as a provision against the scarcity that too surely attends upon Indian warfare.

In the summer of 1780, these apprehensions were realized.  Hyder crossed the Ghauts, and passed down into the Carnatic with 100,000 men, directed by a staff of French officers, and plundered up to the very gates of Madras.  Everything was in the greatest confusion; the English troops were dispersed in garrisons, and could not easily be brought together; and one small detachment under Colonel Baillie, who were made prisoners at Conjiveram, suffered a frightful captivity.  Sir Eyre Coote did, indeed, keep the enemy in check, and defeat him in several battles, but had not at first sufficient numbers or stores effectually to drive him back; and the whole province of Tanjore was horribly wasted.  The irrigation of the district had been broken up by the invaders; there was for three years neither seed-time nor harvest, and the miserable peasants crawled into the towns to perish there, often with their sons carried off to form a regiment of youths whom Hyder Ali was bringing up as a sort of Janissaries.

The unhappy creatures lay dying along the sides of the road, and among them moved from one to another that homely figure in the black dimity dress, and his catechists with him, feeding those who could still swallow, and speaking words of comfort to those who could hear.  Some of the English sent a monthly subscription, which enabled Swartz to keep up the supply, so that a hundred and twenty a day were fed; but often in the morning he found the dead lying in heaps, and in one of his letters he mentions that his catechists are alive, as though he regarded it as a wonder and a mercy.  Indeed he seems to have been a very Joseph to the Rajah, and even to the English garrison.  There was absolutely no magazine for provisions, either for the Sepoys or the Rajah’s own troops, and twice he was implored, both by Tuljajee and the Company, to purchase supplies and get them brought in, since they were unable to do so, “for a want of good understanding with the natives who still possessed either rice or oxen to transport it.”  He was enabled to procure the supply, and then there was no place to store it in but his own new English church, so that he was obliged to hold three services on a Sunday in the other: from eight till ten in English, from ten till twelve in Tamul, and from four till five in Portuguese!  About a hundred converts were gained during the famine; but he was forced to teach them very slowly, their mental faculties were so weakened by their state of exhaustion.  The whole of the towns of Tanjore and Trichinopoly were, he says, filled with living skeletons, there was hardly an able or vigorous man to be found, and in this distress it was necessary to relax the ordinarily wise rule of never giving any assistance to a person under preparation for baptism, since to withhold succour would have been barbarous cruelty.

When the whole country was overrun by the troops of Mysore, the respect paid to the good Padre was such that he travelled from end to end of it without hindrance, even through the midst of the enemy’s camp, and on the only occasion when he was detained, the sentinel politely put it that “he was waiting for orders to let him proceed.”  It was on one of these journeys that a little lad, named Christian David, the son of one of the converts, was attending him one evening, when, halting at a native village, the supper was brought, of rice and curry.  The Padre made so long a grace out of the fulness of his heart, that at last the boy broke in with a murmur that the curry would be cold!  He never forgot the reproof: “What! shall our gracious God watch over us through the heat and burden of the day, and shall we devour the food which He provides for us at night, with hands which we have never raised in prayer, and lips which have never praised Him?”  The missionaries were always safe throughout the war, and, when Cuddalore capitulated to the French and Mysoreans, Mr. Gerické, who was then at the head of the station, concealed some English officers in his house, and likewise, by his representations to the French general, saved the town from being delivered up to be plundered by Hyder’s native troops.

In the end of 1782, Hyder Ali died; his son, Tippoo Sahib, assuming the title of Sultan, continued the war, with the same fierceness, but without the assistance of the French, who were withdrawn, in consequence of the peace that had been concluded at home.

This, together with the numerous victories that had been obtained by the English forces, led to hopes that Tippoo would consent to terms of peace, and two Commissioners were appointed, whom Swartz was requested to join as interpreter.  He had no taste for political missions, but he thought it a duty to do all in his power for peace, and set off for the purpose, but the Mysoreans complained that the English promises had not been kept, and he was turned back again by the enemy’s troops.  Colonel Fullarton, who was in command of the army about to invade Mysore, writes, “The knowledge and the integrity of this irreproachable missionary have retrieved the character of Europeans from imputations of general depravity!”  He went back to Tanjore, and there, for the first time, experienced some failure in health.  He was requested again to join the Commissioners, but would not again attempt it, partly from the state of his health, and partly because Tippoo was far more averse to Christianity than Hyder had been.  All the 12,000 Tanjoreen captive boys—originally Hindoos—were bred up Mahometans, and he tolerated nothing else but Hindooism, persecuting the Roman Catholics in his dominions till no one dared make an open profession.

A treaty was, however, concluded in 1784, and there was for a time a little rest, greatly needed by Swartz, who had been suffering from much weakness and exhaustion; but a journey into Tinnevelly, with his friend Mr. Sullivan, seems to have restored him.

There were already some dawnings of Christianity in this district.  As long before as 1771, one of the Trichinopoly converts, named Schavrimutta, who was living at Palamcotta, began to instruct his neighbours from the Bible, and a young Hindoo accountant, becoming interested, went to an English sergeant and his wife, who had likewise been under Swartz’s influence, and asked for further teaching.  The sergeant taught him the Catechism and then baptized him, rather to the displeasure of Swartz, who always was strongly averse to hasty baptisms.  Afterwards, a Brahmin’s widow begged for baptism.  She, it appeared, was living with an English officer, and Swartz was obliged to refuse her while this state of things continued, but he found that the Englishman had promised to marry her, and had begun to teach her his language and his faith.  He died without performing his promise, but Christianity had become so dear to her, that she again entreated for baptism, and was then admitted into the Church by the name of Clarinda.  She afterwards was the chief means of building a church at Palamcotta, to which Sattianadem became the catechist; and thus was first sown a seed which has never ceased growing, for this district of Tinnevelly has always been the stronghold of Christianity in India.

Meantime Swartz’s poor friend, the Rajah Tuljajee at Tanjore, was in a deplorable state.  He had suffered great losses during Hyder Ali’s invasion of his country, and, moreover, was afflicted with an incurable disease, and had lately lost, by death, his only son, daughter, and grandson: He shut himself up in the depths of his palace, and became harsh and moody, heaping all the treasure together that he could collect, and employing a dean or minister, named Baba, whose exactions on the famished population were so intolerable that the people fled the country, and settled in the neighbouring districts, so that no less than 65,000 were said to have deserted the province.

Sir Archibald Campbell, Governor of Madras, remonstrated, but the Rajah was affronted, and would not dismiss his minister, and as the peasants refused to sow their land without some security that the crops should not be reaped by Baba’s emissaries before their very eyes, the Madras authorities decided on taking the management of Tanjoreen affairs into their hands and appointing a committee to watch over the government.  Sir Archibald wished to place Mr. Swartz on this committee as the person best able to deal both with Rajah and people, and he accepted a seat, only stipulating that he was not to share in any violent or coercive measures.

When the “good Padre” assured the fugitives in the Rajah’s name and his own that oppression was at an end, 7,000 at once returned; and when he reminded them that the season for planting their corps was nearly past, they replied that in return for his kindness they intended to work night and day.