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superior force. Although the utmost exertions of fir Eyre Coote had not been wanting, no decisive advantage had been gained in the last campaign with Hyder; and the ill state of health of this able commander obliged him to resign the army into the hands of general Stuart, and to retire at the conclufion of the year 1783 to Bengal. Early in the ensuing spring, believing himself somewhat recovered, he returned to Madras in order to resume his command; but two days only after his arrival, he expired in an advanced age, having acquired in more than thirty years military service in India a reputation, the lustre of which could be deemed scarcely inferior to that of his predeceffor, lord Clive. The important fettlement of Trinquemale was retaken by M. Suffrein in the course of the last summer, and a very large reinforcement of French troops landed in the Carnatic under M. de Buffi. Notwithstanding all oppofition, general Stuart invested Cuddalore, and made confiderable progress in the fiege, when an express arrived with the intelligence of a treaty of peace having been concluded between the belligerent powers, on which an immediate cessation of hostilities took place.

After the conquest of Hydernagore, and the recapture of the inland country by Tippoo, he laid fiege to Mangalore, the principal place yet remaining in the hands of the English. An obstinate resistance was made by the garrifon; but a practicable breach being at length effected, a general affault was in contemplation, when news arrived of the pacification which had taken place in Europe; and the French troops and engineers in his service informed him, that they must immediately withdraw their affistance. Tippoo, after much paffionate expoftulation, therefore afsented to an armistice, in a few days after which event colonel Macleod arrived with powerful reinforcements from Bombay. A negociation was immediately commenced for a definitive peace. This was accelerated

by by a declaration which the fultan received from the peishwa of the Mahrattas, that if Tippoo did not confent to an immediate evacuation of the Carnatic, he would unite with the English against him.

During the continuance of the truce and the negocia tion, the bibby, or princess of Cannanore, a district depending on the kingdom of Carana, having feized fome boats with fepoys belonging to the garrison of Mangalore, accidentally forced by stress of weather on her coaft, colonel Macleod attacked and stormed the fortress of Cannanore, making the princess herself prifoner. Although loud complaints were made by Tippoo of this violation of the armistice, it does not appear much to have retarded the negociation, the articles of peace being figned March 11th, 1784, on the terms of mutual reftitution, and a renunciation on the part of the sultan of his claim to the fovereignty of the Carnatic. This claim, there is every reason to believe, would never have been enforced, or perhaps advanced, if the rash and violent conduct of the English government respecting the Mahrattas had not encouraged and incited the attempt. To this purpose Mr. Whitehill, prefident of Madras, in his exculpatory minute of November 1780, fays, " the offensive line of conduct adopted against the Mahrattas threw them, i. e. the governor and council of Bengal, into a scene of action so extensive and fo full of difficulty, that neither their forces nor their revenues were capable of bearing them through with any poffibility of fuccess. Had the experience of former times been called in to their aid, they would have seen that Aurengzebe, one of the most formidable monarchs that ever fat upon the throne of Dehli, was, after a twenty years struggle, with all the power and riches of Hindostan, obliged to abandon a fimilar attempt. The truth is, the Mahratta war has been the real fource of all the mischief that hath befallen the Carnatic. Had peace existed in that quarter with the English, Hyder Ali Khan would never VOL. II. have

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have ventured from his own dominions. - He saw the ex tremity to which we were reduced, and seized the occa fion to distress us where he knew we were most vulnerable."

But the conduct of Mr. Hastings, subsequent to the restoration of peace in India, is perhaps the most extraordinary, certainly the most mysterious part of his dark and inextricable policy. The peace concluded with the Mahrattas, it has been already remarked, was followed by an alliance of the most strict and confidential kind. And from that period it feemed to be the great and favorite object of the English governor general, to confirm and aggrandize the power of that state, which he had ever before affected to confider as most formidable and adverse to the English interests; and whom he had even styled "the NATURAL ENEMIES of the company."

In the month of March 1783, Mr. Hastings dispatched, by no authentic act, but as his own secret agent, major Browne to the court of Dehli, in order to make proposals to the emperor, Sha Allum, to enter into engagements with the company and the Mahratta government, for the accomplishment of certain designs in favour of the emperor, but of a very hostile nature to several powers of the continent then in amity with the company. And major Browne was commiffioned to offer to the mogul, to provide for the entire expence of any troops the emperor might require; which proposal was accepted with every symptom of eagerness and fatisfaction. And the negociation being sufficiently advanced, Mr. Hastings openly brought forward a propofition in council, October 5, 1783, to afsist the mogul with a military force: and at a subsequent meeting of the board, he laid before them a letter from major Browne, dated Dehli, December 30, 1783, containing amidst much miscellaneous matter, the following extraordinary passages:-" The bufsiness of affisting the SHAH can and must now go on, if we wish to be fecure

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in India, and regarded as a nation. We have offered, the shah has accepted the offer of affiftance. - We have annexed conditions, the shah has approved of them."

The project thus unexpectedly and forcibly obtruded on the board by Mr. Hastings, was, however, very ill received by his colleagues, Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Stables, who strongly remonstrated against involving the company in new wars and dangerous foreign connections. But Mr. Hastings was not a man to be discouraged by trivial obstacles.

Early in the follow year, 1784, Mr. Hastings made a progress to the city of Lucknow, and there had an interview with the prince Mirza Jehander Sha, eldeft fon of the mogul, and who, as the governor general in his public letter fays, " had long held the principal part in the administration of the king his father." From Mr. Haftings's account of this interview, which he represents as wholly unexpected and fortuitous, the prince having left the court of Dehli without even the knowledge of the emperor, it appears that urgent folicitations were made by the heir of the Mogul empire to the English governor, for aid and affistance to raise the KING, his father, from that state of degradation and infignificance into which he had fallen: intimating his readiness even to go in person to England, to represent the distresses of the emperor of Hindoftan, in the hope of obtaining relief. Mr. Haftings in reply informed the prince, "that the English nation, just emerged from a state of univerfal warfare, required repose, and would be alarmed at any movement of which it could not immediately fee the issue or the progress, but which might eventually create new hoftilities; that as to himself; he could not engage, if he chose it, in a business of this nature, without the concurrence of his colleagues in office, who he believed would be averse to it; that he would, however, represent his fituation to the joint members of his own government, and wait their

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determination. In the mean time he advised him to make advances to Madajee Scindia, as the effective head of the Mahratta ftate, and who was in intimate union and fworn connection with the English."

In his fubfequent dispatches to the council at Calcutta, Mr. Haftings requests to be invested with difcretionary powers of acting in relation to the court of Dehli, under a vague promise of " not proceeding against their fenfe." The council, in reply, not only refused to grant any fuch powers, but exhorted him " most sedulously and cautioufly to avoid, in his correfpondence with the different potentates of India, whatever might commit, or be strained into an interpretation of committing, the company as to their army or treasure observing, that the company's orders are pofitive against their interference in the objects of difpute between the country powers." But this injunction the fophiftical fubtlety of Mr. Haftings was at no loss how to evade; for, in his letter of June 1784, to the court of directors, he says, "The faction which now furrounds the THRONE, is widely different from the idea which your commands are intended to convey by the expreffions to which you have generally applied them, of ' country powers, to which that of permanency is a neceffary adjunct, and which may be more properly compared to a splendid bubble, which the flightest breath of oppofition may diffipate, with every trace of it existence--That if the mogul's authority is suffered to receive its final extinction, it is impossible to foresee what power may arise out of its ruins, or what events may be linked in the fame chain of revolution with it. - Your interests may suffer by it; your reputation certainly will, as his right to our affiftance has been conftantly acknowledged; more especially as, by the movements which the influence of our government by too near an approach has excited, it has unfortunately become the efficient instrument of

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