While these things were taking place, a new rebuff was being prepared for himself by the Emperor, from whom neither age nor misfortune had taken that levity of character which, partly inherited from his ancestors, partly constitutional to himself, formed at once his chief weakness and his greatest consolation. In his dependent condition, enjoying but the moderate stipend of ninety thousand pounds a year for his whole civil list-and that not punctually paid-the blind old man turned envious thoughts upon the prosperity of the provinces which he had formerly ceded to his old protectors, the British. Accordingly, in July 1792, the Court newsman of Dehli was directed to announce that despatches had been sent to Punah, instructing Sindhia to collect tribute from the administration of Bengal. A similar attempt had been made, it will be remembered, though without success, in 1785 (vide sup. Pt. II. c. iv. in fin.) The present attempt fared no better. This hint was taken certainly, but not in a way that could have been pleasant to those who gave it; for it was taken extremely ill. In a state-paper of the 2nd of August, Lord Corwallis, the then Governor-General, gave orders that information should be conveyed to Mádhoji Sindhia to the effect that in the present condition of the Dehli court he, Sindhia, would be held directly responsible for every writing issued in the name of the Emperor, and that any attempt to assert a claim to tribute from the British Government would be "warmly resented." Once more the disinclination of the British to interfere in the Empire was most emphatically asserted, but it was added significantly, that if any should be rash enough to insult them by an uncount given in Skinner's "Memoirs," chiefly from Tod; connected by reference to the Memoirs of de Boigne quoted above.

just demand or in any shape whatever, they felt themselves both able and resolved to exact ample satisfaction.

This spirited language, whether altogether in accordance with abstract right or not, was probably an essential element in the maintenance of that peaceful policy which prevailed in the diplomatic valley that occurred between Warren Hastings and the Marquess Wellesley. Sindhia (not unmindful of Popham's Gwalior performance just twelve years before) hastened to assure the British Government that he regarded them as supreme within their own territories; and that, for his part, his sole and whole object was to establish the Imperial authority in those territories that were still subject to the Emperor.

In this he had perfectly succeeded. The fame of his political sagacity, and the terror of General de Boigne's arms, were acknowledged from the Satlaj to the Ganges, and from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas. And for nearly ten years the history of Hindustan is the biography of a few foreign adventurers who owed their position to his successes. In the centre of the dominions swayed by the Dictator-Beadle were quartered two who had attained to almost royal state in the persons of General de Boigne and the Begam Sumroo the one at Sardhana, the other at Aligarh. The Chevalier du Drenec, who had not been well used by Holkar, left (without the slightest blame) the service of that unprosperous chief, and joined his quasicompatriot and former antagonist, the Savoyard de Boigne, as the commandant of a battalion. The "dignity of History" in the last century has not deigned to preserve any particulars of the private life of these gallant soldiers; but one can fancy them of an

evening at a table furnished with clumsy magnificence, and drinking bad claret bought up from the English merchants of Calcutta at fabulous prices; not fighting over again the battle of Lakhairi, but rather discussing the relative merits of the slopes of the Alps and the cliffs of the Atlantic; admitting sorrowfully the merits of the intermediate vineyards, or trilling to the bewilderment of their country-born comrades, light little French songs of love and wine.*

Among the officers of the Begam's army there would be few congenial companions for such men. The Brigadier, Colonel Levaissoult (or le Vasseur; it is impossible to be quite sure of these names as manipulated by the natives of India),† seems to have been a young man of some merit. Her only other European officer who was at all distinguished was an Irishman named George Thomas, who had deserted

* The translator of the Siar-ul-Mutákharin gives the following amusing contrast between two famous European chiefs of a somewhat earlier date as an illustration of "the different geniuses of the French and English nations."—" M. de Bussy always wore embroidered clothes or brocade. He was seen in an immense tent, about thirty feet high, at one end of which he sate in an armchair embroidered with his King's arms, on an elevation covered with a crimson cloth of embroidered velvet; over against him his French guard on horseback, and behind those his Turkish guard; his table was covered with three, and sometimes four services of plate. Governor Hastings always wore a plain coat of English broadcloth, and never anything like lace or embroidery: his throne a plain chair of mahogany, with plenty of such thrones in the hall; his table sometimes neglected; his diet sparing, and always abstemious; his address and deportment very d stant from pride and still more from familiarity."-Vol. iii. p. 150.

+ His name is spelt Levaissoult upon the tombstone at Sardhana.

from a man-of-war in Madras Roads about ten years before, and after some obscure wanderings in the Carnatic, had entered the Begam's service, and distinguished himself, as we have seen, in the rescue of Sháh Alám before Gokalgarh, in 1788. The officers of the Begam's little army had never recovered the taint thrown over the service by its original founder, the miscreant Sumroo, and the merits of the gallant young Irishman, tall, handsome, intrepid, and full of the reckless generosity of his impulsive race, soon raised him to distinction. About his military genius, untaught as it must have been, there could be no doubt in the minds of those who had seen the originality of his movement at Gokalgarh; his administrative talents, one would suppose, must have given some indication by this time of what they were hereafter to appear in a more leading character, and upon a larger stage.

*

Some time in 1792 the partiality of the Begam for M. Levaissoult began to show itself; and Mr. Thomas who was not only conscious of his own merits, but had all the hatred of a Frenchman which characterized the British tar of those days, resolved to quit her service and attempt a more independent career. With this view he retired, in the first instance, to Anupshahar on the Ganges, so often noticed in these pages, and now, for some time, the cantonment of the frontier brigade of the English establishment in the Presidency of the Fort William.† Here he found a hospitable

* Sumroo had taught his men to enter the field from the safest part, to deliver one volley and then to form square. Thomas introduced a very different system of tactics.-Vide sup. p. 168.

It was from here that the brothers Daniell, the well-known

welcome, and from this temporary asylum commenced a correspondence with Appa Khándi Rao, a chief whom he had formerly met in the Mahratta army, and whose service he presently entered with an assignment of land in Ismail Beg's former Jaigir of Mewát. In the Mewát country he remained for the next eighteen months, engaged in a long and arduous attempt to subjugate his nominal subjects; in which employment we must for the present leave him engaged.

In the meanwhile the Begam had been married to M. Levaissoult, according to the rites of the ancient Church to which both adhered. Unfortunately for the lady's present reputation and the gentleman's official influence, the marriage was private; the only witnesses of the ceremony being two of the bridegroom's friends, MM. Saleur and Bernier.*

All this time Sindhia was at Punah endeavouring to raise his influence in the Mahratta country to something like a level with his power in Hindustan. But the situation was one of much greater difficulty in the former instance than in the latter. In the one case he had to deal with a blind old voluptuary, of whom he was sole and supreme master; in the other the sovereign Mádhu Rao Peshwa was in the vigour of life, and had a confidential adviser in the Nána Farnavis, who was almost a match for the Patel in ability, and had an undoubted superiority in the much

landscape painters, accompanied by a few British officers, made their way about this time into the gorge of the Ganges in the Himalayas, above Hurdwar-the first Europeans who had ever seen or been seen in those regions.-S. Karr, vol. ii.

* On her baptism, 1781, the Begam had received the Christian name of Joanna. To this, on her marriage, she added that of Nobilis, which she ever after bore.