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XX.

1782.

success.

The war in India was still carried on with various The valuable settlements of Negapatnam on the Coromandel coast, and Trinquemalé in the island of Ceylon, belonging to the Dutch, were captured by the English. On the other hand, colonel Braithwaite, with a detachment of the Com

cerns its direction in Europe, is in this manner essentially faulty, that of its administration in India is still more so. A council of merchants can command obedience only by military force, and their government is therefore necessarily military and despotical. Their proper business, however, is that of merchants. It is to sell upon their master's account the European goods consigned to them, and to buy in return Indian goods for the European market. It is to sell the one as dear and buy the other as cheap as possible; and consequently to exclude as much as possible all rivality. The genius of the administration is therefore so far the same as that of the direction. It tends to make government subservient to the interests of monopoly. All the members of administration, besides, trade more or less upon their own account; and it is in vain to prohibit them from doing so. If by an order from Europe they cannot act openly and directly, they will employ the whole authority of government, and pervert the administration of justice, in order to harass and ruin those who interfere with them in any branch of commerce which, by means of agents either concealed or at least not publicly avowed, they may choose to carry on. It is a very singular government, in which every member of the administration wishes to get out of the country, and consequently to have done with the government, as soon as he can; and to whose interest the day after he has left it, and carried his whole fortune with him, it is perfectly indifferent though the whole country were swallowed up by an earthquake."

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pany's troops, was totally routed on the banks of BOOK the Coleroon by Tippoo Saib, son of Hyder Ally, assisted by a body of French troops; after which Cuddalore surrendered to the victors.

Invading the

1782

operations

The operations of the war on the Malabar coast Military were conducted by general Goddard with a great in India, display of military skill and spirit. province of Guzzerat, in the year 1780, he reduced the city of Amedabad, its capital; and on the 2d of April he stormed the camp of the Mahrattas, cominanded by Madajee Scindia, whom he totally defeated. Entering into a treaty with the rana of Gohud, major Popham, by order of the general, attacked and carried, in the course of the summer, the strong fortress of Gualior, which was garrisoned by the Mahrattas, though within the ter ritory of the rana.

of general

Early in 1781, general Goddard sat down be- Exertions fore Basseen; and after reducing this important Goddard, place he desisted from farther active operations, in consequence of the succours he was under a necessity to send to sir Eyre Coote. In the province of Malva, colonel Carnac surprised, April 30, the camp of the enemy, and Madajee Scindia was a second time totally routed. After this the Mahratta chieftain made secret overtures for a separate peace; and a cessation of hostilities between England and the Mahratta states took place in the month of October 1781. The definitive articles of peace

VOL. VII.

BOOK were signed in May following at Salberg, by Mr.

XX.

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Anderson on the part of the Company, and by Scindia, general and plenipotentiary, on the part of the peishwa. By this treaty Basseen and the other recent acquisitions in the Guzzerat were restored to the Mahrattas, the island of Salsette only of the late conquests remaining to the English; for, at the request of Madajee Scindia, the English consented also to relinquish their claim to the city of Baroach and the contiguous districts. Ragonaut Row was for ever abandoned, and compelled to quit the territories of the Company; and their ally, the rana of Gohud, who appears indeed without scruple to have opposed duplicity to duplicity, was, under the pretext of "leaving him to settle his own affairs," virtually delivered up to the mercy of his enemies. But the most extraordinary article of the treaty was that whereby the peishwa engages that Hyder Ally Khan shall be made to relinquish, within six months, all such territories belonging to the Company or their allies as he shall have taken possession of since the 9th of the month Ramzan. The fact was, that not only a treaty of peace, but of the strictest alliance and friendship, was now formed by the governor-general Hastings with the Mahratta court; and a secret project was believed to be already in contemplation for the partition of Hyder's dominions. And thus, notwithstanding the ill success of his former schemes of conquest,

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1782.

no sooner was this "daring pilot" of the state, BOOK who "sought the storms" and invoked the tempests, obliged to relinquish one vast and hazardous plan of aggrandizement, than he entered with equal eagerness into another. The nizam of the Decan and the rajah of Berar were also parties in this accommodation, for their accession to which they received large pecuniary gratifications.

This pacification with the Mahrattas induced the presidency of Bengal to risk a bold attempt on the dominions of Hyder Ally on the Malabar side. The kingdoms of Canara and Mysore, both under subjection to that prince, stretch along the western coast of Hindostan, nearly in the latitude of Arcot. The chief city of the former is Bednore, a name changed by its present possessor to Hydernagore. A considerable force, already landed in the kingdom of Mysore, had relieved the city of Tellicherri, a post or factory on that coast belonging to the English, and reduced the neighbouring town of Calicut. It was with difficulty, nevertheless, that the English kept their footing in this country, when general Matthews arrived from Bombay with very large reinforcements, and immediately laid siege to the important fortress of Onore, which was carried by storm on the 5th of January 1783. The carnage on this occasion is said to have been terrible; and the indiscriminate seizure of treasure, public and private, there deposited, exhibited, in the most

212

BOOK odious light, the rapacity and avarice of the com

XX.

1782.

Death of

mander.

At this period the hopes of the English were Hyder Ally raised to the highest pitch by the death of Hyder Ally, a name ever memorable in the annals of India. He was succeeded by his son Tippoo Saib, who had already given proofs of valor and ability not unworthy his descent.

Disasters

From Onore general Matthews proceeded through the Ghauts, or the passes of the mountains, to Hydernagore, which surrendered to him without resistance. Here, as at Onore, the general was accused of combining the meanness of fraud with the ferocity of violence; and colonel Macleod, second in command, and several other officers, retired in disgust from the army. After this, Annampore by storm, Carwa and Mangalore by capitulation, were successively subdued.

In the mean time Tippoo prepared for the relief in Mysore. of Mysore and Canara; and, leaving a strong force to guard his conquests in the Carnatic, he marched his army across the peninsula with unexpected and unexampled expedition, and arrived in the vicinity of Hydernagore in the month of April 1783. By a series of excellent military manoeuvres he made himself master of the Ghauts in the rear of general Matthews, by which means all communication with the sea was entirely cut off. The force of general Matthews being now centred in Hydernagore, this

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