court, visited Mr. Bussy in his tent on the 20th, and the same day Mr. Bussy proceeded, with an escort of 300 Europeans and 1000 Sepoys, to pay his respects to Salabadjing, who received him with the distinctions of an officer in the Mogul government, second only to himself. The interview was courteous, and the protestations solemn. No hints were given of the late disagreements, and future measures were concerted with much seeming confidence. New patents were immediately prepared, and letters dispatched through all the governments of the Decan, to destroy the impressions which had been made by those written during the rupture.
Thus ended this distress; the greatest in which Mr. Bussy had been involved since his command in the Decan. Nor would his perseverance and resolution alone have sufficed, without the sagacity of his character, and the influence of his reputation.
Besides the provisions which were laid in store, the army at Charmaul was constantly supplied with cattle for the shambles, and forage for the horses, oxen, camels, and elephants, by bands of a people called Lamballis, peculiar to the Decan, who are continually moving up and down the country with their flocks, and contract to furnish the armies in the field. The union amongst all these bands renders each respectable even to the enemy of the army they are supplying; but they are not permitted to deal with places besieged; nevertheless Mr. Bussy surmounted this objection by bribing the Morattoes, who, for the sake of marauding, undertook the patroles of Salabadjing's army, to let the Lamballis pass in the night, and it was especially concerted, that the convoys should come in on the nights when the French troops made sallies on the enemy's quarters.
But money was equally necessary, and the want of it had well nigh reduced him to quit Charmaul; for he had exhausted the public, his own, and all he could borrow on his own credit, and had no means of raising more, excepting by giving rescripts on the revenues of the four ceded provinces; but most of the renters and Polygars of those countries were, in the present conjuncture, encouraged to withhold them by the letters which they received from the ministry of Salabadjing, and still more by the practices of Ibrahim
