and devoted himself to the study of Indian business. At that time he became intimately acquainted with Lord Cornwallis, who had recently retired from the governor-generalship of India. In 1797 he was nominated for the post of governor of Madras, the intention being to reappoint Cornwallis as governor-general. The latter, however, could not be spared from Ireland, where he was holding the office of lord lieutenant, and accordingly Mornington was appointed governor-general of India, and sailed on 7 Nov. 1797. He took out with him as his private secretary his brother, Henry Richard Charles Wellesley (afterwards Lord Cowley) [q. v.] He had married, on 29 Nov. 1793, Hyacinthe Gabrielle, daughter of Pierre Roland of Paris, who had lived with him for nine years before their marriage, and by whom he had had children. In the circumstances he did not think it expedient to take her to India.
It was a very critical time in India. Clive had laid the foundations of British supremacy in Bengal, and that supremacy, amid many difficulties, had been consolidated by Warren Hastings; but in the south of India the British had been hard pressed by Hyder Ali, the astute ruler of Mysore, with whom they had maintained a by no means equal contest. Hyder's son and successor, Tippu Sahib, who had been defeated by Cornwallis in 1792, was engaged in plots for the subversion of British rule, and the great Mahratta states had still to be overcome. There were also threats of another invasion of India from the north, where Zamán Shah, the ruler of Cabul, was known to be planning an advance upon Delhi. The danger, however, which at that time was most pressing was an alliance between Tippu and the French, and the co-operation of a French force with that under Tippu for the expulsion of the English. This was Tippu's object, and it so happened that on 26 April 1798, the very day that Mornington reached Madras, a small body of French soldiers landed at Mangalore, a port on the coast of Canara, which was then under Mysore rule.
The condition of affairs in the Hyderabad state was also threatening. In 1759 Colonel Francis Forde [q. v.], acting under Clive's orders, had compelled the nizam of that day, then styled the subahdár of the Dekhan, to renounce the French alliance, and in 1768 and 1779 fresh treaties had been made with the nizam, under which he was bound to maintain no French troops in his service. These treaties, however, had been broken, and Mornington's predecessor, Sir John Shore (afterwards Baron Teignmouth) [q. v.], had taken no steps to enforce their observance. Indeed, when Mornington reached India the troops maintained at Hyderabad under French officers numbered fourteen thousand men. They had been under the command of an able French officer named Raymond, who had died just before Mornington arrived. The Mahratta states of Poona, Baroda, Nagpur, Gwalior, and Indore, however much divided among themselves, were at one in their desire to expel the English from India, while in Oudh and in Rohilkhand the feelings of the people towards the English were the reverse of friendly.
In the course of his voyage Mornington landed at the Cape of Good Hope, where he not only received despatches from India giving the latest news, but met Lord Macartney, then governor of the Cape, who had been governor of Madras; Lord Hobart, who had just retired from the Madras government; General (afterwards Sir) David Baird [q. v.], and Major William Kirkpatrick [q. v.], who had quite recently held the office of British resident at Hyderabad. From Major Kirkpatrick Mornington received a great deal of useful information, although he did not agree with him on all points, and several of the recommendations which, when writing from the Cape, Mornington made to the home government were based upon information given him by Kirkpatrick. The conclusion at which Mornington arrived during his short stay at the Cape was that the balance of power in India no longer existed upon the same footing on which it was placed by the peace of Seringapatam, and that therefore the question was, how it might best be brought back to that state in which the president of the board of control had directed him to maintain it. He was clearly of opinion that the non-intervention policy of his two immediate predecessors—for Cornwallis, as well as Shore, was a believer in that policy—could not be continued. During his stay at Madras he looked into the position of the nawáb of Arcot, the successor of Muhammad Ali, commonly called the Nawáb Wallajah, who owed his throne to the aid given him by Stringer Lawrence [q. v.] and Clive. He found that there was a large debt due by the nawáb to the company, and that the nawáb had no intention of paying it. He also investigated the affairs of Tanjore, a Mahratta state in the south of India; but he was compelled to postpone his decision on both these matters. He did not reach Calcutta until 17 May 1798, and the Mysore question then claimed precedence of all others.
This question assumed an acute phase in June 1798, when a proclamation appeared
