respecting their feelings, did not enforce the surrender of their weapons. Afgháns, however, as he must have well known, are an eminently treacherous race. The eighty troopers, smarting under the disgrace to which he had proposed to subject them, rose in the dead of night, overpowered and killed the guards placed over them, and penetrated to the tent of Haidar, who, disturbed by the noise, made up the semblance of a person asleep with a pillow, cut a hole through his tent, and succeeded in escaping. On the alarm being given most of the assassins were slain. Such of them as survived had their hands and feet chopped off, while a few were killed by being dragged round the camp, attached to the feet of elephants[1]. The Nawáb had fled to Sidháut, a short distance to the east of Kadapa. but surrendered shortly afterwards, on a guarantee being given for his personal security. He was despatched to Seringapatam with the rest of his family, but his beautiful sister was compelled to marry the destroyer of her house, who placed her at the head of his harem with the title of Bakshí Begam[2].
- ↑ This was a not uncommon mode of punishing malefactors. A more recent instance is the murder of Etojí, brother of Jaswant Ráo Holkar, who was barbarously killed in this fashion by the Peshwá Bájí Ráo in 1799.
- ↑ The heads of many of the State departments were styled 'Bakshí,' literally meaning dispensers, but technically controllers, so that this appellation probably signifies Controller of the Women's department – no doubt a responsible post, for Haidar, though perhaps not susceptible in the higher sense to the charms of female beauty and never allowing any woman to influence his public actions, was a man of the loosest morals, and never spared any one of the sex
