Page:Warren Hastings (Trotter).djvu/164

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
158
WARREN HASTINGS

set up factories on their ground, and to 'hold no intercourse or friendship with any other European nation.' Freedom of trade between the English and the Maráthás was expressly assured, and neither party was to give any kind of aid to the enemies of the other. Raghuba himself was promised a safe asylum with Sindhia on a pension of four lakhs a year[1].

As a further reward for his timely services, Madhájí Sindhia received from Hastings a separate grant of Broach, his claim to which had first arisen out of the Wadgáon Convention. The Bombay Council vehemently deplored a stroke of policy which, in Hastings' view, would clinch his hold upon the most powerful of the Peshwá's feudatories, without involving any appreciable loss to the Company's revenues, still less to their trade[2]. The daring and ambitious chieftain who had barely escaped with life from the slaughter of Pánípat, had lately been assured that the Bengal Government would not interfere with his schemes of conquest towards Delhi; and the Rána of Gohad soon gave him a fair pretext for wresting Gwalior also out of the hands into which Hastings had transferred it[3].

Abandoned by the Maráthás and the Nizám, Tipú could still look for help to his French allies; and he prepared to carry on the war with all his father's energy, but without Haidar's consummate skill. Fortune favoured his first efforts. Haidar's stoutest foe, Sir Eyre Coote, died in April, 1783, of sheer

  1. Forrest.
  2. Auber.
  3. Malleson.