A History of the Mahrattas v1.c27.18

v1.c27.18

Sulabut Jung, by the advice of Shah Nuwaz Khan, had appointed his brothers, Nizam Ally and Busalut Jung, as Governors of provinces; the former to Berar, and the latter to Beejapoor, whither they had proceeded in 1756. Bussy, in the end of that year, departed from Hyderabad, accompanied by his Dewan Hyder Jung, to regulate the French districts to the eastward, and was thus employed when an opportunity presented itself of reducing some of the English factories in that quarter. Sulabut Jung, in the meantime, took the field, and his operations, at the suggestion of Shah Nuwaz Khan, were directed against Ramchundur Jadow, ostensibly to call him to account for not keeping up his established quota of horse, but in reality to punish him for not acting against the French reinforcements, when marching from Mausulipatam to join Bussy at Hyderabad. Jadow was deprived of most of his Jagheer; the minister spent the season in revenue arrangements, and Sulabut Jung attended by his brother Busalut Jung, from Adonee, cantoned for the rains at Aurungabad, after having taken the government of Doulutabad from Sadut Bokharu, the Killidar in whose family it had been from the time of Aurungzebe. It was now given in charge of a dependant of Shah Nuwaz Khan; and here began a scene of intrigue as eventful and complicated as might occur to the fancy of a dramatist. The sum of the plot seems to have been to confine Sulabut Jung in Doulutabad; to place the government in the hands of Nizam Ally or Busalut Jung, and to expel the French from the Deccan. The Peishwa was probably in the first instance apprised of it,¹ and the real object of Wiswas Rao’s march to the Godavery may have been to aid the design. As late as the month of September, he did not, as may be observed by his instructions to Bulwunt Rao, expect that it would obstruct his designs on the Carnatic.