A History of the Mahrattas v2.c36.23

v2.c36.23

The deep artifice of Nana Furnuwees had succeeded in baffling the designs of his own countrymen, but he had still to encounter the intellect and vigour of Englishmen. The national jealousy he had ventured to awake rose with an aspect which terrified him. The application of the Resident at Poona to the ministers, and to Sindia and Holkar, for passports to facilitate the march of a body of British troops from the east to the west of India, for the declared purpose of counteracting the designs of the French, seems at first to have been viewed by the Mahrattas as a threat. They probably considered that if it had been intended to send troops to Bombay, they would have been embarked from the coast of Malabar or Coromandel, and replaced from Bengal; an opinion in which many competent judges among our own countrymen coincided; but the unfavourable season of the year, the ill-treatment to which the Bengal Sepoys had been invariably exposed on board ship; and perhaps, though never avowed, the grandeur of the enterprise, together with some idea entertained by Mr. Hastings from the first of forming an alliance with Moodajee Bhonslay, were the motives which influenced the Governor-General in choosing the overland route.