A History of the Mahrattas v2.c37.74

v2.c37.74

To account for these orders it is necessary to explain that the Supreme Government had received information that all the Mahrattas, except Futih Sing Gaekwar (whose communication was in a manner cut off from his countrymen by the British troops, and whose interests strongly bound him to the Company), were combined with Hyder and the Nizam against the English, and that Nizam Ally, although he had not commenced hostilities, was the contriver of the whole confederacy. The immediate cause of the enmity of Nizam Ally towards the English originated in a treaty concluded by the Madras Government, in April, 1779, with his brother, Busalut Jung, Jagheerdar of Adonee, by which they received him under their protection, on condition of their being allowed to rent the district of Guntoor, which was at all events to come into their possession after the death of Busalut Jung. The alliance alarmed Nizam Ally, whose jealousy of Busalut Jung was extreme² ; and Hyder, some of whose late acquisitions would have been cut off from the rest of his territory, would not suffer the British troops to take possession of Guntoor, and opposed their march even before the war broke out. The treaty of the Madras Government with Busalut Jung was illegal, because it never received the sanction or ratification of the Governor-General and Council, who therefore, when it came to their knowledge, in February, 1780, disavowed and annulled it, a measure which tended considerably to appease the resentment of Nizam Ally ; but, from the time of the Wurgaom convention, he had adopted a tone of overbearing insolence, which, towards the British authorities, he had not before ventured to assume. Hyder, in addition to those motives of jealousy already described, had a very strong inducement for engaging in the confederacy. The conquests he had made as far north as the Kistna had been ceded to him by Rugonath Rao, whom he affected to consider the legitimate Peishwa; and the confirmation of this cession on the part of the Poona ministers was preliminary to his becoming a party in the alliance; his right to the Mahratta territories south of the Kistna was admitted, and the future tribute for the whole of his possessions was fixed at the inconsiderable sum of eleven lacks of rupees.