Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v3.c42.s2.t1.150.2

v3.c42.s2.t1.150.2

His instructions were to make available the resources of Kotah to the armies moving round him, and to lessen the field [556] of the enemy’s manœuvres, by shutting him out of that country. So efficient were these resources, that in five days after the agent reached the regent’s camp,¹ every pass was a post ; and a corps of fifteen hundred men, infantry and cavalry, with four guns, was marched to co-operate with General Sir John Malcolm, who had just crossed the Nerbudda with a weak division of the army of the Deccan, and was marching northward, surrounded by numerous foes and doubtful friends. Throughout that brilliant and eventful period in the history of British India, when every province from the Ganges to the ocean was agitated by warlike demonstrations, the camp of the regent was the pivot of operations and the focus of intelligence. The part he acted was decided, manly, and consistent ; and if there were moments of vacillation, it was inspired by our own conduct, which created doubts in his mind as to the wisdom of his course. He had seen and felt that the grand principle of politics, expediency, guided all courts and councils, whether Mogul, Mahratta, or British : the disavowal of the alliances formed by Lord Lake, under Marquess Wellesley’s administration, proved this to demonstration, and he was too familiar with the history of our power to give more credit than mere politeness required to our boasted renunciation of the rights of anticipated conquest.