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Rh entered into negotiations for a cession of territory in lieu of a cash payment. In 1801, the treaty of Lucknow made over to the British the Doáb, or fertile tract between the Ganges and the Jumna, together with Rohilkhand. In Southern India, our possessions were chiefly confined, before Lord Wellesley, to the coast Districts of Madras and Bombay. Wellesley resolved to make the British supreme as far as Delhi in Northern India, and to compel the great powers of the south to enter into subordinate relations to the Company's government. The intrigues of the Native princes gave him his opportunity for carrying out this plan without a breach of faith. The time had arrived when the English must either become supreme in India, or be driven out of it. The Mughal Empire was completely broken up; and the sway had to pass either to the local Muhammadan governors of that empire, or to the Hindu Confederacy represented by the Maráthás, or to the British. Lord Wellesley determined that it should pass to the British.

Lord Wellesley's Policy.— His work in Northern India was at first easy. The treaty of Lucknow in 1801 made us territorial rulers as far as the heart of the present North-Western Provinces, and established our political influence in Oudh. Beyond those limits, the northern branches of the Maráthás practically held sway, with the puppet emperor in their hands. Lord Wellesley left them untouched for a few years, until the second Maráthá war (1802-1804) gave him an opportunity for dealing effectively with their nation as a whole. In Southern India, he saw that the Nizám at Haidarábád stood in need of his protection, and he converted him into a useful follower throughout the succeeding struggle. The other Muhammadan power of the south, Tipú Sultán of Mysore, could not be so easily handled. Lord Wellesley resolved to crush him, and had ample provocation for so doing. The third power of Southern India—namely, the Maráthá Confederacy—was so loosely organized, that Lord Wellesley seems at first to have hoped to live on terms with it. When several years of fitful alliance had convinced him that he had to choose between the supremacy of the Maráthás or of the British in Southern India, he did not hesitate to decide.

Treaty with the Nizám, 1798.—Lord Wellesley first