Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/173

Book II. instant mortally wounded; and the troops, not satisfied with this atonement, fell with fury on those of the Nabob, whom they soon overpowered, and cut to pieces. The French battalion was preparing to hail thern returning from the field with acclamations of victory, when the news of Murzafa-jing's fate struck them with the deepest consternation. They immediately marched back to the camp, which they found in the utmost confusion; for large arrears of pay were due to the army; and it was to be apprehended that the soldiery would mutiny and plunder, and every general suspected all the others of sinister intentions.

But this disaster affected no interest more severely than that of the French; for by it were annihilated all the advantages which were gained by the murder of Nazir-jing: and Mr. Bussy was left without pretensions to interfere any farther in the concerns of the Decan. This officer saw all the desperate consequences of his present situation without losing his presence of mind: he assembled the generals and ministers, and found them as ready as himself to admit of any expedient by which the loss of their sovereign might be repaired. Besides the son of Murzafa-jing, an infant, there were in the camp three brothers of Nazir-jing, whom that prince had brought into the Carnatic under strict confinement, to prevent their engaging in revolts during his absence; and after his death they were continued under the same restraint by Murzafa-jing. Mr. Bussy proposed, that the vacant dignity of Soubah should be conferred on the eldest of the brothers, by name Salabat-jing; and the generals, from a sense of the convulsions to which the reign of a minor would be exposed, readily acquiesced to the exclusion of Murzafa-jing's son, and unanimously approved of Mr. Bussy's advice. It was immediately carried into execution, the three princes were released from their confinement, and Salabat-jing was proclaimed Soubah of the Decan, with the universal consent of the army. His elevation, and the signal catastrophe of this day in which three of the conspirators of Nazir-jing's death fell in battle fighting against each other, were regarded as a retribution of the divine justice.