Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/327

Book IV. disturber of the Nabob's government in this part of the country, for he was a very brave and active man; there were several other chiefs of less consequence, who were constantly making inroads into the districts of Ponomalee, Chinglapett, and Arcot, and gave frequent employment to the garrisons of these places; but they always retreated as soon as they heard that a detachment of Europeans was marching; against them. The enemy at Seringham seemed so little inclinable to take advantage of the absence of the English troops cantoned at Coiladdy, that they did not even send parties on the plain to prevent the country people from going daily with provisions to the market in Tritchinopoly where the garrison were as well supplied and lived in as much tranquillity as if both sides had agreed in form to a cessation of hostilities: the enemy, however, convinced that the English would never have attempted to attack their camp at the sugar-loaf rock if they had not been joined by the cavalry of Tanjore, determined to leave no means untried to deprive them of this resource in future. Accordingly the regent gave Succo-gee, the king's minister and favourite, a sum of money more considerable than the first bribe, and Mr. Dupleix sent a letter penned in the Malabar language by his wife, in which he threatened the king, that if he dared to give the Nabob and the English any more assistance, the Morattoes should lay waste his country with fire and sword, and that if this should not be sufficient to terrify him into a neutrality, he would bring down the Soubah Salabad-jing, with his whole army, from Golconda. The effect of these practices, both on the king and his minister, was soon visible; for Succo-gee taking advantage of the timorous and suspicious character of his master, prevailed on him to remove the general Monac-gee from the command of the army, by representing him as a man in such close connexion with the English, that he might probably, from a reliance on their friendship, be induced to form projects dangerous even to the king himself; who, alarmed at the same time by the menaces of Dupleix, determined to preserve his country by breaking the promise he had made to the Nabob and major Lawrence, to send his troops to Coiladdy as soon as the rains were over. Having brought him thus far, the next step was to make him join the enemy; this