Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/334

326 road, and as they had threatened began to lay the country waste with fire and sword.

This was the first motion which any of the enemy's parties had made since the assault of Tritchinopoly: in the mean time several convoys were escorted from Tricatopoly to the English camp.

In the Carnatic the districts which acknowledged the Nabob had received no molestation from his enemies since the defeat of Mahomed Comaul at Tripetti, which happened in the month of September. The troops which Mr. Dupleix was able to send into the field from Pondicherry had lately been employed in besieging Palam Cotah, the same fort which they had refused to reduce for Morari-row. This place, with the circumjacent territory, is the only part in the Carnatic which does not depend on the Nabob of Arcot; it belongs to the Nabob of Cudapah. Examples of such sequestrations occur in every province of the Mogul empire, which amongst the rest of its feudal institutions allots to every Nabob a certain revenue arising from the product of lands, for his private expences: but as the basis of the Mogul government consists in regulations which deprive all its officers of any pretensions to real estates, and in obliging them to acknowledge that they hold nothing by any other title than the favour of the sovereign; the lands thus allotted to a Nabob are rarely situated in the province governed by himself, but are generally chosen in the most distant part of one of the neighbouring provinces; so that in this institution the Mogul's authority over all his officers appeal's in its utmost majesty; since the inhabitants of a province see the Nabob appointed to rule them, excluded from the right of appropriating to himself any part of the territory over which his jurisdiction, notwithstanding, extends. Hence likewise a perpetual source of disputes is established between the 'Nabobs of neighbouring provinces, who never fail to give one another reason to complain of violence committed in these sequestered lands. The Nabob of Cudapah applied to the presidency of Madrass to assist the governor of Palam Cotah, on which they ordered a detachment of thirty Europeans, and two hundred Sepoys, to march from Devi Cotah and relieve the place. The detachment did not take the field before the