Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/161

Book VII finally to adjust a plan of operations for the subsequent conduct of the revolution. Colonel Clive undertook to get the treaties prepared with due secrecy. The fictitious was transcribed upon red paper. But the agent of Meer Jaffier having insisted that the King's Admiral should sign, as well as the company's representatives; and Omichund knowing this, it was necessary to the scheme of deceiving him, that Mr. Watson should sign both. He signed the real, but refused to sign the fictitious treaty: on which his signature was counterfeited. On the 19th of May, Clive dispatched the treaties by a private messenger of the country; but, in this short interval, either some intelligence from Muxadavad, or his own reflections, changed his notions of the vastness of Surajah Dowlah's treasures: and he instructed Mr. Watts, that if Meer Jaffier should disapprove of the great amount of the stipulations for money, the restitution allotted for the company might be reduced from ten to five millions of rupees. Mr. Scrafton was stopped near Plassy by the advanced guards of the camp; he requested to be conducted to the quarters of Meer Jaffier; but some of the Nabob's spies being present, they interfered, and insisted that he should take the direct road to the capital, where he arrived on the 24th. In the interval between Mr. Watts's letters of the 6th, and Mr. Scrafton's return to Muxadavad, the crafty Omichund had practised another trick on the credulity of the Nabob; for, perceiving by his questions that his suspicions of the English increased, although he had discovered nothing of their project, Omichund, after much artificial hesitation, informed him, as a discovery by which he risqued all his pretensions to the favours of the English, that they had lately sent deputies to Mr. Bussy in the Decan, inviting him to march into Bengal, and proposing that both armies should join in dethroning him, when the spoil was to be equally divided between them. A little knowledge and understanding would have convinced the Nabob, that such an union was im-