Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/187

Book VII. were removed, but by what intelligence we do not known. On the 29th in the morning, he entered the city, escorted by 200 of the battalion and 300 Sepoys, and proceeded to the habitation allotted for him. It was a palace and a garden, called Moraudbaug, and spacious enough to accommodate all the troops which accompanied him. Here he was immediately visited by Meerum, with whom he went to the palace of the late Nabob, where Meer Jaffier with all the great officers in the city were waiting for him. In the hall of audience was fixed the Musnud or throne, in which Surajah Dowlah used to appear in pulflic. Jaffier, after the first salutation at the entrance, returned towards the inner part of the hall with Colonel Clive, and seemed desirous to avoid the Musnud, which Clive perceiving, led him to it, and having placed him on it, made obeisance to him, as Nabob of the provinces, in the usual forms, and presented a plate with gold rupees; he then, by an interpreter, exhorted the great men to be joyful that fortune had given them so good a prince, in exchange for such a tyrant as Surajah Dowlah; on which they likewise paid homage, and presented gold. The next morning Jaffier visited Clive, and conferred with him on the state of the treasury, alleging, as Roydoolub had done, that there was not sufficient to answer all his engagements to the English, but that he was nevertheless ready to agree to any reasonable accommodation. Clive proposed, and Jaffier agreed, to refer the matter to the Seats; and, in order to extinguish as soon as possible this brand of contention, they proceeded immediately to the house of the Seats, accompanied by Watts, Scrafton, Meerum, and Roydoolub. Omichund, who was attending, followed, thinking himself, at this very time, in as high a degree of estimation with Clive, as any one who had contributed to the evolution; but, on his arrival at the Seats, finding that he was not invited to the carpet where the others were in conference, he sat down at a distance near the outward part of the hall.

The treaties, as written in Persic and English, were read, explained, and acknowledged. After much conversation, Roydoolub insisting always on the scantiness of the treasury, it was agreed that one half