Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/202

196 obligations mutual, and maintained the independency of his command. Neither Jaffier nor his son had suspected this sternness in his character. He not only insisted on the payments of the treaty-monies, as they became due, but, when tampered with to approve changes in the army and administration, which Jaffier wished to make in order to gratify his own favourites, Clive let him understand, that he would permit none, as deeming them dangerous to the public tranquillity, and contrary to declarations, sanctified by his own. Jaffier felt these restraints with abomination, which turned his head to notions of emancipating himself from the ascendance of the English; but, warned by the experience of the confederacy which had raised him to the sovereignty, saw the necessity of first breaking the power of the Gentoos, in whom the English would find the same resources against himself as he with the English had derived from them against Surajah Dowlab. Roydoolub, as the head of the Gentoo line, was first to be destroyed; but, dreading the sagacity of Clive, Jaffier determined to set nothing in motion which might awaken his suspicions, whilst he remained at Muxadavad; and in the interval, both he and his son Meerum carried themselves to him with every appearance of openness and confidence, and Clive often partook of the familiarity of their private amusements.

On the 14th of September, the day after the detachment from Patna arrived at Muxadavad, Clive went away to Calcutta, leaving Watts, Maningham, and Scrafton, to transact the company's affairs with the Nabob and his ministers. The detachment from Patna was stationed in the factory at Cossimbuzar; the rest of the troops, which had served at Plassy, were sent down the river, and quartered at Chandernagore, as a more healthy situation than Calcutta.

We shall now return to the affairs of Coromandel and the Decan.