Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/26

20 of Behar, and from hence by land to Delhi, where they arrived on the 8th of July 1715, after a march of three months. The famous Hossan Ally, who afterwards deposed four, and created five emperors of Indostan, was at this time Vizir, dreaded by his sovereign, and mortally hated by Caundorah, who was in full possession of the emperor's favour. The English, by their previous correspondence to Delhi, had chosen Caundorah for the patron of their petitions, to which the rivality between these lords was likely to prove no little detriment; for the one only could persuade the emperor to grant, what the other alone had the power of carrying into execution. Jaffier, the Nabob of Bengal, had from the beginning regarded the embassy with detestation, as the strongest imputation against the integrity of his own conduct, and would probably have counteracted it, both by representations and money, if he had not wanted all his influence at Delhi to promote the success of greater views; for he had for some years been soliciting the annexion of the provinces of Behar and Orixa to the government of Bengal, and the succession to this vast viceroyalty, in his family. Nevertheless his emissaries privately spread their specious objections amongst his friends: which with the desire of Hossan Ally to thwart Caundorah, would probably have soon produced the dismission of the embassadors with civil and insignificant answers, if an accident, which on a less important occasion would have been too mean to merit historical notice, had not placed them at once in a high degree of favour with the emperor himself; whom not all the vigilance of a mogul's seraglio had been able to preserve from the contagion of a distemper, which its institutions seem so well calculated to prevent.

The Mogul, despairing of the skill of his own empiricks, was advised by Caundorah to employ the surgeon of the English embassy, named Hamilton, by whom he was in a few weeks perfectly cured; and, in gratitude for this service, promised to grant the embassadors any indulgences, which might be consistent with the dignity of his government. Soon after his recovery succeeded the festival of his marriage with the daughter of Jasseing, the principal Rajah