Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/285

Book VIII. information that Coja Haddee, who commanded them, was ordered by the Nabob to suffer no troops, excepting his own division, to enter the gates until the Nabob himself should arrive there. This arrangement was intended to give a notion to the capital of the province, that the English troops were as subservient to the Nabob as his own. Clive waited until Coja Haddee's division were in possession of the gate, and then marched up, demanding admittance. Coja Haddee being attached to Roydoolub, and knowing his respect and reliance on Clive, mentioned the general order he had received from the Nabob; but said, that it could not be meant to extend to his friends the English, and admitted the troops with more pleasure than reluctance. Clive, satisfied with having established the point of honour, did not stop, but continued his march through the city to the English factory; which stands on the farther side, very near the western gate. The next day, being the 6th, he received a letter from the Nabob, with inconsistent excuses for the forced march of Cojee Hadde's division, and requesting Clive to encamp at Bankapoor, which is five miles beyond the English factory, where the company have a large garden. Clive had before determined to do so; and the troops proceeded thither immediately. The day after, another letter desired him to move to Dinapoor, five miles farther, because the Nabob himself intended to encamp at Bankapoor. This design of removing the English troops to such a distance, and of keeping the whole of the Nabob's army between them and the city, raised suspicions, which corresponded with other intelligence. Promises, delays, distresses, relief, were to be alternately employed, and bribes as the last resource, to draw Clive to an acquiescence to the Nabob's designs, which continued invariably to deprive Ramnarain of the government of Patna, and to confer it on his own brother Meer Cossim, when the other offices and departments of the province would be shared amongst the favourites and dependants of his former fortune. Roydoolub, who had always suspected, was now convinced that such were the Nabob's intentions, and, seeing his own destruction blended with Ramnarain's, united their councils, whatsoever might have been their former connexions, without reserve.