Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/53

Book VI. the elder, named Mirza Mahmud, was adopted by Allaverdy, and the other, named Moorad Dowlah, by Nowagis Mahomed. The superior qualities of Zaindee justified Allaverdy in preferring him to his elder brother Nowagis, a man of much less resolution and capacity; but after the death of Zaindee there remained no reason to exclude Nowagis again from the succession: for he was of a better character than his brother Sid Hamed; and of the two children left by Zaindee, the younger, Moorad Dowlah, was weak of intellect, and the elder, Mirza Mahmud, a youth of seventeen years, had discovered the most vicious propensities, at an age when only follies are expected from princes. But the great affection which Allaverdy had borne to the father was transferred to this son, whom he had for some years bred in his own palace; where, instead of correcting the evil dispositions of his nature, he suffered them to increase by overweening indulgence: born without compassion, it was one of the amusements of Mirza Mahmud's childhood to torture birds and animals; and, taught by his minions to regard himself as of a superior order of beings, his natural cruelty hardened by habit, rendered him as insensible to the sufferings of his own species as of the brute creation: in conception he was not slow, but absurd; obstinate, sullen, and impatient of contradiction; but, notwithstanding his insolent contempt of mankind, innate cowardice, and the confusion of his ideas, rendered him suspicious of all who approached him, excepting his favourites, who were buffoons and profligate men, raised from menial servants to be his companions: with these he lived in every kind of intemperance and debauchery, and more especially in drinking spirituous liquors to an excess, which inflamed his passions, and impaired the little understanding with which he was born. He had, however, cunning enough to carry himself with much demureness in the presence of Allaverdy, whom no one ventured to inform of his real character; for in despotic states the sovereign is always the last to hear what it concerns him most to know.

This youth in the year 1753 Allaverdy declared his successor, and from this time suffered him to act in the government of the provinces