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 As Resident at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, Lieut-Colonel Kirkpatrick rendered valuable services to the Government under the Marquis of Wellesley, and firmly established British authority in that State, at a time when the French were powerful rivals in Southern India; but it is his personal history that draws attention and arouses a lively interest even after the lapse of a hundred years.

In Hyderabad, Kirkpatrick was known by the Indian title Husheerat Jung, or " Glorious-in-battle." He was a great favourite with the nizam, who built a splendid palace for him as Residency, and there he lived, in all the magnificence and style of an Indian noble, with a beautiful young begum who had lost her heart to the handsome soldier, and threatened to take her own life if he persisted in the refusal of her suit.

When the young girl herself, "in faint and broken accents" pleaded her love, and was supported by her mother and grandmother, Kirkpatrick, as he wrote his brother, " must have been something more or less than man to have held out any longer," and the pair were married by civil contract according to the Mohammedan law. The alliance caused no little stir and scandal, and Lord Wellesley contemplated superseding the Resident. But Kirkpatrick's great public services,