Page:Dupleix and the Struggle for India by the European Nations.djvu/95

88 recognition of Chandá Sáhib as Nuwáb of the Karnátik, and the cession to the French of the town of Masulipatam. The first of these conditions meant, the Subáhdár considered, the release of a man who would at once pose as a rival to himself. Rather than that, it was better to risk the result of war. Accordingly, he marched with an army of upwards of 100,000 men in the direction of Gingi. For about two months the operations of both armies were prevented by an unusually fierce rainy season. These months were employed by Dupleix in constant secret correspondence with the powerful chiefs who formed the backbone of Nádir Jang's army, and who, he well knew, bore him personally no good-will. Finally, before the rainy season had ended, he had entered into a convention with those, that if Nádir Jang should still refuse acceptance of the terms offered by Dupleix, they should turn against him in the crisis of the first battle. Even the minor details, regulating the very moment of their defection, were carefully settled.

The inaction, forced upon him by the heavy rainy season, combined with the prospect of a long and hazardous campaign against an enemy so formidable as the French, produced a revulsion in the mind of Nádir Jang. So long as hostilities should last his presence in camp was necessary, and to a man of his sensual nature camp-life was an abhorrence. He wrote, then, early in December, to Dupleix, to offer to agree to the terms the latter had proposed three