Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/230

202 Ujain to Sironj. Agra, too, the place in which in his younger days he had won his spurs, fell into the hands of his adherents.

Perron had not been blind to the events occurring in his government. In Agra were his arsenals, his magazines, his manufactories. To Agra, then, he marched, at the head of his whole available force. He was joined before the place by Ambají Inglia, one of Daolát Ráo's principal officers, at the head of a large body of cavalry.

Agra resisted long, but Lakhwá Dádá was not there to defend it in person, and in the end it surrendered. Perron then marched against Lakhwá Dádá, who had by this time mastered nearly two-thirds of Rájpútáná. The hostile forces met at Sondia, in the Datiá territory, on the 3rd May 1800. The disciplined battalions prevailed. Lakhwá Dádá was beaten and so severely wounded that he died shortly after.

Rid of this formidable adversary Perron had time to turn his attention to George Thomas, an adventurer who had almost succeeded, single handed, in firmly establishing an independent principality in northern India. Thomas was a very remarkable man. An Irishman by birth, Thomas had come out to India as a common sailor on board of an English man-of-war about the year 1782. Deserting from his ship as she lay anchored in the Madras roads, he had wandered about the Carnatic, and had finally taken service under the