Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/250

222 For some time after this engagement Dudrenec remained in comparative inaction, at Indúr. In 1797 he added two battalions to his force. In the struggle for power which followed the death of Túkají the same year (1797), Dudrenec sided at first with the legitimate, but imbecile, heir, Khási Ráo. Acting in his name, he alternately defeated, and was defeated by, the pretender, Jeswant Ráo. When at length the triumph of the latter seemed assured, Dudrenec went over with all his troops and guns to his side. But Jeswant Ráo did not trust him, and Dudrenec soon saw that his disgrace was determined upon. Under these circumstances he thought he would try and steal a march upon his master. Taking advantage of the hostilities then engaged between Sindia and Jeswant Ráo (1801) he endeavoured to take his six battalions bodily over to the former. But the men were more faithful than their commander. They drove Dudrenec from the camp and marched to Jeswant Ráo, who at once placed at their head an Englishman named Vickers.

Dudrenec was, however, well received by Sindia, and entrusted with the command of a brigade — the fourth — and placed under the orders of Perron, at Aligarh. In February, 1803, he was detached with this brigade to join Sindia at Ujjén; again, towards the autumn of the same year, when hostilities with the English were imminent, he was sent back to rejoin Perron. This force reached the vicinity of Agra in October, having been joined in its way by the three battalions of