Page:Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan.djvu/105

Rh was impracticable, but it had the effect of severing the coalition between the Maráthás and Haidar, who thus stood alone against the English.

Haidar, although deserted by his native allies, unsupported by the French, and threatened by rebellion in his western possessions, was not a man to abandon himself to despair. He had not indeed achieved his main object of driving the English out of Southern India. But he had overrun large tracts of their country, occupied most of their principal forts, and fought steadily and with success against his antagonists. What he himself thought of the struggle is thus recorded by Wilks, as forming a topic of conversation with his finance minister, Púrnaiya: –

'I have committed a great error. I have purchased a draught of séndhi (an intoxicating drink) at the price of a lac of pagodas. Between me and the English there were grounds for mutual dissatisfaction, but no sufficient cause for war, and I might have made them my friends in spite of Muhammad Alí, the most treacherous of men. The defeat of many Baillies and Braithwaites will not destroy them. I can ruin their resources by land, but I cannot dry up the tea. I ought to have reflected that no man of common sense will trust a Maráthá, and that they themselves do not expect to be trusted. I have been amused by idle expectations of a French force from Europe; but, supposing it to arrive and to be successful here, I must go alone against the