Page:Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan.djvu/191

Rh Isle of France to his assistance. On February 7, 1799, Monsieur Dubuc embarked at Tranquebar on his embassy. Yet Tipú, on the 16th of the same month, replied to the Sublime Porte in a grandiloquent despatch, full of professions of unbounded devotion for the head of his faith, winding up the strange epistle by saying: –

'As the French nation are estranged from, and are become the opponents of the Sublime Porte, they may be said to have rendered themselves the enemy of all the followers of the faith. All Musalmáns should renounce friendship with them.'

The above, however, was really only a pretended answer, intended to be forwarded through the Governor-General. In a separate communication, which Tipú forwarded by special means to Constantinople, he virulently attacked the English, as well as the French.

'All Hindustán,' he wrote, 'is overrun with Infidels and Polytheists, except the dominions of the Khudádád Sirkár (the God-given State), which, like the ark of Noah, are safe under the protection and bounteous aid of God.'

He proceeds to say that the English Governor-General (Lord Teignmouth) had caused Asaf-ud-dáulah. the Nawáb Vazír of Oudh, to be poisoned, had violated the chastity of his widow, and plundered his house of money and jewels to the amount of twenty crores of rupees. The wives and daughters of men of science and rank had been forcibly carried