Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/228

188 We must now turn from internal affairs to the foreign relations of the East India Company and the general aspect of Indian politics. The Vizir of Oudh, when Mir Kasim took refuge with him, had in his camp the titular emperor of Delhi; and he thought the opportunity favourable for an expedition into the Bengal provinces with the professed object of restoring the imperial authority, but really with the intention of annexing such territory as he could seize. At Baxar, on the Ganges, he was met and signally defeated in September, 1764, by the Company's troops under Major Hector Munro, in an engagement of which the eventual and secondary consequences were very important. The success of the English brought the emperor into their camp, intimidated the Vizir, carried the armed forces of the Company across the Ganges to Benares and Allahabad, and acquired for them a new, advanced, and commanding position in relation to the principalities northwest of Bengal, with whom they now found themselves for the first time in contact. By this war the English were drawn into connection with upper India, and were brought out upon a scene of fresh operations that grew rapidly wider.

At this point, therefore, it will be useful to sketch in loose outline the condition, in the middle of the last century, of that vast tract of open plain country, watered by the Jumna, the Ganges, and their affluents, which stretches from Bengal northwestward to the Himalayas, and which is now divided into the three British provinces of Oudh, the Northwest Provinces,