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304 sympathetic assurance that the Amir would soon come to exterminate all infidels and polytheists. In 1797 Shah Zaman did march through the Panjab and occupy Lahore, to the great alarm of the Anglo-Indian government; for the whole of North India was stirred by his coming, the Mohammedans were preparing to join his standard, the Oudh ruler was totally incapable of making any effective resistance, and if the Afghan had pushed on to Delhi, there would have been an outbreak of anarchy and perilous commotion. Such a formidable diversion would undoubtedly have drawn northward every available English regiment for the protection of the Bengal frontier; but in 1798 Shah Zaman was obliged to return hurriedly to guard his own western provinces from the Persians.

Meanwhile Tippu had sent a secret mission across the Indian Ocean to the Isle of France, as Mauritius was then called, with letters for the Directory in Paris, proposing an offensive and defensive alliance with the French Republic for the purposes of destroying the English in India and dividing the country between himself and France. The governor of the French islands gave his envoys a public reception, and on January 30, 1798, issued a proclamation calling for volunteers to serve under the Mysore flag against the common enemy, England. In 1799 Buonaparte addressed to him a letter, dated Headquarters, Cairo, saying: "You have been already informed of my arrival on the shores of the Red Sea, with an innumerable and invincible army, full of the desire of releasing you from the iron yoke of