Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/368

320 Sultan in 1799, "considered all the thrones of the world as the sport and prey of their boundless ambition and insatiable rapine." But Mysore, Haidarabad, and Oudh had now been placed beyond danger of the French contagion; and Lord Wellesley was able to record that "the only native powers of importance now remaining in India independent of British protection are the confederate Maratha states."

It could only be through a perverse contrariety of spirit that, notwithstanding his solemn warnings against the machinations of France, the European power which the Marathas persisted in regarding with uneasiness was England. Their restless character, the advantages presented by their local position to the future intrigues of France, and the number of French officers in the service of Sindhia, convinced the Governor-General that it was a matter of indispensable precaution to acquire an ascendency in the councils of the Maratha Empire, and to frame a system of political connection that should preserve a powerful barrier against them. This barrier had now been erected by the subsidiary treaties with the Mohammedan states; and as the three leading Maratha chiefs – Sindhia, Holkar, and the Raja of Nagpur – were contending in arms among themselves for supremacy, the time was opportune for interposing with an offer of protection to the nominal chief of their confederacy at Poona, where the government was threatened by three predatory armies, subsisting at large on the country. If the chiefs of these armies combined to upset the Peshwa, they might seize command of the