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378 ing off great booty, and had also plundered on the frontier of Bengal. Amir Khan, the Pathan leader, was besieging Jaipur, whose raja applied to the English for succour. After much negotiation Lord Hastings succeeded not only in bringing the Rajput state of Jaipur within the English protectorate, but also in concluding a subsidiary treaty with the Bhonsla Raja of Nagpur, whereby an important member was detached from the Maratha confederation. But this raja soon repented an engagement which affected his complete independence; and under the influence of a party at his capital hostile to the English, he began to correspond secretly with the Peshwa at Poona, who had become restless, disaffected, and exceedingly impatient of British mediation in his dealings with feudatories or neighbouring states.

The war in Nepal, which seemed likely to be long and troublesome, encouraged an inclination among the Marathas to try conclusions again with the English. The Peshwa began to assemble his troops and collect military stores; the British Resident replied by calling in the subsidiary force; and a kind of sporadic insurrection, privily fomented by the Poona authorities, was breaking out in the country. All these threatening symptoms reached a crisis when the Gaikwar's envoy, who had been sent to Poona on a special mission under British guarantee, was assassinated, with the Peshwa's connivance, by one of his confidential favourites. The murderer's surrender was extorted from the Peshwa, with the greatest difficulty, by the British Resident,