Page:History of the French in India.djvu/254

 232 FRENCH INDIA AT ITS ZENITH. chap, themselves to the principle of supporting expelled and , wandering royalty — a principle which nearly ruined 1749. them on this occasion, and which, more than ninety years after, brought their army to destruction in the snows of Afghanistan. Eleven years had elapsed since Sahuji had been expelled, and during that time Tanjur had enjoyed a quiet and a prosperity to which, under his rule, it had been a stranger ; yet the desire of governing, so strongly planted in the Asiatic breast, would not allow the dethroned monarch to be tranquil. Although his experience of the attraction of a crown had been such as would have been sufficient to deter a man of ordinary sense from again striving for the dangerous prize, although on one occasion he had barely escaped from his enemies' hands, and on the other had been seized by them in the midst of his own guards, to the imminent danger of his life, he never ceased to sigh for his departed grandeur. To attain that state of sensual existence which had once been his, he was ready not only to stake his life, but to consent to the dismemberment of his country. When, therefore, the news of the meeting of the European plenipotentiaries at Aix-la-Chapelle caused a suspension of Arms in India, Sahuji, who had been struck with the great superiority evinced in the field by the European over the Asiatic soldiers, resolved to en- deavour to enlist on his behalf the aid of some of those redoubtable warriors. It was, however, he well knew, useless for him to appeal to the French. Not only had he deceived them in 1738, but they had since lived upon good terms with his successor, Partab Singh. His only chance was with the English, and to them, therefore, he made his demand. He was extremely liberal in his offers. The payment of all the expenses of the war, and the cession of Devi- kota, a town at the mouth of the Kolrun, a hundred and twenty-two miles south of Madras, with the terri-