Page:History of the French in India.djvu/375

 GHt(zl-UD-DlN CONSPIRES. 351 to govern, effeminate, slothful, and possessing an chap. almost empty treasury. This state of things pre-, J_ sented an opportunity for self-aggrandisement, which, 1751. in the decline of the Mughal Empire, few possessed sufficient virtue to resist. Ghazi-ud-din at least had not that virtue. Through the agency of Mulhar Rao Holkar, he opened negotiations with the Peshwa, Balaji Baji Rao, and succeeded in inducing the great chief of the Marathas to support his pretensions. We have seen how the difficulty presented by this alliance had been momentarily overcome. A present of two lakhs of rupees, during his march to Golkonda, had induced the Maratha general to retire. Such pre- sents, however, ever form but incitements to new attacks. From the date of his triumphant entry into Aurangabad — June 29, 1751 — to the autumn of the same year, Salabat Jang had indeed lived unthreatened. During that interval, however, Ghazi-ud-din and Balaji Baji Rao had had time to cement their plans, and it soon became but too clear that the prospect of a larger bribe had combined with the promises of Ghazi-ud-din to determine the Peshwa to make a new and more formidable attack upon the Dakhan on the earliest and most convenient occasion. Affairs in that quarter being thus threatening, we may proceed to inquire how they were influenced by the conduct of Bussy ; how, likewise, his presence in the capital of that division of the empire affected, or was likely to affect, the plans which Dupleix was evolving for the growth of a French empire in India. The march of Bussy to Aurangabad in 1751, at the head of a force of 300 Europeans and 2,000 disciplined sipahis, his overthrow during that march of the three conspiring Nawwabs, his prompt elevation of Salabat Jang to the office and dignity of Subadar, had had the primary effect of making the French absolute masters of the situation. Bussy had, indeed, been a consenting