Page:Our Indian Army.djvu/251

Rh the native powers of India; and notwithstanding the bad faith he had before so often experienced from them, he resolved to form a confederacy which, by including every potentate of any power or influence, might render his long concerted project more feasible. With this view, after having fulfilled all the conditions of the late treaty, and received back his sons in 1794, he sent ambassadors to the Court of Zemaun Shah, the sovereign of the Afghans – a powerful and warlike tribe, inhabiting the rich and populous provinces of Candahar, Cabul, and Cashmere, with whom we were at that time but little acquainted.

A correspondence had subsisted between Tippoo and Timur Shah, the father of this prince, before the commencement of the late war; and he now indulged a sanguine hope of obtaining the assistance of the latter, in a simultaneous attack upon the British territories. In order that the influence of religion might be added to political considerations, the Sultan of Mysore proposed to the Afghan prince the total extermination of the Brahmins and Europeans; and the establishment, throughout all India, of the faith of Mahomed. This, however, was to be a secret article between them and the Nizam; for he proposed to engage in the confederacy the Peishwa and Dawlut Bao Scindiah, who were both bigoted Hindoos. So extensive were the connexions and intrigues of Tippoo at this period, that he is said to have induced even Mahomed Ali, Nabob of the Carnatic, the old and supposed faithful friend of the British, to concur in his designs.

Zemaun Shah, at this time engaged in a war with the Emperor, conceived the projects of Tippoo to be very chimerical, and the hopes of success very faint and uncertain. Influenced by these considerations, and discouraged by an unsuccessful attack upon Delhi, he declined the confederacy; in consequence of which, and the failure of an embassy which he had sent to Constantinople and Paris, the Sultan was obliged for the present