VIZAGAPATAM,
The united forces now moved south in earnest. The Rája's levies, however, were of the wretchedest, consisting of '500 paltry horse and 5,000 foot, some with awkward fire-arms, the rest with pikes and bows: but he had collected 40 Europeans, who managed four field-pieces under the command of Mr. Bristol; besides which his own troops had some useless cannon.'
On the 9th December, near Condore, about 35 miles east-north-east of Rajahmundry, an action was fought with the French which ranks as one of the decisive battles of India and in which the French were utterly routed. The day was won by the European part of Colonel Forde's force. His sepoys broke and ran at an early stage, and even when the enemy was in full retreat the Rája's horse 'could not be prevailed upon to quit the shelter of a large tank, at this time dry, in which they, his foot, and himself in the midst of them, had remained cowering from the beginning of the action.'1[1] Forde pushed on to Rajahmundry next day without the Rája's rabble, and shortly afterwards took Masulipatam by a most brilliant assault. Salábat Jang, the Subadar of the Deccan, who had advanced within fifteen miles of the place to assist his protégés the French, changed sides at once and on the 14th May 1759 made a treaty 2[2] with the English, granting them the country round Masulipatam, renouncing all friendship with the French, and prohibiting the latter from ever again settling in the Northern Circars.
Except the tract then ceded to the Company, the rest of the Northern Circars thus fell once more with dramatic suddenness under the sway of the Subadar of the Deccan. His rule, however, extended to it in little but name. 'For seven succeeding years, the completest anarchy recorded in the history of Hindustan prevailed over all the Northern Circars. The forms, may even the remembrance, of civil government seemed to be wholly lost.'3[3]
In 1765 Clive obtained from the Mughal emperor at Delhi a firman granting the Company the five Northern Circars. This recites the cession of the country to the French by the Subadar Salábat Jang without authority from Delhi, and the expulsion of the French therefrom by the emperor's faithful sepoy sirdars, the English Company, and then states that in consideration of the fidelity and good wishes of the said Company 4[4] we have, from our
34
- ↑ 1 Orme, ii, 381.
- ↑ 2 The text of it is given in Aitchison's Treaties, etc. (1892), viii, 278.
- ↑ 3 Grant's Political Survey of the Northern Circars, forming Appendix B to the Fifth Report on the Affairs of the East India Company, 1812 (Madras, 1883), p. 146.
- ↑ 4 Aitchison's Treaties, etc., viii, 278
