POLITICAL HISTORY.
and Council' says Mr, Carmichael in his District Manual of Vizagapatam, 'to regard this as a chllange to their newly-constituted authority, and with the aid of the Company's troops he readily defeated the insurgents one after the other. At the close of the campaign, all the zaniindars in the district but Andra and Pálkonda, who had both kept aloof from the malcontents, were dispossessed, and their patrimony went to swell the rental of Vizianagram. The more considerable chiefs were admitted to 'towjees' or stipends while men of less note, or who were objects of special resentment, were kept in fetters in the dungeons of the fort at Vizianagram.' The manner in which the Jeypore fort was captured about this time by the combined forces of the Company and Sítaráma is recounted on p. 267 below.
'In the year 1775,' continues Mr. Carmichael, a strong faction of the leading Rásavárs (Rájputs), who had their own advantage in view, coerced Sítaráma Rázu to retire from the prominent part he had heretofore taken in his brother's affairs. He agreed to resign the office of díwán and to retire to a private possession, on Viziaráma's covenanting to acknowledge his (Sítaráma's) son, Narasimha Gajapati Rázu, as his successor. To this, Viziaráma (who was then childless) readily acceded, it being a proviso that the title of the son of Sítaráma should not be preferred to that of any male issue that might afterwards be born to Viziaráma himself.
In 1778, in the circumstances referred to on p. 167 below, the zamindars of the Northern Circars were summoned to Madras to have their peshkash settled, and the intriguing and ambitious Sítaráma succeeded by lavish bribery in obtaining, from the authorities there, orders reinstating him as díwán, instructing his brother the Rája to be reconciled to him, confirming the conditional succession of his son to the zaraindari, and directing that all future leases of land in the estate should be made in this son's name.1[1]
On the 3rd October 1780 a serious mutiny occurred among the sepoys at Vizagapatam. To meet the invasion of the Carnatic by Haidar Ali of Mysore, the Govei-nment had ordered four companies of these troops to embark for Madras. The result is described as follows by the newswriter in Hickey's Gazette2[2]: —
'We are informed that the Sepoy troops lately draughted at Vizagapatam, having all their arms, aceautraments, baggage, etc., ready to
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