"Long live the Nizam!"
Obviously gratified at the warmth of his greeting, the ruler of the Deccan wheeled his horse and came cantering up to the cavalryman, whose sword flashed in salute.
"Boyd Sahib," he said, "you are a veritable magician. You turn ryots into soldiers as readily as a fakir turns a stone into bread. Your men are admirable. I congratulate you on their appearance."
Then, turning to his taciturn companion:
"Sir Arthur Wellesley, permit me to present to you Boyd Sahib, commander of my cavalry and my trusted friend. General Boyd," he added, glancing at the Englishman with a malicious smile, "is a very brilliant soldier—and an American."
Thus met, when the nineteenth century was still in its swaddling-clothes, two extraordinary men: Sir Arthur Wellesley, who in later years, as the Duke of Wellington, was to gain undying fame by conquering Napoleon; and General John Parker Boyd, an American soldier of fortune, who rendered most gallant service to his own people, but whose very name has been forgotten by them.
Jack Boyd, as his boyhood companions in Newburyport used to call him, was born with the spirit of adventure strong within him. Almost before he had graduated from dresses to knee-trousers he would linger about the wharfs of the quaint old town, drinking in the stories of strange places and stranger doings told him by the seafarers who were wont to congregate along the water-front, or staring wistfully at the big, black merchantmen about to sail for foreign parts. He was wont to say that it was a perverse and unkind fate which caused him to be born in so inauspicious a year as 1764, for, though there was no more ardent youngster in all New England, his youth caused the recruiting sergeants of the Continental Army to whom he applied for enlistment to pat him on the shoulder and remark encouragingly: "Come again, son, when you're a few years older."
Thus it was that he saw unroll before him that marvellous moving-picture of the birth of a nation, which began on the greensward at Lexington and ended before the British lines at Yorktown, without being able to play any greater part in those stirring events than does a spectator in the thrilling scenes which he pays his five cents to see depicted on a screen. Indeed, a twelve-month passed after the last British soldier left our shores before young Boyd achieved the ambition of his life by obtaining an ensign's commission in the 2d Regiment of Foot and donned the blue coat and buff breeches of an officer in the American army. Although within a year he had been promoted to lieutenant, his was not the temperament which could long endure the monotony of garrison life, with its unending round of guard-mounting and small-arms practice and company drill. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that before the gold braid on his lieutenant's uniform had time to tarnish he had handed in his papers and had booked passage on an East Indiaman sailing out of Boston for Madras. The year 1788, then, saw this youngster of four-and-twenty landed on the coast of Coromandel, poor in acquaintances and pocket but rich in adventurousness and pluck.
He could have taken his military talents to no better market, for at this period of India's troubled history a brilliant career awaited a man whose wits were as sharp as his sword. The last quarter of the eighteenth century found all India ablaze with racial and religious hatred. Wars were as frequent as strikes are in the United States. Though the French were still supreme in the south of the peninsula, the English power was steadily rising in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. There were really two distinct struggles in progress: the English were fighting the French and the Hindus were fighting the Mohammedans. The most powerful of the native princes at this time were the Nizam of Hyderabad, and the Peishwa, as the ruler of the Mahratta tribes was called—both of whom had, for reasons of policy, espoused the English cause—and Tippoo Sahib, the son of a Mohammedan military adventurer who had made himself Sultan of Mysore, who was an ally of the French. Ranged on the one side, then, were the British, with their allies, the Nizam and the Peishwa, while opposed to them were the French and Tippoo of Mysore. All of the reigning princes of India maintained extensive military establishments, and soldiers of fortune found at their courts rapid promotion and lavish pay. When Boyd landed in India he was confronted with the problem which of the rival causes he should make his own, and it speaks well for his sagacity and foresight that he promptly decided to offer his services to the allies of the English, for at that time most students of politics, in India and out of it, believed that the future of the peninsula was to be Gallic rather than Anglo-Saxon.