Meanwhile, the Nizâm's forces and those of the Company under Colonel Smith were approaching Mysore from different sides. It was agreed, however, that the two armies should, when they reached fighting distance, join forces in one camp, so as to show their inviolable unity. But alas! when this happy consummation was reached, the English troops had the mortification of seeing the Nizâm's troops march out as they marched in!
Hyder had been successful with his money-bags once more, and after an absurd and futile farce of palavering on the part of the Company, Colonel Smith prepared to face the enemy's seventy thousand men and one hundred and nine guns with his own meagre seven thousand and sixteen guns. It is astonishing to think how he won his battle and managed to retreat in safety, though he had against his poor thousand of cavalry over forty-two thousand of mounted men, pure freebooters by trade. He seems to have had mettle, this almost unheard-of Colonel Smith, for immediately he received reinforcements he resumed the offensive, and after a time completely defeated Hyder and the Nizâm at Trincomalee. Concerning this battle a nice little story is told. The Nizâm, as is the custom of Eastern potentates, had taken his favourite women with him to the fight mounted on elephants, which stood in line at the rear. The Nizâm, seeing the tide of war going against him, gave orders for the elephants to turn and retire, when from one howdah arose a clear, scornful, feminine voice: "This elephant has not been taught so to turn; he follows the standard of Empire."
And follow it he did, standing alone amid shot and shell, till the royal standards, flying in hot haste, gave him the lead.
But not even this sort of thing could avail. And Hyder's money-bags failed him also in an attempt to suborn an English commandant, who replied to the second flag of truce sent in with a bribe, that if Hyder-Ali wished to spare the lives of his ambassadors, he had better refrain from sending more, as they would be hanged in his sight.
Still, bursting money-bags do much, and ever since the sacking of Bednore, an ancient Hindu city where he had found treasures worth over £12,000,000, Hyder had never been crippled by any lack of gold. Nothing held him. He was here, there, everywhere. Recovering lost territory one day, losing it the next, fighting everybody, even the Mahrattas, like a wild cat, and inwardly raging at his failure to crush the English, who had just entered into a new treaty with his former ally the Nizâm, by which the latter again acknowledged the rights of the Company to the Northern Circars, and further ceded to it, for the annual payment of £700,000, the whole district of Mysore. Thus Madras gained its diwâni as well as Bengal.
There is something almost ludicrous in the ease with which territory changed hands in those days, and we are left with the picture in our mind's eye of a be-jewelled potentate and a be-stocked officer hobnobbing over bags of rupees, silk-paper documents, and large seals.
This treaty was a bitter pill to Hyder, who retaliated in every possible way, until one day, by deft stratagem, he took his enemies in the rear, appeared by forced marches before the very walls of Madras, so, with the pleasure-gardens and houses of the councillors at his mercy, almost compelled a treaty of mutual aid and defence.
A volte face indeed! Small wonder that the Directors at home, who had been complaining ineffectively of the expenses of the war, became bewildered by the sudden change of venue. The general public also, seeing the price of East India stock go down 60 per cent., became uneasy; there is nothing like a drop in Trust-Securities for rousing the national conscience! Dividends were declining, debts were increasing, the glorious hopes of unbounded riches from India had faded; actuaries, nicely balancing debit and credit against the Company, discovered that no less than one and a quarter million of the original stock of four and a quarter of millions had gone, disappeared!
Fateful disclosures these! Public outcry rose loud; voices that had kept discreet silence while profit seemed the certain result of wars, and treaties, and giftings, were now uplifted against rapacity, misconduct, corruption; in the midst of which the alarming discovery was made that the Company required a loan of £1,000,000 from this same public in order to carry on the business. Yet, unless the business was carried on, how could the yearly payments of £400,000 to the royal exchequer, on which the public had insisted, be continued?
Could mismanagement further go?