As a preliminary to this
undertaking, they prevailed on him to propose a tripartite division of
that vast country: one part to the Company; another to the Mahrattas;
and the third to himself. To himself he reserved all the southern part
of the great peninsula, comprehended under the general name of the
Deccan.
On this scheme of their servants, the Company was to appear in the
Carnatic in no other light than as a contractor for the provision of
armies, and the hire of mercenaries for his use and under his direction.
This disposition was to be secured by the Nabob's putting himself under
the guaranty of France, and, by the means of that rival nation,
preventing the English forever from assuming an equality, much less a
superiority, in the Carnatic. In pursuance of this treasonable project,
(treasonable on the part of the English,) they extinguished the Company
as a sovereign power in that part of India; they withdrew the Company's
garrisons out of all the forts and strongholds of the Carnatic; they
declined to receive the ambassadors from foreign courts, and remitted
them to the Nabob of Arcot; they fell upon, and totally destroyed, the
oldest ally of the Company, the king of Tanjore, and plundered the
country to the amount of near five millions sterling; one after
another, in the Nabob's name, but with English force, they brought into
a miserable servitude all the princes and great independent nobility of
a vast country.
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