The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

by William Dalrymple

Then, on the morning of 25 March 1798, Raymond was found dead, aged only forty-three; there was gossip that the cause may have been poison, possibly administered by the pro-Company faction in the durbar. Whatever the truth, the sudden death of Raymond gave Kirkpatrick his chance. It helped that one of the Nizam’s ministers, Mir Alam, had recently visited Calcutta and been astonished by the size and scale of the Company’s barracks and arms factories, and that other senior officials in the Hyderabad durbar were equally convinced that the Company was the rising power in India. They argued that an alliance was essential for the safety of Hyderabad, surrounded as it was by two much more powerful neighbours, Tipu’s Mysore to the south and the Marathas in Pune, immediately to the west. Six months later, after weeks of hard negotiation, a secret treaty was signed, bringing Hyderabad and the Company into a close military alliance: 6,000 Company troops were to be resident in Hyderabad and available for the Nizam’s protection. In return the Nizam was to pay the Company an annual subsidy of £41,710,b and to dismiss the French corps. Exactly how or when this was to be done, however, was not made clear in the Treaty. Following the signing, an uneasy month passed as the new Company force of four battalions, along with a train of artillery, made its way slowly up the 150 miles from the coast near Guntur. This was the nearest Company-controlled town, where Wellesley had ordered them to col...