Yusuf Khan; The Rebel Commandant (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H ENTRY INTO THE ENGLISH SERVICE According to Orme,1 Yusuf Khan entered the English service by enlisting, with a company of sepoys which he had raised himself in the Nellore District, under Clive shortly before the battle of Kaveripak.2 It is just possible that he is the same man as the Muhammad Yusuf Khan who, with four others, signed an agreement,3 with Admiral Boscawen in 1748, to serve the English for three months against the French ?an agreement immediately cancelled?or he may have been the " Moorman" recommended to the good offices of Clive by Richard Prince, Deputy-Governor of Madras, in his letter of the 15th September, 1751; 4 but it is more probable, for reasons which will shortly be given, that he was at first in the service of Chanda Sahib; and in fact this must have been the case if he ever actually served as physician to Muhammad Kamal, for the latter was one of Chanda Sahib's adherents. At this time, though in Europe England and France were at peace, in India they were at war, for the rule of the Carnatic was contested between Muhammad Ali,5 whom the English supported as the rightful Nawab, and Chanda Sahib, the candidate put forward by the French. Of all the country between the river Kistna and Cape Comorin to which Muhammad Ali History, I. 346-7. See p. 9 below. Country Correspondence, 1748, No. 19. Orme AfSS., 287, p. 103. For convenience' sake I shall hereafter refer to this Prince simply as the Nawab. His claim was not acknowledged by the French until the treaty of Paris in 1763. Both the Nawab and Chanda Sahib claimed to have received farnuina or grants of the Nawabship of Arcot from the Great Mughal; but fur inn n.i were easily forged, and no importance need be attached to the assertion of either of these Princes. See p. 32 (n...