Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/273

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
FOREIGN ADVENTURERS IN INDIA.
245

gaining to such an extent, the love, the esteem, the admiration of the natives of the country. The grandsons of the men who loved him then love and revere him now. The hero of the grandfathers is the model warrior of the grandchildren. Round his tomb in the present day there flock still young men and maidens listening to the tales told by the wild dervishes of the great deeds and lofty aspirations of the paladin to whom their sires devoted their fortunes and their lives.

Raymond was succeeded in the command of the French division by M. Piron, a Fleming. Piron was honest, but sadly deficient in prudence. He could not conceal the hatred which he felt towards the English. It happened that Marquess Wellesley had just landed as Governor-General strongly impressed with the designs of General Bonaparte on India, and almost his first act was to require the Nizám to dismiss his French contingent. It is possible that the prudent Raymond might have conjured away or have met the storm. Piron did not possess sufficient character to do either. The Nizám was very unwilling to comply. But he yielded to the pressure put upon him by the great Marquess, and on the 1st September, 1798, he signed a treaty by which he agreed to take no Frenchman in his service, to disband the whole of the infantry lately commanded by Raymond, and to receive in their stead a contingent of British sepoys.

No sooner had the treaty been concluded than four battalions of British sepoys with their guns marched to