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HE REFUSES TO SURRENDER HIS GUESTS. 85 consequence was, that though the Marathas gleaned c "| p - every blade of grass, there was but little else to gather, ^ and they were beginning to feel that, looking at it with 1740. the eyes of marauders, the campaign had been a failure. That was a frame of mind which would willingly have listened to offers of payment for retiring from so barren and desolated a country, and such offers they did receive at the proper time. They had liberated Mir Asad, first minister of the deceased Dost Ali, and he, betaking himself to Vellur, prevailed upon his new master to make proposals of peace to the invader. Mir Asad was a bitter enemy of Chanda Sahib, and he had succeeded in imbuing the mind of Safdar Ali with sus- picions as to the designs of his brother-in-law. He had easily convinced him also that the sacrifice of Chanda Sahib would lighten the conditions likely to be imposed upon himself. This being agreed upon as a basis, negotiations were opened, and after a short interval, a treaty was signed in the month of August, 1740, by which it was arranged that Safdar Ali should be recog- nised as Nawwab of the Karnatik in place of his father; that he should pay by instalments ten millions of rupees to the Marathas ; that he should join his troops to those of the Marathas to drive Chanda Sahib from Trichina- palli; and that all the Hindu princes on the Koromandel coast should be reinstated in possession of the places they held prior to 1736. The two last articles, however, were kept secret, and the better to prevent their exis- tence being suspected, the Marathas at once retired from the Karnatik. Some information, however, regarding the secret clauses of this treaty reached M. Dumas, and he did not fail to take advantage of it. He had already been threatened by Raghuji Bhonsla, and a correspondence, not tending at all to accommodate matters, had ensued between them. He had been asked to pay tribute, and he had refused ; he had been called upon to give up the