Page:History of the French in India.djvu/529

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AFFAIRS AT AURANGAB^D. 503 this intrigue. The confinement of the princes did not chap. long follow the fall of Saiyid Lashkar, for the Subadar, XL completely reassured as to Bussy, and following his 1757 advice, almost immediately released them, giving them each a liberal income, but without any administrative or political power. Thus they continued till the period of Bussy 's dismissal in May, 1756. Then it was that Shah Nawaz Khan, dreading the facile character of Salabat Jang, and fearing that he would recall the French, hoping more from the determined character of the next brother, Nizam AH, persuaded the Subadar to confide to him the government of Barar, and the Basalat Jang, the younger, the government of the terri- tory of Adoni in the district of Bellari. The possession of some power would not fail, he knew, to induce them to aspire to more. The success of Bussy at Haidarabad delayed for some time the plans that Shah Nawaz had formed, but as the French leader did not interfere after his own reinstate- ment with the arrangements made by Salabat Jang re- garding his brothers, Shah Nawaz took advantage of the subsequent march of Bussy to the Sirkars to renew them. In the month of May following, affairs appeared to him ripe for a movement. He took advantage, then, of the death of his predecessor,* Saiyid Lashkar, to summon the fortress of Daolatabad, in which the trea- sures of the deceased minister, computed at nearly a million sterling, and which of right reverted to the Subadar, were stated to be concealed, and which the governor refused to deliver up. At the end of a month Daolatabad surrendered, and was immediately taken possession of by Shah Nawaz, the office of governor being bestowed upon a dependent of his own. His object was to take an early opportunity of confining the Subadar in Daolatabad, of then proclaiming Nizam Ali, and of expelling the French from the Dakhan. The

  • May, 1757.