who during that period conversed a good deal with his host, seems to have found him a wild and boastful talker, puffed up with vanity and pride. The new Governor-General spoke as if he were the Great Mogul of modern times. He was determined 'to come Aurangzeb over them.' He talked regretfully of the good things he would have done for India had he gone out thither twenty years before. As for the old King of Delhi, he intended to turn him and his family out of the royal Palace, and convert it into a residence for himself[1].
On the 15th of March, three days after Lord Auckland's departure. Lord Ellenborough laid by letter before Sir J. Nicolls a careful statement of the policy he meant to pursue. Setting wholly aside, as a source of weakness, the policy which had ended by provoking a religious as well as a national war, he held it his first duty to ensure the safety of our Afghán garrisons and other troops in the field, and then to re-establish our military reputation among Eastern peoples by inflicting upon the Afgháns 'some signal and decisive blow.' That done, we might withdraw with honour from Afghánistán, 'satisfied that the king we have set up has not the support of the nation over which he has been placed.' If the release of the prisoners taken at Kábul, an object 'deeply interesting in point of feeling and of honour,' could not be effected by other means, it might become a question whether Pollock's and Sale's forces should return to the country below
- ↑ Greville Memoirs.
