retreat for our troops. Hastings ordered Goddard to propose a renewal of the Purandhar Treaty, if the Poona Government would forego all claims arising from the new Convention, and promise to admit no French troops into their country. The Maráthás, however, could not be brought to accept the only compromise by which war might be avoided. Raghuba gave his captors the slip, and made his way to Surat. Nána Farnavís demanded his surrender, and invited the Nizám and Haidar to join him in making war on the English. In January, 1780, Goddard took the field. During the next few months he captured the stately city of Ahmadábád, and twice defeated the combined forces of Tukají Holkar and Madhají Sindhia[1]. The capture of Ahmadábád was the first-fruits of a treaty by which the Gáikwár of Baroda had just agreed to divide with his English allies the fair province of Gujarát.
Before the year's end Bassein itself, for which the Company had so long been hungering, had surrendered to the victorious Goddard, while Hartley had crowned his former exploits by repulsing 20,000 Maráthás who had been pressing him hard on all sides for two days. Meanwhile another Bengal column, which Hastings had launched across the Jumna under the bold Captain Popham, drove Sindhia's men before them, and stormed the fort of Lahár on the road from Kálpi to Gwalior. In August two companies of Popham's Sepoys, with twenty English soldiers led by Captain Bruce, brother of the famous African explorer, carried by escalade
- ↑ Forrest.
