of the Rohillá chiefs had just displayed itself in negotiations with Sindhia and Holkar for objects dangerous to the peace of Oudh. Instead of paying their debt to Shujá, they were planning a raid across the Ganges into the country about Cawnpur. Instead of thriving in almost Arcadian bliss, the people of Rohilkhand were a rack-rented peasantry, living amid scenes of lawless strife, doomed to suffer alike from the exactions of their own masters and from the merciless raids of ubiquitous Maráthás[1]. There was disunion too among the Rohillá, leaders, some of whom sided with the Wazír of Oudh, while others stood neutral, or very unwillingly espoused the cause of Ráhmat Khán.
Hastings himself avowedly based his Rohillá policy on high political grounds. He had 'long considered the power of the Rohillás as dangerous to that of the Wazír, the only useful ally of the Company.' A jealous dread of this powerful neighbour would drive the Rohillás at any moment to join the Maráthás in warring on the Wazír. The consequent danger to Oudh and Bengal could be averted only by the conquest of Rohilkhand. Our ally — he argues in the same Minute — would thus obtain 'a complete, compact state shut in effectually from foreign invasion by the Ganges, all the way from the frontiers of Behár to the mountains of Tibet, while he would remain equally accessible to our forces ... either for hostilities or protection. It would give him wealth, of which we
- ↑ Hamilton's History of the Rohillás.
