I have the honour to report my arrival in India. My ship had perforce to put into Madras for repairs and during her inactivity I availed myself of a most opportune re-acquaintance which has placed me within the state of Chintal very considerably earlier than might otherwise have been arranged.
I report that predatory bands of Maratha horse are marauding along the Eastern Circars but, from accounts I have, they do not trouble the Nizam’s territories, nor very greatly that of the Rajah of Chintal. I have it on the same and other authorities that the Nizam’s forces are formidable and respected, and that especially he is well served by artillery.
I have further to report that I am in contact with Mr Selden and shall be proceeding with him soon directly to the Rajah’s capital at Chintalpore. I am very mindful that my orders are to report first to Mr Bazzard in Calcutta, and I shall, of course, communicate with him at once, but the opportunity presented by my encountering Mr Selden is one which I feel sure you would wish me to avail myself of, for it is probable that I shall shortly make the acquaintance of the Nizam himself since His Highness is to visit with the Rajah. I have accounts, by officials of the Honourable East India Company, that relations between the Nizam and the Rajah are infelicitous. However, by Mr Selden’s own accounts, relations are — if not cordial — sufficiently tolerable. I believe — though I may only surmise — that this disparity of opinion is occasioned by the want of intelligence available to Madras, for it seems that Haidarabad and Chintal are interests of Calcutta’s rather than of the former. I have to report, however, that there appears to be certain resentment between Fort George and Fort William which may stand in the way of unity of effort in terms of intelligence.
This must therefore be but a brief account of my assessments so far. I pray that this fortuitous beginning shall yield full and timely results, and with little attention drawn to His Grace’s agency here.
I remain, Sir, Your Most Obedient Servant
M. P. Hervey
Captain
From the Deputy Commissioner of Kistna, Guntoor the Collector of Land Revenues, and Magistrate
To The Governor’s Secretary Fort George Madras
2 March 1816
Sir,
Be pleased to lay before the Governor at the earliest opportunity this assessment of the recent incursions into the Company’s territory of the Eastern Circars by the irregular Maratha horse become known as Pindarees. At attachment is a schedule of depredations, together with the relief authorized.
In all probability the route of the incursion lay through Nagpore, and it is most evident therefore that that country is enfeebled to a degree alarming to the Company’s peace. My agents report that the Rajah of that place is so enfeebled as to be incapable of exerting his dominion. His son is but an imbecile and a prey to the most malevolent influences. It is my very strongest recommendation that the treaty of subsidiary alliance be advanced as rapidly as possible ere the country descends to lawlessness, and I urge you most fervently to press upon Fort William the absolute imperative of concluding the said. For the present time I urge that the subsidiary force be assembled in anticipation of said conclusion so that not the least time is lost in bringing Nagpore under regulation.
I have in the past urged a similar course with Chintal and my entreaties have been met with ill favour at Fort William on account of their conviction that Chintal represented no threat as a conduit for Pindaree attacks upon the Circars, neither that the Nizam retained any ambitions towards attaching that country to his own by force of arms. I must tell you now that my agents report most emphatically that the Nizam is about to begin a campaign against Chintal by subversion and intimidation. I do not have to tell you how parlous would be the condition of Madras, and the Circars, were such a unity to be opposed to the policies of the Company at some time in the future, for it would render mutual support of the two Presidencies by land most perilous. I therefore urge once more that Chintal, as Nagpore, be pressed to conclude a subsidiary alliance, if necessary on terms unusually advantageous. The situation, believe me, is very grave.
I have the honour to be etc etc
Eyre Somervile C.B.
Chintalpore, 25 February
Half a mile west of the city, the Rajah of Chintal’s palace sat prettily on a shallow hill just visible from the rooftops of the humblest dwellings of Chintalpore — imposing, therefore, rather than dominating. It had been built in the middle of the seventeenth century on the birth of the rajah’s great-grandfather, whose own father had visited the water gardens of Italy and had wished to create fountains and cascades of like grace. He had therefore excavated a canal to take water to his new seat from the tributary of the Godavari on which Chintalpore stood, and the palace’s precise elevation was determined by the Venetian engineer who had laid out the gardens. The rajah’s ancestor had thereby sacrificed the eminence of a hilltop situation for the elegance of a less elevated one. It was a compromise of which successive generations had approved. At least, that is, to this time, for the present rajah was without male issue.
The palace itself was an eclectic structure, a mix of Hindoo and Mughal architecture in which domes and pyramidal roofs stood harmoniously side by side — symbolic of the harmony in which the Mussulman population of Chintalpore lived with their more populous Hindoo neighbours. Everywhere there was marble and alabaster, some of it almost pure white, but some richly veined with a shade of red that Hervey would have been hard put to describe. There was a tranquillity, in part wrought by the continuous tinkling of water in the fountains, inside and out, which stood in the starkest contrast to the city through which he had just ridden. And, though the heat outdoors was hardly oppressive in this early month, he found the cool shade the greatest relief after their long march.
‘ “High on a throne of royal state, which far outshone the wealth of Ormus and Ind…”?’ he declaimed, turning to Selden with a smile.
‘You are beginning to sound like Major Edmonds.’
‘I had all Milton’s works with me during the passage.’
‘You suppose this is paradise, then: you shall have to wait and see.’
They had been met at the foot of the droog, the great earth ramp that led to the palace, by the rissaldar of the rajah’s life guard and thence borne by palanquin to the turreted gates which commanded the ascent. Here they observed the customary propitiatory offering to Pollear, the protecting deity of pilgrims and travellers. One of the bearers stopped before the gates and, with considerable ceremony, silently unwound his turban. Then, giving one end to another bearer, he placed himself the other side of the gateway so that the turban was stretched across the entrance at about waist height. Hervey and Locke, at Selden’s urging, placed some silver into the outstretched palms of the bearers before passing over the lowered tape and through the portals into the courtyard.
They were shown to their quarters at once — high, airy rooms with fretted windows overlooking the water
