"حياة ومراسلات اللواء السير جون مالكوم، قائد فرسان وسام الطُهر، المبعوث السابق إلى بلاد فارس وحاكم بومباي؛ من رسائل ومذكرات غير منشورة. في مجلّدين. المجلد II." [‎٢‎٤‎٩] (٦٥٤/٢٦٦)

THE PEISHWAH SURROUNDED.
of June, 1818, was remembered to his dying day with
feelings that he found it difficult to describe. The result
was extremely doubtful. Surrounded as he was by ad
herents whose fate depended upon his own, the Peishwah
might at any moment, under the influence of a present
fear, determine to break off the negotiations, or he might
be hurried into hostilities by the despairing madness of
his soldiery. A little thing might turn the scale in favor
of war; and the sword once drawn, nothing less could
follow than the massacre of the Peishwah's army. Mal
colm had so made the disposition of his troops—had so
hemmed in the Mahrattas on every side—that escape
was an impossibility. On that day he made some altera
tions in the distribution of the different components of
his force, which rendered the circle of enclosure still
more effectual; and an express was sent off to General
Doveton, who was at Boorhanpore, exhorting him by all
possible means to intervene between the Peishwah's camp
and the fortress of Asseerghur, and at once to attack
Trimbackjee's force. Badjee Rao had repudiated his
Minister, whose atrocities had placed him wholly out of
the reach of the mercy and forgiveness of the British.
Whilst these military arrangements were being made
for the destruction of Badjee Rao, in the event of his
rejecting the propositions, Malcolm was assailed by nu
merous messages from the Peishwah himself, and over
tures and applications from his principal adherents.
Great as was his experience of the native character, he
had never before, in all his life, seen it displayed in so
many varieties of shade, "from the lowest to the highest
principle," as he said, " that can actuate the human
mind." u I never," he added, when narrating these in
cidents in a letter to his wife—" I never had such a task,
and I trust that I never shall again." There was selfish
intrigue on the one extreme, and generous devotion on