NOTE. — Thomas describes the Begam as small and plump; her complexion fair, her eyes large and animated. She wore the Hindustani costume, made of the most costly materials. She spoke Persian and Urdu fluently, and attended personally to business, giving audience to her native employee behind a screen. At darbars she appeared veiled; but in European society she took her place at table, waited on exclusively by maid-servants. Her statue, surmounting a group in white marble by Tadolini, stands over her tomb in the Church at Sardhana. CHAPTER III. A.D. 1801-3. Feuds of the Mahrattas — Perron attacks Thomas — End of Thomas — Treaty of Bassein — Lord Wellesley — Treaty of Lucknow — Wellesley supported — Fear of the French — Sindhia threatened — Influence of Perron - Plans of the French — The First Consul — Wellesley's Views — War declared — Lake's Force — Sindhia's European Officers, English and French — Anti-English Feelings and Fall of Perron — Battle of Dehli — Lake enters the Capital — Emperor's Petition — No Treaty made. 1801. — THE end was now indeed approaching. Had the Mahrattas been united, it is possible that their confederacy might have retrieved the disasters of 1760-1, and attained a position in Hindustan similar to that which was soon after achieved by the Sikhs in the Panjab. But this could not be. The Peshwa still assumed to be Vicegerent of the Empire, as well as head of the Mahrattas, under the titular supremacy of Satara, and Sindhia affected to rule in Hindustan as the Peshwa's Deputy. But the new Peshwa, Baji Rao — having dislodged the usurping minister Nana Farnavis — had proceeded to provoke the Holkars. Jeswant Rao, the present head of that clan, took up arms against the Peshwa, whose side was espoused by Sindhia; and Sindhia consequently found himself constrained to leave the provinces north of the Narbadda to the charge of subordinates. Of these the most powerful and the most arrogant was the promoted Quarter-Master Sergeant, now General Perron. As long as the last-named officer was in a subordinate position, he evinced much honourable manhood. But the extremes of prosperity and adversity proved alike the innate vulgarity of the man's nature. When every hereditary prince, from the Satlaj to the Narbadda, acknowledged him as master, and he enjoyed an income equal to that of the present Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief of India combined; at this climacteric of his fortunes, when he was actually believed to have sent an embassy to the First Consul of the French Republic, instead of seriously and soberly seeking to consolidate his position, or resign it with honour, his insolence prepared the downfall which he underwent with disgrace.