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The destruction of Tipu provided a release for British energies. Now the rest of India lay open before them. The Maratha might badly divided and the Nizams were as useless as before. As far as brave Rajputs were concerned Wellesley adopted the policy of Akbar and kept them in good humor lest they revolted and created problems for the new dominion. The effect on Wellesley was no less electric. He had crushed the company's best organized and most resolute foe. He would now see how far he could go before the opposition solidified again. He gathered round him a group of able and ardent men who were later to finish his work as the organizers of the new British India. At home, the government, faced with the still rising power Napoleon, was content to give him a free hand so long as he was successful. Only the Directors queried the expense and resented the arrogance of their agent. Wellesley then proceeded to acquire lands from certain helpless states. On the pretext of discovered correspondence with Tipu the carnatic (or coastal strip from the river Krishna to cape Commorin on which Madras stood) was annexed. The Nawab of Bengal was pensioned off. The Nawab of Oudh was coerced to the point of offering to abdicate and then penalized for retracting by the loss of half his state. The commercially useful Mughal fragment of Surat on the west coast was absorbed. Wellesley now sought to take advantage of the remaining Indians states. For this purpose he employed the device of the subsidiary treaty. He would guarantee the independence of a threatened state in return for control of its external relations. The method was to station a force of the company's troops in the capital, available to deal with any attack. These were under the control of a British resident and were paid for by the state itself. Thus, should the state fall out at its heart . The financial arrangement made internal interference possible at any time on the ground of non-payment of the subsidy for the force. In the then circumstances the whole arrangement meant for any state freedom from Indian conquest at the price of subjection to the British. Wellesley's first great success with this weapon was with Hyderabad in 1798. The Nizam was old and discouraged and harassed by the Marathas. For him it was an easy way out, for his successors the end of free action. A decisive moment came when the Peshwa Baji Rao, hard pressed by his own chiefs, bought security by the Treaty of Bassein in December 1802. He was the head of Maratha confederacy and his action was a shattering blow to Maratha pride. In 1803 the Maratha chief went to war, to be defeated by Arthur Wellesley and Lord Lake. All seemed set for a British Raj up to the Sutlej when next year the Maratha chief Holkar staged a spectacular recovery. It became clear that the company had overstrained its strength. Britain, then faced with invasion by Napoleon, was in no position to send reinforcements. Wellesley was recalled in 1805. continued....
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