WE have had the pleasure to receive your agreeable letter, informing us that peace has lately been concluded in Europe, between the King of France and the English, in consequence of which the port of Pondicherry has been restored to the French. This information has afforded us much satisfaction. You must let us know [what you learn] respecting the [expected] arrival of ships belonging to you [i. e. your nation], as well as how far Monsieur Suffrein is advanced in his voyage.

I believe this letter contains almost the only instance in which the title of Bâdshâh, or King, is bestowed upon any European sovereign by Tippoo Sultan, who appears, on all other occasions, to have thought as if this designation would be degraded, by being applied to any but a prince professing the Mahommedan faith: he, therefore, generally affected to call, not only the King of England, but his own friend and ally, the King of France, Râjah; intending, by this ingenious contrivance, to intimate (though, of course, not to those so addressed) that he considered them as nothing superior to the petty Hindoo Râjahs of India, and, in fact, as Idolators. What rendered this appellation the more insulting was, that though originally, and strictly, signifying a King, it had now become extremely common, the title being borne, as has been seen, by one Hindoo, at least, in the service of the Sultan himself, and being frequently bestowed on their subjects of that religion, by the different upstart rulers of the dismembered empire of Hindostan.

For a more distinct view of the sentiments entertained by Tippoo Sultan, with respect to Christians in general, the reader is referred to the Preface to Colonel Wilks’s History of Mysore, where they are exhibited in the most undisguised manner, in an extraordinary letter from the Sultan to the late General Macleod. The same letter occurs, with very little variation from Zynûl Aabideen’s copy, in the Sultan’s own Memoirs.