YOUR letter has been received. Your longer continuance at Nergûnd, is needless; while it is also productive of the ruin and destruction of your army: we therefore write, to desire* you will remove with your forces into the country of Kittoor, where forage and grain will be found in abundance. Let orders be given to the Kilaadâr of Nergûnd, to make the necessary repairs to the fort.

The troops of the Uskur,* and others which have been sent [ostensi­bly] to forage at Dhârwâr, are, in fact, stationed there only to create disorder and disputes: these men must, therefore, be recalled. The place in question appertains to the cavalry foragers, and not to you [or to your people.]

What you say, of the assembling of the enemy’s forces, is known. Do you keep your mind collected, and entertain no apprehensions. Thousands of this kind of people are [constantly] coming and going.

It will be seen, hereafter, that the real object of the Sultan, in directing Bûr­hânûddeen to remove his camp to Kittoor, was not to facilitate the procuring of supplies, but to obtain possession of that place.

The indifference, if not contempt, with which the Sultan here speaks of the movements of the Mahrattah army, is strongly expressive of the low estimation in which he always either actually held, or affected to hold, the military character of that nation. Of the Nizâm’s troops he certainly did not entertain a more favorable opinion. With respect to the English, it is hardly credible that, with the impres­sion which the successes obtained over him by Lord Cornwallis must necessarily have produced, he should really have thought so meanly of them, as, to judge by the sentiments he has left on record, he would appear to have done, even at a period posterior to the war of 1791-2. Spleen, arising from disappointed hopes, from baffled ambition, or even from a narrow policy, such as usually regulated his conduct, might have led him to write, and perhaps also to speak, in a more dis­paraging strain of his European neighbour and antagonist, than accorded strictly with his inward conviction or feeling. Arrogance and vanity were, undoubtedly, among the most prominent features of the Sultan’s mind: but however those passions, seconded by the flattery of the people surrounding him, might encourage him to believe himself superior in military skill and prowess to the English, it seems impossible that his infatuation should have been so great, as to inspire him, in reality, with that contempt, which he occasionally professed to entertain for them as rivals in arms.