sseau, George Thomas, who, from a quartermaster on board a ship,
raised himself to a principality in Northern India.[21] Thomas on one
occasion raised his mistress in the esteem of the Emperor and the
people by breaking through the old rule of central squares: gallantly
leading on his troops, and rescuing his majesty from a perilous
situation in one of his battles with a rebellious subject, Najaf Kuli
Khan, where the Begam was present in her palankeen, and reaped all
the laurels, being from that day called 'the most beloved daughter of
the Emperor'.[22] As his best chance of securing his ascendancy
against such a rival, Le Vaisseau proposed marriage to the Begam, and
was accepted. She was married to Le Vaisseau by Father Gregoris, a
Carmelite monk, in 1793, before Saleur and Bernier, two French
officers of great merit. George Thomas left her service, in
consequence, in 1793, and set up for himself; and was afterwards
crushed by the united armies of the Sikhs and Marathas, commanded by
European officers, after he had been recognized as a general officer
by the Governor-General of India. George Thomas had latterly twelve
small disciplined battalions officered by Europeans. He had good
artillery, cast his own guns, and was the first person that applied
iron calibres to brass cannon. He was unquestionably a man of very
extraordinary military genius, and his ferocity and recklessness as
to the means he used were quite in keeping with the times. His
revenues were derived from the Sikh states which he had rendered
tributary; and he would probably have been sovereign of them all in
the room of Ranjit Singh, had not the jealousy of Perron and other
French officers in the Maratha army interposed.[23]

The Begam tried in vain to persuade her husband to receive all the
European officers of the corps at his table as gentlemen, urging that
not only their domestic peace, but their safety among such a
turbulent set, required that the character of these officers should
be raised if possible, and their feelings conciliated. Nothing, he
declared, should ever induce him to sit at table with men of such
habits; and they at last determined that no man should command them
who would not condescend to do so. Their insolence and that of the
soldiers generally became at last unbearable, and the Begam
determined to go off with her husband, and seek an asylum in the
Honourable Company's territory with the little property she could
command, of one