Item CR9/17/14 - Letter from Shuja al-Daulah Safdarjang to Clive.

During the period that I took leave of you and returned to Faizabad I sent a number of letters to you but have not received any reply. I had earlier written to you that your messengers had informed me that the news reports and letters from here are received at Calcutta promptly and punctually. In case, during this period, the news reports do not convey to you some important news what is the guarantee that letters carrying important news reach you in time? It is necessary that you instruct the Darogha of post at your end that he should personally take the responsibility to collect and deliver all news reports and letters to you. -- I have already sent you an account of the Marhattas. In reply to the letter which I had written to Navab Ahmad Khan he has replied that he agrees with you but he points out that the distance between him and the Marhattas is more than four Karohs and there is no fort in between for protection and the English army is too far away. By the time they receive the news and reach there to help the situation will have gone out of control. Hafiz Rahmat Khan is facing the same dilemma because Navab Najib al-Daulah is in Najibabad. In this case it is better that you assign four, five or six battalions of your army for this campaign and at the same time that you instruct your commanders at Allahabad that if they receive any order from me regarding the Marhattas they should consider it as coming from you and act on it immediately. -- Enclosure: -- The latest news received from the fort of Chinar/Janalah is not very good. There is hardly any pieces of artillery left and most of the parapet, walls, etc. have been destroyed. It will take some time before I would be able to attend to it. I did not get any opportunity duing the past three or four years to go there. Your army has brought down seven cannons from the parapet and taken.them to Kama Kotah; they want to take them away to some other fort. As the Marhattas forces are approaching and our artillery is not in a good state I would appeciate if you could ask your commanders to return these cannons for the protection of the original fort.