Now ‘Citizen Tippoo’ was discovered by British interceptions to be in communication with Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he formally invited to visit India to liberate the country and expel the British. He had even sent ambassadors to Paris along with a draft treaty in which he proposed an alliance to drive the British out of India.73

and led to the unpopular and deeply resented annexations of Satara in 1848, Jhansi in 1853 and Nagpur in 1854; but Avadh was an acquisition on a far different scale from anything yet attempted, and was practiced on “a faithful and unresisting ally” without even the nominal justification of the absence of a recognised heir, and with only the “fictit