of a lady whose salt they had eaten
for so many years'. Le Vaisseau made no mention of the marriage to
Colonel McGowan; and from the manner in which he mentions it to Sir
John Shore it is clear that he, or she, or both, were anxious to
conceal it from the troops and from Sindhia before their departure.
She stipulated in her will that her heir, Mr. Dyce, should take the
name of Sombre, as if she wished to have the little episode of her
second marriage forgotten.

After the death of Le Vaisseau, the command devolved on Monsieur
Saleur, a Frenchman, the only respectable officer who signed the
covenant; he had taken no active part in the mutiny; on the contrary,
he had done all he could to prevent it; and he was at last, with
George Thomas, the chief means of bringing his brother officers back
to a sense of their duty. Another battalion was added to the four in
1787, and another raised in 1798 and 1802; five of the six marched
under Colonel Saleur to the Deccan with Sindhia. They were in a state
of mutiny the whole way, and utterly useless as auxiliaries, as
Saleur himself declared in many of his letters written in French to
his mistress the Begam. At the battle of Assaye, four of these
battalions were left in charge of the Maratha camps. One was present
in the action and lost its four guns. Soon after the return of these
battalions, the Begam entered into an alliance with the British
Government; the force then consisted of these six battalions, a party
of artillery served chiefly by Europeans, and two hundred horse. She
had a good arsenal well stored, a foundry for cannon, both within the
walls of a small fortress, built near her dwelling at Sardhana. The
whole cost her about four lakhs of rupees a year; her civil
establishments eighty thousand, and her household establishments and
expenses about the same; total six lakhs of rupees a year. The
revenues of Sardhana, and the other lands assigned at different times
for the payment of the force had been at no time more than sufficient
to cover these expenses; but under the protection of our Government
they improved with the extension of tillage, and the improvements of
the surrounding markets for produce, and she was enabled to give
largely to the support of charitable institutions, and to provide
handsomely for the support of her family and pensioners after her
death.'[33]

Sombre's son, Zafaryab Khan, had a daughter who was married to
Colonel Dyce, who had for some time