Life of Being a Crown Prince in France

The alliance between Mysore and France came about so suddenly that it surprised everyone involved.

This included the Marquis de Lafayette.

Upon leaving the Ambavilas Palace, he looked at Salah with a tone filled with bafflement and astonishment, "Are you really going to promote a marriage with the natives?!"

Salah responded with a polite smile, "This is a bargaining chip that His Highness the Crown Prince has left us to throw out when necessary. You yourself have said that the monsoon season is approaching. Enjoy more content from My Virtual Library Empire

"Moreover, this is merely the marriage between Duke Haji, oh no, Haji Bey and the Kingdom of Mysore, which has no real impact on the Royal Family.

"According to the secret agreement just now, the marriage will not be made public until the British are out of the Indian subcontinent. Only a secret wedding will take place, and the dowry will be paid. This way, it won't affect British-French diplomacy in the short term.

"Oh, and there's the dowry of 600,000 British Pounds! That amount of money should be enough for you to bring two regiments from France to fight here."

Indeed, using his eloquent persuasion, Salah had, during the marriage negotiations, convinced Sultan Tipu to add another 100,000 British Pounds to the dowry.

"Suit yourself..." Lafayette, uninterested in these political maneuvers, still appeared anxious as he said, "But Tipu has not responded to the attack on the British that I mentioned earlier. Your marriage plan does not seem to be working."

"It is only part of the plan," Salah said as he joined him in the carriage, shut the door, and continued, "It brings us closer to Mysore, and we also gain an important ally — General Sheikh Khan.

"By the way, my lord Marquis, I need to request 100,000 livres for the expenses."

As the chief in charge of the Indian strategy, Lafayette had full control over both the troops and finances. Joseph had generously allocated 700,000 livres for this purpose.

"What do you need so much money for?" Lafayette asked, looking in surprise at his Tunisian colleague. If not for the fact that the other was a disciple of Elder Aly, with a distinguished identity and a powerful family background, he would have suspected Salah of planning to embezzle the funds and flee.

"To deal with Mysorean officials who speak for the British," Salah said, "like Jahanzeb Khan.

"Though hiring people here is relatively cheap, you know, there is no real press to speak of, oh, and even if there were, it would be of little use, since most people here are illiterate. Therefore, if we want to do some propaganda, it will be very costly — I can only hire many people, and use their mouths to spread the news."

"Propaganda? What are you planning to propagate?"

"Well, to use the words of His Highness the Crown Prince, this is called a 'war of public opinion.'" Salah still wore a smile, "It's to put those pro-British folks in a difficult position. Then General Khan will deliver the fatal blow to them!"

With no other way to persuade Sultan Tipu, Lafayette thought for a moment and then nodded, "Alright, I hope you succeed. But you will need to write a daily report on the flow of the funds and give it to me."

"You will see the daily financial report, my lord Marquis."

Soon enough, starting from Mysore City, stories about the British began to spread to cities like Seringapatam, Ganga, and beyond.

With the network and resources of General Sheikh Khan, the news spread very quickly.

In fact, Salah had spent only one-third of the applied funds, and as an ally, Sheikh Khan took out 5000 British Pounds from his own pocket, equivalent to more than one hundred thousand livres, to help bring down Jahanzeb Khan's influence and mobilized many nobles from the same political faction to assist.

On the streets of Seringapatam, more than a dozen Hindu citizens were gathered together, discussing something with agitated expressions, "I heard from relatives at Ambavilas Palace that the generals said over three million people died at that time! However, most were from Madurai, so we didn't feel it much here."

"The British actually killed that many people!"

"You don't know this? It's to intimidate us," a small man with fair skin and wearing a red robe mysteriously continued, "Have you heard? In order to control North America, a very distant land, the British killed all the Native Americans they saw – the original inhabitants, millions of them!"

"Hmm, I've heard of this." A middle-aged man nodded, "My business partner has been to North America, and he told me about it. The British would lure Native American leaders into a room under the pretense of discussing matters, then set fire to it and burn them all. Oh, they also give blankets used by plague patients to the Native Americans, causing entire villages to be wiped out by the epidemic."

"I've heard the British are preparing to attack Mysore, and what happened to the Native Americans will happen to us too..."

A person, clutching his chest fearfully, said, "Thankfully we have Tipu's army, or more than three million people would have died in the two wars against the British. Perhaps even we would have..."

Another old man added with a tense expression, "I also heard that the British like to eat children, especially those of high caste, clean and with lots of flesh. They only eat the limbs and the heart, and throw the rest to the dogs..."

The surrounding people immediately showed a look of horror, although they were not of high caste, their children were also fair and plump, and if the British came this time, their children might tragically end up on the dining table.

What they were discussing was, of course, the "script" written by the writers accompanying Salah.

Previously, Joseph wasn't very familiar with the specific situation in Mysore, so he only roughly outlined the approach of a propaganda war, leaving the rest to the discretion of the executor of the "India Project". And Salah, as a novice, ended up devising such a horrifying narrative.

But he did grasp the principle the Crown Prince had mentioned, "eight parts true, two parts false".

They leveraged the psychological shadow left by the previous two Mysore Wars among the locals, with most content being true actions of the British, only somewhat inflated. For instance, the total deaths in Mysore and British wars combined were less than 130,000. And the Native Americans did not nearly number in the tens of millions slaughtered.

Of course, the child-eating part was added based on the horror stories he had heard in his childhood, representing the "two parts false".

Since Indians had extremely limited sources of information, it was difficult for anyone to verify the truth within these stories. And with Salah spreading vast numbers of these rumors, he quickly dominated the discourse of the time.

Meanwhile, in the southern region of Madurai, people were discussing the same topic, adding the issue of the British dealing extensively in the slave trade.

Being by the sea, everyone started to worry that they might be sold to the Americas like the Africans and forced into endless labor.

In many other places, the news that the British would ban both Hindu and Islamic religions in Mysore, force everyone to convert to Protestantism, and those who refused would be faced with execution by cannon, caused even larger-scale panic.

For a time, the memories of the previous two Mysore Wars along with the widespread news about the British filled every heart in Mysore with hatred and fear against them.

It was just short of a spark to ignite the powder keg.