Page:A Comprehensive History of India Vol 1.djvu/569

 ClIAP. IX. 1

SURA J AH DOWLAH.

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RflNS OF THK Ha.IAU'3 rALACE, UaJAMAHAI, From nil oriictnHl ilrawiiiK by Cuplain Smith, forty- foiirth Regiment.

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easy to see why it should have had such an effect. His dignity may have been offended at the very suppo.sition that Europeans should presume to make war within his territories without his sanction ; and still more at the assumption, that if they did so, the party attacked would be obliged to trust to their own resom-ces, instead of leaving it to him to repel and punisli the aggi-essor. Beyond this, there was nothing in the answer to provoke an outburst of passion even in the ])roudest and most sen- sitives of tyrants. The rage, if real, and not merely assumed to give a coloui' to further pro- ceedings, was probabl}' provojced by perceiving that a plan which he had long been meditating, and. a revenge which was rankling in his mfnd, were in danger of being frustrated. Were Calcutta put into such a state of defence as would enable it to resist the attacks of the French, whose skill in siege operations had been rendered famous throughout India, by the capture of for- tresses previously deemed imj)regnable, how could he be able to make himself master of it, and ritle it of the fabulous wealth which was believed to be treasured up within its precincts ? Npw, therefore, was the decisive moment. Calcutta, if not forthwith attacked, would set him at defiance, and both the fam^ whiiih he anticipated as its conqueror, and the plunder on which his heart was set, would be lost to him for ever.

Instigated by some such m6tives as. these, the expedition to Punieah was immeaiately postponed, and the anny began its march back to Moorshedabad. Its movements were too slow for the nabob's impatience, and a detachment of 8000 men was pushed foi-ward to invest the Company's fi^ctory at Cossimbazar. Though the garrison consisted only of twenty -two Europeans and twenty topasses, no attempt was made to carry it by a sudden onset, and the .detach- ment were contented to remain for nine days after their arrival, merely watch- ing it so as to preclude either egress or ingi'ess.

On the 1st of June, the nabob came up with the main body of the anny The idea of resistance seems not to have been entertained, as the fortifications, undeserving of the name, consisted only of a brick wall, three feet thick, with small bastions at the angles, but without ditch or paUsade. Part of the curtain formed the outer wall of a series of chambers looking inward, and affording, b}'

AD. 1756.

The factory of Cossini bazar at- tack t'd anil jiillageU