Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/185

Book VII. the 24th. Colonel Clive then dispatched letters to Roydoolub, Latty, and Monickchund, and to Monickchund he promised that no enquiry should be made concerning the plunder of Calcutta. The army proceeded in the afternoon, and halted six miles beyond Daudpore. Surajah Dowlah got to the city before the midnight after the battle; and not a few of his principal officers arrived there almost as soon as himself. These he assembled in council. Some advised him to deliver himself up to the English, which he imputed to treachery; others proposed, that he should encourage the army by the offer of great rewards, and appear again at their head in the morning. This he seemed to approve, and, having ordered an immediate distribution of three months pay to the troops, dismissed the council, and retired into the seraglio, where, left to his own reflections and his women, his terrors returned.

The next morning, the 24th, he sent away his women, with 50 elephants laden with their furniture and necessaries, and with them a great part of his own jewels, and some gold rupees: and determined to escape himself in the night; but, having lost all confidence in every officer of distinction, whose fortunes either he himself or his grandfather had made, he intrusted his intentions only to the eunuch who governed his seraglio. The arrival of Meer Jaffier in the evening, although he attempted nothing immediately, hastened the Nabob's departure. Having disguised himself in a mean dress, he went secretly at ten o'clock at night out of a window, carrying a casket of his most valuable jewels, and attended only by his favourite concubine and the eunuch. They got undiscovered into a boat, which the eunuch had prepared at the wharf of the palace: it immediately rowed away to the northward. It was his intention to escape to Mr. Law, and with him to Patna, the governor of which province was a faithful adherent to his family. At midnight, Meer Jaffier was informed of his flight, and immediately sent several parties in pursuit of him. In the morning, the whole city was in confusion, no one knowing what was become of their late Nabob, and not perceiving his station occupied by any other. Moonlol, and several others of the Nabob's familiars, were taken in the forenoon, endeavouring to