Page:Shivaji and His Times.djvu/120

100 soldiers, but had so long appropriated the money without maintaining a proper force. His cowardice also prevented him from organising a defence or even from dying at his post.

The townspeople were sheep worthy of such a shepherd. A population composed mostly of money-loving traders, poor artisans, punctilious fire-worshippers and tender-souled Jains, cannot readily take to war even in self-defence. The richest merchants, though owning millions of Rupees, had not the sense to hire guards for the protection of their wealth, though they might have done so at only a twentieth part of what they were soon to lose through pillage.

The shame of this cowardice in high and low alike was deepened by the contrast afforded by the manly spirit of a handful of foreigners. The English and Dutch merchants resolved to defend their own factories at all costs, though these were open houses, not built to stand an attack. They might have sought safety by escaping to their ships at Swally on the coast, 10 miles west of Surat; but "it was thought more like Englishmen to make ourselves ready to defend our lives and goods to the uttermost than by a flight to leave money, goods, house to merciless people."

Sir George Oxenden, the English President, and