CHAPTER III.

1753-1757.

IN October, 1753, Hastings was ordered up to the factory at Kásimbazár on the Bhágirathi, at that time the busy trading suburb of Murshidabad. Among the silk-weavers of that place, and the shrewd native middlemen who helped them to keep their shuttles going, and to bring the produce of their looms to an English market, he discharged his new duties with such steady skill, that within two years he found himself promoted to a seat in the council of the factory.

But the even tenour of his life was soon to be ruffled by a storm which altered the whole course of English affairs in India. In January, 1756, the aged Aliverdi Khán breathed his last, and his favourite grandson, the cruel, profligate, selfwilled Suraj-ad-daula, filled his place. A new Viceroy, who cared nothing for the English reigned in Bengal. It was not long before Surajad-daula had picked a quarrel with the Governor of Calcutta. Mr. Drake was ordered to sur

CAPTURE OF FORT WILLIAM.

21

render the refugee son of a wealthy Hindu officer, and to demolish the new defences he was said to have raised around Fort William. In vain he pleaded that the ramparts had merely been repaired against a possible attack from his French neighbours, and that honour forbade his yielding up a fugitive who claimed his protection. The imperious Subhadár at once began his march upon Calcutta, with the troops he had gathered for the chastisement of a rebellious vassal in Parniah.

What 'followed must be told in the fewest words. At the first sight of an army 50,000 strong a great panic seized upon our countrymen in Calcutta. On the 19th of June a general rush of men, women and children to seek shelter on board the English ships in the river was crowned by the flight of Mr. Drake and the Commandant himself of Fort William. For two days the small garrison, thus shamefully abandoned, held out under Mr. Holwell, with bootless courage and ever-waning strength, against the doom which the captains of the vessels in the river made no effort to avert. At last the soldiers, worn out with heat and watching, broke into the liquor stores. Amidst the ensuing drunkenness and disorder,

while Holwell was parleying with the enemy, some of the Nawab's soldiers rushed into the fort and in a few minutes all its surviving defenders had fallen into the hands of their dreaded conqueror.

Then came the memorable tragedy of the Black Hole. In one of the hottest, sultriest nights of the Bengal year, with the air yet further heated by the blaze of burning warehouses, a hundred and forty-six wretches, including more than one woman, were shut up in an old guard-room barely eighteen feet square, pierced by two small windows strongly barred. What they suffered during that night of slow torture Holwell himself has told us in language powerfully simple as that of Defoe. Enough here to say that, next morning twenty-two men and one woman crawled out of that den of noisomeness into the air of a new day, looking hardly more alive than the dead they left behind

them.

It is only fair to Suraj-ad-daula to add that this deed of hellish cruelty was neither ordered by himself, nor prompted by any instructions left with the officers into whose hands the prisoners were made over. The tragedy was enacted while

DISASTERS OF THE ENGLISH.

23

he slept, and when the survivors were brought before him, Holwell alone and four others were sent off in irons to Murshidabad; the woman to adorn his harem, and the men as hostages for the extraction of more plunder. The rest were

Falta, a barren

allowed to make their way to island near the mouth of the Hughli, where Drake and his fellow-runaways were awaiting the issue of an appeal for help to their countrymen at Madras.

The ruthless conqueror of Calcutta lost no time in reaping the full fruits of his success. Every English factory in Bengal was seized and plundered, and Hastings among others found himself a prisoner at Murshidabad. It was not the Viceroy's policy to kill the victims of his greed, and Hastings for one remained a prisoner at large on bail offered by the head of a neighbouring Dutch factory. Amidst the dangers and discouragements of that dark hour he kept his head clear and his hands ready for such work as might still devolve upon him. His opportunity Famine threatened the fugitives at Falta, whose appeal to Madras had not yet been answered. In their despair they turned to Hastings as a means of softening the Viceroy's

soon came.

heart. He chose his own time and methods for carrying out their wishes; but erelong the opening of a bazár or native market rewarded his efforts to save the Falta party from dying of sheer hunger.

By that time the fainting hearts of Drake's followers were cheered with prospects of relief from another quarter. Kilpatrick's arrival at Falta with a small body of troops from Madras, if it had shortened their supplies of food, had prepared them to look for the coming of larger reinforcements in due time. It was not till August that the disasters at Calcutta were made known to the English at Madras. With mingled feelings of horror, wrath, and dismay was the news received; but the cry for action prompt and vigorous overbore all weaker counsels, and it ouly remained to get ready an armament strong enough to exact due vengeance for the past disgrace.

It took two months, however, not so much to prepare the armament as to choose for it the fittest leader and to define his proper powers. The Governor himself was quite ready 'to take the command if his colleagues could only have discovered his fitness for such a post. In default