Note 01 — Chapter XI · SHOWING HOW THE FLOOD CAME.

Oh, my dear, Cossimbuzar is fallen without striking a blow, and if all be true that we hear, Surajah Dowlah is already marching on Calcutta! Mr Dash came in just after I had finished writing to you this morning, and related the dreadful history to my papa, as he had heard it from being in the vicinity of the council-chamber when the letters arrived. On the 1st of this month, the very day that our rulers despatched their humiliating arasdass from Calcutta, the Nabob sent three Jemindars and Radjbullobdass, the father of Kissendasseat, to hold a parley with Mr Watts, who told them, in spite of the objections of his own officers, that he would trust himself with them if the Nabob would send him a beetle. This is with the Indians a sign of ceremony and friendship, for they wrap this beetle, which is called pawn,[01] in some sort of leaves, and chew it. I don’t doubt but my Amelia, on hearing of this disgusting custom, will unite with me in thinking that to polite minds it would be more agreeable to dispense with both the sign and the friendship. However, the beetle was sent on a silver plate, and Mr Watts, following the meek example of our Council here, humbled himself so far as to enter the Soubah’s presence with his hands across and tied round with a puckery,[02] which is the strip of stuff that the Moors twist into their turbants. That Surajah Dowlah was not to be disarmed by this show of humility the poor gentleman quickly discovered, for he was at once threatened with death for his offering such a hardy resistance, and was only saved by the mediation of the son of the duan Huckembeg, who told the Nabob that Mr Watts was a good sort of a man, that was come at great peril to embrace his footsteps. Whether ’twas the threats or the mediation I don’t know, but Mr Watts was so strangely affected that he forthwith signed a mulchilca,[03] which is an instrument enforced by a penalty, by which he not only surrendered his own factory of Cossimbuzar, but also pledged the Council here to demolish their fortifications, as well the old as the new, within a fortnight, to give up those of the Nabob’s subjects they were protecting against him, and to resign the privileges anciently granted to the Company with respect to dussticks by making good the losses the Soubah had sustained through them. Seeing their chief in the enemy’s power, the garrison of Cossimbuzar felt constrained to fulfil his covenant, and admitted the Moorish army, who treated the unhappy gentlemen with such detestable cruelty that Ensign Elliott, who commanded the military, shot himself in a frenzy of shame. May Heaven pardon the poor man this rash act! Alas, there may be others that will need the same pardon before very long.