Note 500 — CANTO THE NINTH.
Reading edition
He was killed in a conspiracy, after his temper had been exasperated by his extreme costivity to a degree of insanity.
[To such a height had his madness (attributed to melancholia produced by dropsy) attained, that he actually ordered the Afghan chiefs to rise suddenly upon the Persian guard, and seize the ... chief nobles; but the project being discovered, the intended victims conspired in turn, and a body of them, including Nadir's guard, and the chief of his own tribe of Afshar, entered his tent at midnight, and, after a moment's involuntary pause—when challenged by the deep voice at which they had so often trembled—rushed upon the king, who being brought to the ground by a sabre-stroke, begged for life, and attempted to rise, but soon expired beneath the repeated blows of the conspirators.—The Indian Empire, by R. Montgomery Martin (1857), i. 172.]