o his
keeping, knowing well what the result would be.

In the night, Suraja Dowlah was murdered. His mangled remains were, in
the morning, placed on an elephant, and exposed to the gaze of the
populace and soldiery.

Suraja Dowlah was undoubtedly a profligate and rapacious tyrant. In
the course of a few months, he alienated his people, and offended a
great number of his most powerful chiefs. The war which he undertook
against the English, although at the moment unprovoked, must still be
regarded as a patriotic one; and, had he not soiled his victory by the
massacre of the prisoners, which he first permitted and then approved,
the English would have had no just cause of complaint against him.

From the day of the arrival of Clive at Calcutta, he was doomed. It is
certain that the nabob would not have remained faithful to his
engagements, when the danger which wrung the concessions from him had
passed. Nevertheless, the whole of the circumstances which followed
the signature of the treaty, the manner in which the unhappy youth was
alternately cajoled and bullied to his ruin, the loathsome treachery
in which those around him engaged, with the connivance of the English;
and, lastly, the murder in cold blood, which Meer Jaffier, our
creature, was allowed to perpetrate; rendered the whole transaction
one of the blackest in the annals of English history.

Chapter 24: Mounted Infantry.

A few days after Plassey, Colonel Clive sent for Charlie.

"Marryat," he said, "I must send you back, with two hundred men, to
Madras. The governor there has been writing to me, by every ship which
has come up the coast, begging me to move down with the bulk of the
force, as soon as affairs are a little settled here. That is out of
the question. There are innumerable matters to be arranged. Meer
Jaffier must be sustained. The French under Law must be driven
entirely out of Bengal. The Dutch must be dealt with. Altogether, I
have need of every moment of my time, and of every man under my
orders, for at least two years.

"However, I shall at once raise a Bengal native army, and so release
the Sepoys of Madras. If there be any special and sore need, I must,
of course, denude myself here of troops, to succour Madras; but I hope
it will not come to that. In the meantime, I propose that you shall
take back two hundred of the Madras Europeans. Lawrence will be glad
to have you, and your chances of fighting are greater there than they
wil