r
Comte d'Estaing destroyed all the English settlements on the coast of
Sumatra; but they were soon reestablished and our possession secured by
the treaty of Paris in 1763. Fort Marlborough, which had been hitherto a
peculiar subordinate of Fort St. George, was now formed into an
independent presidency, and was furnished with a charter for erecting a
mayor's court, but which has never been enforced. In 1781 a detachment of
military from thence embarked upon five East India ships and took
possession of Padang and all other Dutch factories in consequence of the
war with that nation. In 1782 the magazine of Fort Marlborough, in which
were four hundred barrels of powder, was fired by lightning and blew up;
but providentially few lives were lost. In 1802 an act of parliament was
passed "to authorize the East India Company to make their settlement at
Fort Marlborough in the East Indies, a factory subordinate to the
presidency of Fort William in Bengal, and to transfer the servants who on
the reduction of that establishment shall be supernumerary, to the
presidency of Fort St. George." In 1798 plants of the nutmeg and clove
had for the first time been procured from the Moluccas; and in 1803 a
large importation of these valuable articles of cultivation took place.
As the plantations were, by the last accounts from thence, in the most
flourishing state, very important commercial advantages were expected to
be derived from the culture.)

A few years before these transactions she had invited the king of Siam to
renew the ancient connexion between their respective states, and to unite
in a league against the Dutch, by whose encroachments the commerce of her
subjects and the extent of her dominions were much circumscribed. It does
not appear however that this overture was attended with any effect, nor
have the limits of the Achinese jurisdiction since that period extended
beyond Pidir on the northern, and Barus on the western coast.

1688.

She died in 1688, having reigned something less than eleven years, and
was succeeded by a young queen named Kamalat-shah; but this did not take
place without a strong opposition from a faction amongst the orang kayas
which wanted to set up a king, and a civil war actually commenced. The
two parties drew up their forces on opposite sides of the river, and for
two or three nights continued to fire at each other, but in the daytime
followed their ordinary occupations. These opportunities of interc