nted out that they had not
presented him with the offerings which, according to Oriental
custom, are the due of a sovereign on his accession. The only
person who dared oppose the wishes of the young Nawab was his
mother,[6] but her advice was of no avail, and her taunt that he, a
soldier, was going to war upon mere traders, was equally
inefficacious. The records of the time give no definite information
as to the tortuous diplomacy which fanned the quarrel between him
and the English, but it is sufficiently clear that the English
refused to surrender the son of one of his uncle's _diwans_,[7] who,
with his master's and his father's wealth, had betaken himself to
Calcutta. Siraj-ud-daula, by the treacherous promises of his
commanders, made himself master of the English Factory at
Cossimbazar without firing a shot, and on the 20th of June, 1756,
found himself in possession of Fort William, the fortified Factory
of Calcutta.[8] The Governor, the commandant[9] of the troops, and
some two hundred persons of lesser note, had deserted the Fort
almost as soon as it was actually invested, and Holwell, one of the
councillors, an ex-surgeon, and the gallant few who stood by him and
continued the defence, were captured, and, to the number of 146,
cast into a little dungeon,[10] intended for military offenders,
from which, the next morning, only twenty-three came out alive. The
English took refuge at Fulta, thirty miles down the river, where the
Nawab, in his pride and ignorance, left them unmolested. There they
were gradually reinforced from Madras, first by Major Kilpatrick,
and later on by Colonel Clive and Admiral Watson. About the same
time both French and English learned that war had been declared in
Europe between England and France in the previous May, but, for
different reasons, neither nation thought the time suitable for
making the fact formally known.

Towards the end of December the English, animated by the desire of
revenge and of repairing their ruined fortunes, advanced on
Calcutta, and on the 2nd of January, 1757, the British flag again
floated over Fort William. The Governor, Manik Chand, was, like many
of the Nawab's servants, a Hindu. Some say he was scared away by a
bullet through his turban; others, that he was roused from the
enjoyment of a _nautch_--a native dance--by the news of the arrival
of the English.[11] Hastening to Murshidabad, he reported his
defeat, and asserted that the British they had now to de