ture with
the Mogul authorities, retreated about 26 m. down the river to Sutanati, a
village on the banks of the Hugli, now within the boundaries of Calcutta.
They occupied Sutanati temporarily in December 1686, again in November 1687
and permanently on the 24th of August 1690. It was thus only at the third
attempt that Charnock was able to obtain the future capital of India for
his centre and the subsequent prosperity of Calcutta is due entirely to his
tenacity of purpose. The new settlement soon extended itself along the
river bank to the then village of Kalikata, and by degrees the cluster of
neighbouring hamlets grew into the present town. In 1696 the English built
the original Fort William by permission of the nawab, and in 1698 they
formally purchased the three villages of Sutanati, Kalikata and Govindpur
from Prince Azim, son of the emperor Aurangzeb.

The site thus chosen had an excellent anchorage and was defended by the
river from the Mahrattas, who harried the districts on the other side. The
fort, subsequently rebuilt on the Vauban principle, and a moat, designed to
form a semicircle [v.04 p.0983] round the town, and to be connected at both
ends with the river, but never completed, combined with the natural
position of Calcutta to render it one of the safest places for trade in
India during the expiring struggles of the Mogul empire. It grew up without
any fixed plan, and with little regard to the sanitary arrangements
required for a town. Some parts of it lay below high-water mark on the
Hugli, and its low level throughout rendered its drainage a most difficult
problem. Until far on in the 18th century the malarial jungle and paddy
fields closely hemmed in the European mansions; the vast plain (_maidan_),
now covered with gardens and promenades, was then a swamp during three
months of each year; the spacious quadrangle known as Wellington Square was
built upon a filthy creek. A legend relates how one-fourth of the European
inhabitants perished in twelve months, and during seventy years the
mortality was so great that the name of Calcutta, derived from the village
of Kalikata, was identified by mariners with Golgotha, the place of a
skull.

The chief event in the history of Calcutta is the sack of the town, and the
capture of Fort William in 1756, by Suraj-ud-Dowlah, the nawab of Bengal.
The majority of the English officials took ship and fled to the mouth of
the Hugli river. The Europeans, under John Zephan