yielded to compulsion. The lands were resumed; but
the treasure was not so easily obtained. It was necessary to use
violence. A body of the Company's troops marched to Fyzabad, and forced
the gates of the palace. The Princesses were confined to their own
apartments. But still they refused to submit. Some more stringent mode
of coercion was to be found. A mode was found of which, even at this
distance of time, we cannot speak without shame and sorrow.

There were at Fyzabad two ancient men, belonging to that unhappy class
which a practice, of immemorial antiquity in the East, has excluded from
the pleasures of love and from the hope of posterity. It has always been
held in Asiatic courts that beings thus estranged from sympathy with
their kind are those whom princes may most safely trust. Sujah Dowlah
had been of this opinion. He had given his entire confidence to the two
eunuchs; and after his death they remained at the head of the household
of his widow.

These men were, by the orders of the British government, seized,
imprisoned, ironed, starved almost to death, in order to extort money
from the Princesses. After they had been two months in confinement,
their health gave way. They implored permission to take a little
exercise in the garden of their prison. The officer who was in charge of
them stated that, if they were allowed this indulgence, there was not
the smallest chance of their escaping, and that their irons really added
nothing to the security of the custody in which they were kept. He did
not understand the plan of his superiors. Their object in these
inflictions was not security but torture; and all mitigation was
refused. Yet this was not the worst. It was resolved by an English
government that these two infirm old men should be delivered to the
tormentors. For that purpose they were removed to Lucknow. What horrors
their dungeon there witnessed can only be guessed. But there remains on
the records of Parliament this letter, written by a British resident to
a British soldier:--

"Sir, the Nabob having determined to inflict corporal punishment upon
the prisoners under your guard, this is to desire that his officers,
when they shall come, may have free access to the prisoners, and be
permitted to do with them as they shall see proper."

While these barbarities were perpetrated at Lucknow, the Princesses were
still under duress at Fyzabad. Food was allowed to enter their
apartments only in such scanty qua