Athelstane Ford

by Allen Upward

Even had I succeeded in taking Gurney, and had he been executed, it was now too late to have altered the course of events. Every day brought fresh intelligence confirming the hostility of the Nabob towards the English. One day he sent to demand the levelling of Fort William to the ground, the next he threatened the withdrawal of the Company’s privileges, and in particular the dustucks, which he said were abused by being lent to Gentoos, his own subjects. Finally word came that Surajah Dowlah had marched out of Moorshedabad with his army, and had sat down before Cossimbuzar, where we had a factory and a small fort.

All this time the Governor and others of the Council had refused to believe that anything was intended beyond extorting a sum of money from the Company. But the wiser and more prudent ones, among whom were Messrs. Byng and Holwell, took a different view, which they made me share. Now at last Mr. Drake seemed to rouse from his supineness, and gave orders for the town and fort to be prepared against attack. Before these orders could be carried out, however, arrived the news that Mr. Watts, chief of the Cossimbuzar party, was a prisoner in the Nabob’s hands, that the place was surrendered, and plundered by the Moors, and that our garrison, though promised security, had been so barbarously used by them that Mr. Elliott, the commanding officer, had taken his own life.

And now men began to tell each other fearful stories of Surajah Dowlah and his career. It was said that when he was a child his favourite pastime had been the torturing of birds and animals, from which, while still in his boyhood, he had passed to mutilating slaves; that not only had he given himself from his earliest years to every species of oriental lust—some too vile to be named—but he was even a drunkard, a vice forbidden by the Alcoran and foreign to the manners of Indostan. To his great-uncle, the late Nabob, who doted on him to distraction, he had shown, it was said, the basest ingratitude, insolently taking advantage of the old man’s affection to accomplish his crimes and murders with impunity, and, if restrained in any of his desires, to withdraw from the Court and threaten rebellion, knowing that his uncle would yield anything rather than endure the absence of his darling. At the present moment, it was affirmed, he had quarrelled with and set aside all the wisest and principal men in his dominions, and was governed by minions of his own, buffoons and such creatures, sprung from the lowest class and promoted to high stations as a reward for their participation in his guilty orgies. Such was the young man, incapable of reason or mercy, and passing from one transport of passion to another, who was now in full march with all his force against Calcutta, having sworn to exterminate the English from Bengal.

Immediately I found there was talk of resistance and fighting, I went to Mr. Byng and begged to be allowed to serve with the garrison. This offer he thankfully accepted, and in the course of a day or two every other Englishman in the town either volunteered or was pressed into the same service. Our regular garrison consisted of only two hundred European troops, to which were added some Topasses, a mixed breed of Indians and Portuguese, very suitable to be used as mercenaries, and about a thousand of the black natives armed as buxerries, or matchlock men. Out of regard to my having been the first to volunteer and to my former service on board a man-of-war, I was presently appointed a sergeant, and put in charge of a party of twelve men, assigned to the defence of the rope-walk which joins the main east road from the fort to the Morattoe ditch.

Besides this ditch, begun to be dug many years before at a time when the Morattoe armies were invading Bengal, and never finished, there was no fortification of any kind round the town; so that barricades had now to be thrown up, and guns planted in the streets at whatever points seemed most favourable for intercepting the advance of the enemy. The plan of defence, so far as any plan was adhered to in the confusion and panic which prevailed, was to defend these outposts as long as possible, then to retire into Fort William itself and stand a siege, and when the fort could be maintained no longer to take to the ships which lay in the river, and drop down the stream out of reach of the enemy.

My own post was, as I have said, at the rope-walk. At one end of this place, on the main road into the town, was a battery under the command of a captain, so disposed as to check any advance. But in case the enemy should try to creep round through some side streets and take the battery in flank, our little party of twelve was stationed at the other end of the rope-walk, ready to detect and resist any such attempt.

The first notice we had of the arrival of the Moors’ army was by a cannon fired on the north side of the town, at a place where the Morattoe ditch joined the river Hooghley. This being the direct way for an army coming from Moorshedabad to enter Calcutta, the Moors here made their first attack, and all that day the sound of cannon and musketry came to us on the breeze, without our seeing the enemy or knowing how the fortune of the day was turning. But with evening came the good news that the enemy had been repulsed and had drawn off to the other side of the ditch.

That night we did not dare to retire to rest indoors, but slept at our post, under a shed put up over some wheels on which the twine was wound. At four in the morning we were up and eating some bread and cold meat sent to us from the fort for our breakfast, when suddenly we heard a fearful rattle and crash of musketry close at hand. The enemy had been informed of the gap in the Morattoe ditch further south, had swarmed across it, and were now attacking our outposts all along the line.

Leaving our meal half-eaten, we sprang to our feet and took our weapons. I ordered the men not to expose themselves more than was needed, an order which one or two of them obeyed so zealously as to place themselves where they could neither see nor be seen by the enemy, and where all they did was to load their muskets and discharge them into the air in the direction from which the attack seemed to come. However, I found some braver than that, and as the Moors seemed much afraid of our fire we held them at bay well enough. Their own fire was more frightening than dangerous, the noise being out of all proportion to the number of persons hit. So much was this the case that after some hours had gone by without a single ball taking effect on any member of our party, their first fears wore off and all began to expose themselves in a very reckless manner.

There was a wall forming the side of the rope-walk, about four feet high, and behind this wall we stood and fired at the Moors as they showed themselves in any of the streets commanded by our position. I cannot describe how interested and excited I got in this cruel sport, for such it resembled. I chose for myself a long, narrow street leading to the southward, with about a dozen lanes crossing it from east to west. Loading my gun and resting it on the coping of the wall with the muzzle pointed down this street, I kept my eyes on the various openings. Every quarter of an hour, perhaps, a small party of soldiers in bright silk turbans, with glittering arms and armour, would pass out from one of the lanes into this street, either crossing it or moving up or down. Each time I would wait till a whole group emerged, so as to have a bigger target, and then discharge my piece. Almost invariably a man would fall, and the whole party, terrified and not understanding the smallness of our force, would run into one of the lanes adjoining, leaving a wounded or dead man lying in the deserted street. This went on till, I think, fifteen or twenty bodies lay at different points along the roadway, besides those who, being slightly hurt, had crawled away into shelter.