The difficulties being removed, the detachment fell back towards Gwalior, and met Colonel Muir’s brigade coming to their assistance at Antree, on 4th April. The detachments then moved into cantonments.
When Captain Popham’s detachment was broken up, Captain Mayaffre with his company (2nd company 1st battalion) was stationed at Mirzapoor, and on the massacre of the force placed by Warren Hastings over the Rajah of Benares, on the 16th August, 1781, an order was sent to him, as senior officer at Mirzapoor, to march, with the company of artillery, remaining four companies of Popham’s battalion, and the French Rangers (sending his guns and stores by water to Chunar), upon Ramnagur, viâ Chunar, and wait further orders; and also by Major Popham, with a caution to avoid hostilities, and attend to the safety of the whole party until Major Popham should arrive.
On receiving the order from Warren Hastings, on 17th August, Captain Mayaffre immediately set out, replying, that he would march, “observing his directions in every respect, and otherwise acting to the best of his judgment for the good of the service.”
Colonel Blair, commanding at Chunar, was also directed to send four 6–pounders, two tumbrils of ammunition, an 8 and 10–inch mortar with 100 shells and 200 fuzes each, with powder, &c. to Chota Mirzapoor on the 20th, where Captain Mayaffre was expected to be. These were intended to have been used from an open space on the shore opposite, selected by Major Popham to bombard Ramnagur, and there is little doubt that a place so particularly ill-adapted for defence against such a mode of attack would have proved an easy conquest.
On reaching Ramnagur, however, without waiting for the arrival of Major Popham or further orders, without plan, without inquiry, and contrary to the advice of the officers with him, Captain Mayaffre, on the morning of the 20th August, marched precipitately into the narrow streets, where, in an instant, the leading party was annihilated. Captain Mayaffre, and Captain-Lieut. Doxat, with thirty-three of the Rangers, fell at once, and the detachment was forced to retreat with a loss of 107 killed and 72 wounded, two field-pieces and a howitzer remaining in the enemy’s possession.
It is most probable that Captain Mayaffre was urged to his precipitate and rash attack by the recollection of the successful enterprise against Gwalior, in which he had shared the preceding year; the hope of acquiring reputation led him to disregard the maxims of prudence, forgetting that, although he staked his own life upon the issue, he also hazarded his Government’s safety unnecessarily.
This failure raised the whole country in arms, and rendered Mr. Hastings’s flight to Chunar imperative—a flight which gave rise to the memorable but oft misquoted distich—
Ghora per howdah, hat’hee per zeen,
Juldee bagh gee’a, Warren Hasteen.
Lieuts. F. W. Grand[[20]] and Sand, doing duty with Major Popham’s detachment, accompanied W. Hastings to Chunar.