8. Kāsim Alī Khān is generally referred to in the histories under the name of Mīr Kāsim (Meer Cossim). Mīr Jāfir was deposed in 1760, and his son-in- law Mīr Kāsim was placed on the throne of Bengal in his stead by the English. The history of Mīr Kāsim is told in detail by Thornton in his sixth chapter, and also by Mill.
9. Probably 'Gorgīn' is a corruption of 'Gregory'. This name may be a corruption of 'Georgian'.
10. Mill observes upon these transactions: 'The conduct of the Company's servants upon this occasion furnishes one of the most remarkable instances upon record of the power of self-interest to extinguish all sense of justice and even of shame. They had hitherto insisted, contrary to all right and all precedent, that the government of the country should exempt all their goods from duty; they now insisted that it should impose duties upon all other traders, and accused it as guilty of a breach of the peace towards the English nation, because it proposed to remit them.' [W. H. S.] The quotation is from Book iv, chapter 5 (5th ed., 1858, vol. iii, p. 237).
11. The 3rd of October was the day of slaughter at Patna. The Europeans at other places in Mīr Kāsim's power were also massacred; and the total number slain, men, women, and children, amounted to about two hundred. Sumroo personally butchered about one hundred and fifty at Patna.
12. Our troops, under Sir David Ochterlony, took the fort of Makwānpur in 1815, and might in five days have been before the defenceless capital; but they were here arrested by the romantic chivalry of the Marquis of Hastings. The country had been virtually conquered; the prince, by his base treachery towards us and outrages upon others, had justly forfeited his throne; but the Governor- General, by perhaps a misplaced lenity, left it to him without any other guarantee for his future good behaviour than the recollection that he had been soundly beaten. Unfortunately he left him at the same time a sufficient quantity of fertile land below the hills to maintain the same army with which he had fought us, with better knowledge how to employ them, to keep us out on a future occasion. Between the attempt of Kāsim Alī and our attack upon Nepāl, the Gōrkhā masters of the country had, by a long series of successful aggressions upon their neighbours, rendered themselves in their own opinion and in that of their neighbours the beat soldiers of India. They have, of course, a very natural feeling of hatred against our government, which put a stop to the wild career of conquest, and wrested from their grasp all the property and all the pretty women from Kathmandū to Kashmīr. To these beautify regions they were what the invading Huns were in former days to Europe, absolute fiends. Had we even exacted a good road into their country with fortifications at the proper places, it might have checked the hopes of one day resuming the career of conquest that now keeps up the army and military spirit, to threaten us with a renewal of war whenever we are embarrassed on the plains. [W. H. S.]
The author's uneasiness concerning the attitude of Nepal was justified. During the Afghan troubles of 1838-43 the Nepalese Government was in constant communication with the enemies of the Indian Government. The late Maharāja Sir Jang Bahādur obtained power in 1846, and, after his visit to England in 1850, decided to abide by the English alliance. He did valuable service in 1857 and 1858, and the two governments have ever since maintained an unbroken, though reserved, friendship. The Gōrkhā regiments in the English service are recruited in Nepāl.
13. Aasaye (Assye, Asāi) is in the Nizām's dominions. Here, on the 23rd of September, 1803, Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, with less than 5,000 men, defeated the Marāthā host of at least 32,000 men, including more than 10,000 under European leaders. Ajantā, or Ajantā Ghāt, is in the same region. (Owen, Sel. from Wellington Despatches (1880), pp. 301-9.)
14. His tombstone bears a Portuguese inscription:
'Aqui iaz Walter Reinhard, morreo aos 4 de Mayo no anno de 1778.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 96.)
15. According to this statement she must have been born in or about 1741, not in 1753, as stated by Atkinson. If the earlier date were correct, she would have been ninety-five when she died in 1836. Higginbotham, referring to Bacon's work, says she died at the age of eighty-nine, which places her birth in 1747. According to Beale, she was aged eighty-eight lunar years when she died, on the 27th January, 1836, equivalent to about eighty-five solar years. This computation places her birth in A.D. 1751, which may be taken as the correct date. The date of her baptism is correctly stated in the text.
16. She added the name Nobilis, when she married Le Vaisseau. (N.W.P. Gazetteer, vol. ii, p. 106, note.)