way before the onset of disciplined valour. No mob attacked by regular soldiers was ever more completely routed. The little band of Frenchmen who alone ventured to confront the English were swept down by the stream of fugitives. In an hour the forces of Surajah Dowlah were dispersed never to reassemble; only five hundred of the vanquished were slain. But their But their camp, their guns, their baggage, innumerable waggons, innumerable cattle remained in the power of the conquerors. With the loss of twenty-two soldiers killed and fifty wounded, Clive had scattered an army of near sixty thousand men, and subdued an empire larger and more populous than Great Britain."*

Under a new Nawab of Bengal, set up by the conquerors, large districts around Calcutta were added to the Company's rule. In 1765 all Bengal, Bahár, and Orissa were made over to the Company by Shah Alam, the Mogul Emperor, as a kind of fief, to be held on payment of a fixed tribute. In the time of Warren Hastings, the first and greatest Governor-General of India, these rich and populous provinces dropped by force of circumstances into the entire possession of their English masters, who also gained a footing in Benares and Allahabad.

Moorshedabad-On the Bhaugeruttee has long since dwindled from its former splendour, as the capital of successive Nawabs of Bengal, is the place where the victor of Plassy, flushed from his overthrow of one king, set up another in his stead. This city was formerly the head

*Life of Clive by Malcolm.-Macaulay's Critical and Historical Essays.

quarters of the silk trade, and is still celebrated for its exquisite carving in ivory.

Patna.-Turning thence up the Ganges, we come to the rich and populous city of Patna, 380 miles from Calcutta, peopled chiefly by Mahommedans, and famous as the scene of several English victories, of a massacre of English prisoners by the ruffianly Walter Reinhardt, otherwise Sumroo, in 1763, and in later days of many a Mussulman plot against our rule. Patna is alike famous for its opium and rice.

Benares.-Forty miles further from Calcutta, on the left bank of the Ganges, towers Benares, the holy city of the Hindoos, in a stately semicircle above the broad river, presenting to the first view a rich confusion of temples, palaces and ghâts, or bathing-stairs, interspersed with clumps of trees, and crowned by two lofty minarets, which recal the palmiest days of Mogul rule. The city itself is a dense maze of narrow crooked streets, often lined by lofty and noble stone houses, and generally thronged by Brahmins, pilgrims, Fakeers, traders, and Brahminee bulls. At all hours the numberless shrines are visited by eager worshippers bearing gifts, while the Ghats are daily trodden by thousands of people met for bathing, praying, preaching, bargaining, gossiping, or sleeping. So sacred is deemed the Ganges at Benares that the police have occasionally to restrain the overzealous pilgrims from seeking eternal bliss by immolating themselves in its turbid waters. At once the Oxford and the Mecca of India, Benares also ranks amongst the very wealthiest of Indian cities, and drives a lucrative trade in kincobs, brocades, and other rich fabrics.

Here, too, it was that Warren Hastings, amidst a whole populace in arms against their Rajah's seeming oppressor, quietly finished the draft of his treaty with Scindia, while faithful messengers stole out of the city with demands for succour from the nearest military post. And here it was that Neill's timely daring and Tucker's heroic firmness, prevented a mutinous outbreak in 1857 from blazing into a general revolt.

CHAPTER XX.

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF BRITISH RULE IN INDIAcontinued.

PRESIDENCY OF BENGAL AND NORTH WEST PROVINCES.

Mahrattas-Tragical occurrences-Alamgire II.-Vazir Gazi-ud-deen— Shah Alam II.-Battles of Buxar, Patna and Guya-Carnac and Munro M. Law-Allahabad-Cawnpore-Lucknow-Oude-Agra.

FOR the latter part of the eighteenth century, the Mahrattas were the dominant power in the Deccan and Hindostan, but their disunion and rivalry, not only gave opportunity for the intrigues of other adventurers at the Imperial Court at Delhi, but rendered the permanency of their own widely extended dominions impossible.

The Mahrattas frequently without any apparent design but to prove their own ubiquity and daring, insulted the Emperor, flaunting their banners and defying his authority under the very walls of his palace, and even when entrusted with the highest offices leaving their liege lord to the mercy of the unscrupulous and bloodthirsty miscreants, who, in times of violent vicissitude and revolution, had too frequently a footing within the palace, and who stopped at no outrage or crime to gain their ends, or of those who employed them.

A short time before the fatal field where the Abdallee Shah of Afghanistan, the most renowned soldier in Asia, had humbled the pride and broken the power of the Mahrattas, the infamous Vazir Gazi-ud-deen had the unfortunate Emperor, Alamgire the II., assassinated. The heir apparent, Ali Ghohur, afterwards Shah Alam the II., previous to this having bravely cut his way through his enemies, entered into an arrangement with the then Governor of Allahabad for the recovery of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, the prince being the legally appointed Soubadar of these provinces.

As the movements of the prince greatly influenced our progress in Hindostan, while it led to the consolidation and permanency of our rule in the lower provinces, a few words as to his personal appearance and character may not be out of place on his advent-to him a new arena of politics and war.

The prince at this time was about 40 years of age. handsome, tall, and of a dignified presence, brave, and almost too merciful to his enemies, without enterprize or force of will, fond of pleasure, and too compliant to those about him; the character of his ancestor Aurungzebe was like that of Louis the XI., while that of Shah Alam resembled that of Charles the II., abandoning great designs for sensual gratifications.

Such was the royal adventurer who driven by adverse fate, sought a precarious footing in the wide dominions which by right were all his own.

The news of his father's death, and the appointment of his own son Prince Jewan Buckt to act in Delhi as Regent in his absence, at last reached the exiled prince,