Post by stuart on Oct 10, 2007 17:34:32 GMT -5
Just by way of diversion I thought you might enjoy this piece I'm working on. Although it might not at first appear to have much connection with Texas there are, as you'll find, some interesting parallels which Sam Houston might have found ironic, for it is also the story of James Grant's grandfather.
PART ONE
Once upon a time every schoolboy knew about the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta, but comparatively few have heard of the desperate fight that preceded it, or of the forgotten Highland soldier who fought so hard to prevent an imperial disaster.
What became the city of Calcutta began in 1690 as a fortified trading post precariously perched on a mud bank by the river Hugli. At that time there were just three small native villages on the site, but it quickly gained brick walls and bastions in the European fashion, and a name; Fort William. However it was still primarily a trading post or “factory” and by 1756 had dramatically outgrown its original defences, which was unfortunate as the East India Company’s employees continued a long tradition of upsetting the local rulers. Bengal was in theory a province of the once mighty Mughal empire and while in practise it was an independent state, the British insisted on exercising an old imperial firman granting exemptions from customs duties and in effect granting them immunity from all local legislation. This might not have mattered if the privilege was not openly abused by extending it (for a price) to any local traders claiming British protection and thereby both robbing the Nawab of Bengal of a considerable proportion of his legitimate revenues - and ultimately challenging his authority.
It was perhaps unfortunate therefore that a growing rivalry between the British and the neighbouring French and Dutch factories also saw the beginning of a programme of extending Fort William’s defences. This, together some injudicious meddling in local politics, turned out to be the final straw for as the Nawab angrily pointed out there was no need for elaborate fortifications since he was not prepared to let the Europeans fight within his territory. Instead, egged on it has to be said by the French, he feared that the defences were really intended to secure the British against any attempt by to impose his authority. In this he may well have been right and the upshot of it all was that in June 1756 he seized the up-country factory at Kassimbazar and then marched on Calcutta itself, which was admirably described by Robert Orme:
“The river Ganges [Hugli] forms a crescent between two points, the one called Perrin’s Garden, and the other Surman’s Garden. The distance between them, measuring along the bank of the river, is about three miles and a half. In the deepest part of this crescent, about the middle between the two points, is situated Fort William, a building which many an old house in this country exceeds in its defences. It is situated a few paces from the riverside, on the banks of which runs a line of guns the whole length of the Fort from north to south, and this is the only formidable part, as it is capable of annoying the ships in the river. The ends of this line are joined to the two bastions of the Fort nearest the river by a garden wall and a gate in each, which would resist one shot of a six pounder, but which would be forced by the second. Opposite to the two bastions mentioned there are two others inland to the eastward, but within thirty yards to the north and forty yards to the south the bastions are commanded by large houses. To the eastward inland the top of the church commands the whole of both the northern and eastern ramparts. Northward and southward for the length of a mile, and to the eastward about a quarter of a mile, stand all the English houses, mostly separated from each other by large enclosures. Where the English habitations end to the northward commence those of the principal black merchants, which reach quite up to Perrin’s Garden. To the southward down to Surman’s Garden the houses, belonging to a lower class of the natives, are less conspicuous. Twelve years ago a ditch had been dug [the so-called Maratha Ditch], beginning at Perrin’s, and carried inland of the town in a crescent, with an intent to end at Surman’s, but only four miles of it are finished.”
In short, it was a nightmare of a position to defend. The landward walls and bastions of the fort were overlooked well within musket range by a number of tall buildings, yet those buildings were themselves so scattered and open to attack as to make it all but impossible to establish an outer defensive perimeter even if the garrison had been strong enough to do so. In that respect at least however the question was pretty academic for when the Nawab and his forces hove in view the available troops amounted to just 180 officers and men of whom only 45 were Europeans (and most of them Dutch mercenaries) while the rest were “Portuguese”; which was then a genteel term for Eurasians. On 7 June therefore Governor Drake ordered those inhabitants capable of bearing arms to be mustered and two companies of militia totalling some 250 men were enrolled. They were of course totally untrained and as one defender recalled; “when we came to action there was hardly any among the Armenian and Portuguese inhabitants, and but few among the European Militia, who knew the Right from the Wrong end of their pieces.” What was more, as the Adjutant General, Captain Alexander Grant gloomily reported, although the ordnance storekeeper, Lieutenant Witherington had blithely assured the Governor that stocks of ammunition were more than adequate, the truth was quite different for there were;
“No cartridges of any kind ready. The small quantity of grape in store had lyen so long that it was destroyed by worms; no shells fitted nor Fuses prepared for small or great. The few that were thrown at the siege burst halfway. There were 2 Iron Mortars, one of 13 and the other of 10 inches, sent out about 3 years ago. The 10 mortar we had just finished the bed for it, but the 13 inch one lay by useless for want of one; tho’ there was upwards of 300 shells sent out for both, all that could be prepared was not above 20, and such as was thrown of them burst some after quitting the mortar, other half way. We had but a small quantity of powder, and the greatest part of that damp.”
The same, unfortunately, could be said for most of the senior officers. Grant himself was probably the only one who had ever seen action before. A younger son of Grant of Sheuglie, and one-time Jacobite, he led the Glen Urquhart men at Prestonpans in 1745, marched to Derby and back and stood with them on Culloden Moor. Afterwards, like an increasing number of Scots he took service with the East India Company, which very conveniently did not require the awkward formality of an oath of loyalty to the King he had just been fighting. Unfortunately, as Adjutant General he was a staff officer answering to the Governor and so could not exercise direct command over the garrison. Officially that job fell to the commandant, Captain George Minchin, but Grant rightly reckoned him utterly incompetent and for some reason the acting Governor, Roger Drake had also taken a violent dislike to the man.
Drake himself was a weak and ineffective individual who had only landed in the post through seniority, and lacked any real authority. Consequently he was easily pressured by his fellow council members into seemingly making a bad situation worse by appointing two of their number, Charles Manningham and William Frankland, to be Colonels; outranking all of the professional soldiers in the garrison. Ironically this was probably Drake’s greatest contribution to the defence for on the one hand Captain Minchin and his cronies immediately responded to this slight by going into a monumental sulk and effectively disappearing from the story, while on the other hand Manningham in particular turned out to be easily manipulated by Grant.
Happily the junior officers were a different matter and much was to rest on a handful of young lieutenants and ensigns, and in his own estimation at least, on the Resident Magistrate, John Zephaniah Holwell. Surviving the siege and the events that followed, Holwell wrote an account of the affair that was an instant best seller and his story of the Black Hole became an imperial legend. Those who actually knew him however were less than convinced and generally regarded him as an unctuous hypocrite, while the great Robert Clive went so far as to d**n him as “unfit to preside where integrity as well as capacity is equally necessary”. Suffice it to say that although Holwell unblushingly (and quite falsely it appears) represented himself in his narrative as being the hero of the hour, the real mainspring of the defence was actually the now forgotten Captain Grant.
Initially however the trouble, as Grant found to his frustration, was persuading anybody that they were actually in trouble. When the garrison’s engineer, John O’Hara, offered the entirely sensible proposal that the houses encroaching upon the fort’s defences should be levelled, he was howled down. As an incredulous Grant grumbled; “so little credit was then given, even to the very last day that the Nabob would venture to attack us, or offer to force our lines, that it occasioned a general grumbling and discontent to leave any of the European houses without.” Instead a defensive line was sketched out to include those houses although it was an entirely imaginary one as it never got beyond erecting some barricades across the principal streets and placing small garrisons in some of the buildings. “Such was the levity of the times,” continued Grant, “that severe measures were not esteemed necessary”.
Their attitude was all the more surprising because Nawab’s army was reckoned to number upwards of 30,000 men, but although this estimate was no doubt exaggerated it quickly transpired that the British had no monopoly on military incompetence. It was the building of Perrin’s Redoubt (named after the nearby Perrin’s Garden) that had provoked the Nawab into action and presumably for that very reason he chose that very point at which to commence his attack on 16 June 1756. This was a touch unfortunate for notwithstanding being held by a rather lonely little detachment of just 25 men under Ensign John Piccard it was probably the strongest point in the defences, since he was able to call on the guns of four heavily armed Indiamen moored in the river just offshore. Supposedly some 4,000 men and six guns were directed against the redoubt by the Nawab’s general Rai Durlab, but he began by doing absolutely nothing. He merely revealed his forces and then waited in the confident expectation that sooner or later the tiny garrison’s morale would crack. Had Piccard not been so determined it well have done, for Grant had warned him that a small reinforcement under Lieutenant Thomas Blagg was going to be available during the expected lull at midday, but until then he was on his own. By 10 o’clock the waiting had indeed proved too much and Piccard’s men were on the verge of panic. He was just about to send off a messenger begging for immediate assistance when the attack finally began.
The first rush was momentarily halted by two volleys in quick succession, but then the Nawab’s guns found the range and scored a direct hit; smashing a hole in the wall, killing one man and badly wounding two more. Suitably encouraged the Nawab’s infantry came forward again, but all the while Captain Hague of the Prince George Indiaman had been waiting with two guns trained on the ditch and as soon as it filled with attackers he fired with devastating results. Crammed tightly together Rai Dulab’s best troops were quite literally blown away. There was no respite however, for a second wave quickly followed the butchered first one and this time the attackers swarmed around the redoubt and some had actually mounted the breach before being beaten off. Then came a third wave and this time it was the redoubt’s own guns which tore great gaps in the advancing ranks. Peering through the smoke Piccard saw just one man falter and then suddenly they all turned into a panic-stricken mob which was again raked by the Prince George’s guns as they fled back across the body-strewn garden.
At least two more attacks, perhaps three were launched before the noon-day sun at last imposed a temporary halt on the carnage. By then Piccard and his remaining men were utterly exhausted, but at first there was no sign of the promised reinforcement. Instead Grant had in the meantime convinced “Colonel” Manningham that something more dramatic was needed. Blagg was sent off just as the first attack began, not with 40 men, but with 50 and a big 18 pounder, and rather than simply reinforce Piccard he was ordered to swing around to the east, moving under cover of the deserted Bagh Bazaar to take Rai Dulab’s men in flank. Unsurprisingly in the circumstances it took all of four hours to get the big gun into position but Grant got a message to Piccard, telling him to hang on and then to open up with every gun he had at 2.15pm. Captain Hague of the Prince George was similarly instructed and warped his ship around to bring eight guns to bear on the enemy camp.
Hague in fact was the first to fire, Piccard fired immediately afterwards and then right on time came the heavy crash of Blagg’s 18 pounder. By sheer chance its first round smashed two of Rai Dulab’s French manned guns, causing several kegs of gunpowder to blow up, flinging debris and body parts high in the air. Unsurprisingly, there was no reply and after being pounded unmercifully for some time (no-one thought to record how long) Rai Dulab finally succeeded in getting his men to go forward again only to see them routed when Blagg’s infantry suddenly appeared and fired a volley into their flank. Total panic ensued and this time there was no rallying them.
Afterwards Suraj ud Daulah is said to have admitted to losing 80 killed and an uncounted number of wounded, while Piccard lost 5 killed and had 5 wounded including himself. Both sides were agreed that it had been a serious repulse, but while the British were congratulating themselves the Nawab in the meantime learned that the fight had been totally unnecessary and that there were quite literally gaps in the Maratha Ditch which an army could march through – and soon did.
The next day passed quietly, apart from some premature celebrations in Fort William, but that night the Nawab’s forces started moving into Calcutta, plundering and burning the native quarter and driving a horde of refugees into the fort – wives and children of the Eurasian militia for the most part. In the morning they began infiltrating the European quarter, by-passing the barricades and occupying those houses which had been left undefended. The defenders were so thinly strung out that each little post was on its own, and as each one fell or had to be abandoned, the pressure increased on the rest.
Less than 200 metres to the east of the fort a barricade known as the East Battery had been erected next to the court house, blocking the avenue or main approach. This was guarded by 98 men under the command of Captain David Clayton, the fort’s notional second in command - and an even bigger nonentity than Captain Minchin. Happily he was seconded both by Holwell, and rather more importantly by a French adventurer named Lebeaume, who took up an advanced position at the jail with two guns and 57 men; most of them untrained Eurasians. They were to hold it against an estimated 5,000 men for nine terrible hours.
However just a short distance to the south a number of European houses were occupied by the Nawab’s men in quick succession and at this news Drake, the governor, panicked; ordering Captain Buchannan who was comfortably holding the so-called South Battery to evacuate his position before he was cut off. Buchannan in turn pulled out the little detachments holding a couple of houses nearby, but a messenger failed to get through to the intrepid Lieutenant Blagg, now holding Captain Minchin’s substantial house. The first hint that anything was wrong came with the appearance of the Nawab’s flags all around him, and then the fight began. For nearly an hour he held the ground floor, while some of his men barricaded the grand staircase, and then when the front door was finally forced they continued the fight upstairs.
PART ONE
Once upon a time every schoolboy knew about the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta, but comparatively few have heard of the desperate fight that preceded it, or of the forgotten Highland soldier who fought so hard to prevent an imperial disaster.
What became the city of Calcutta began in 1690 as a fortified trading post precariously perched on a mud bank by the river Hugli. At that time there were just three small native villages on the site, but it quickly gained brick walls and bastions in the European fashion, and a name; Fort William. However it was still primarily a trading post or “factory” and by 1756 had dramatically outgrown its original defences, which was unfortunate as the East India Company’s employees continued a long tradition of upsetting the local rulers. Bengal was in theory a province of the once mighty Mughal empire and while in practise it was an independent state, the British insisted on exercising an old imperial firman granting exemptions from customs duties and in effect granting them immunity from all local legislation. This might not have mattered if the privilege was not openly abused by extending it (for a price) to any local traders claiming British protection and thereby both robbing the Nawab of Bengal of a considerable proportion of his legitimate revenues - and ultimately challenging his authority.
It was perhaps unfortunate therefore that a growing rivalry between the British and the neighbouring French and Dutch factories also saw the beginning of a programme of extending Fort William’s defences. This, together some injudicious meddling in local politics, turned out to be the final straw for as the Nawab angrily pointed out there was no need for elaborate fortifications since he was not prepared to let the Europeans fight within his territory. Instead, egged on it has to be said by the French, he feared that the defences were really intended to secure the British against any attempt by to impose his authority. In this he may well have been right and the upshot of it all was that in June 1756 he seized the up-country factory at Kassimbazar and then marched on Calcutta itself, which was admirably described by Robert Orme:
“The river Ganges [Hugli] forms a crescent between two points, the one called Perrin’s Garden, and the other Surman’s Garden. The distance between them, measuring along the bank of the river, is about three miles and a half. In the deepest part of this crescent, about the middle between the two points, is situated Fort William, a building which many an old house in this country exceeds in its defences. It is situated a few paces from the riverside, on the banks of which runs a line of guns the whole length of the Fort from north to south, and this is the only formidable part, as it is capable of annoying the ships in the river. The ends of this line are joined to the two bastions of the Fort nearest the river by a garden wall and a gate in each, which would resist one shot of a six pounder, but which would be forced by the second. Opposite to the two bastions mentioned there are two others inland to the eastward, but within thirty yards to the north and forty yards to the south the bastions are commanded by large houses. To the eastward inland the top of the church commands the whole of both the northern and eastern ramparts. Northward and southward for the length of a mile, and to the eastward about a quarter of a mile, stand all the English houses, mostly separated from each other by large enclosures. Where the English habitations end to the northward commence those of the principal black merchants, which reach quite up to Perrin’s Garden. To the southward down to Surman’s Garden the houses, belonging to a lower class of the natives, are less conspicuous. Twelve years ago a ditch had been dug [the so-called Maratha Ditch], beginning at Perrin’s, and carried inland of the town in a crescent, with an intent to end at Surman’s, but only four miles of it are finished.”
In short, it was a nightmare of a position to defend. The landward walls and bastions of the fort were overlooked well within musket range by a number of tall buildings, yet those buildings were themselves so scattered and open to attack as to make it all but impossible to establish an outer defensive perimeter even if the garrison had been strong enough to do so. In that respect at least however the question was pretty academic for when the Nawab and his forces hove in view the available troops amounted to just 180 officers and men of whom only 45 were Europeans (and most of them Dutch mercenaries) while the rest were “Portuguese”; which was then a genteel term for Eurasians. On 7 June therefore Governor Drake ordered those inhabitants capable of bearing arms to be mustered and two companies of militia totalling some 250 men were enrolled. They were of course totally untrained and as one defender recalled; “when we came to action there was hardly any among the Armenian and Portuguese inhabitants, and but few among the European Militia, who knew the Right from the Wrong end of their pieces.” What was more, as the Adjutant General, Captain Alexander Grant gloomily reported, although the ordnance storekeeper, Lieutenant Witherington had blithely assured the Governor that stocks of ammunition were more than adequate, the truth was quite different for there were;
“No cartridges of any kind ready. The small quantity of grape in store had lyen so long that it was destroyed by worms; no shells fitted nor Fuses prepared for small or great. The few that were thrown at the siege burst halfway. There were 2 Iron Mortars, one of 13 and the other of 10 inches, sent out about 3 years ago. The 10 mortar we had just finished the bed for it, but the 13 inch one lay by useless for want of one; tho’ there was upwards of 300 shells sent out for both, all that could be prepared was not above 20, and such as was thrown of them burst some after quitting the mortar, other half way. We had but a small quantity of powder, and the greatest part of that damp.”
The same, unfortunately, could be said for most of the senior officers. Grant himself was probably the only one who had ever seen action before. A younger son of Grant of Sheuglie, and one-time Jacobite, he led the Glen Urquhart men at Prestonpans in 1745, marched to Derby and back and stood with them on Culloden Moor. Afterwards, like an increasing number of Scots he took service with the East India Company, which very conveniently did not require the awkward formality of an oath of loyalty to the King he had just been fighting. Unfortunately, as Adjutant General he was a staff officer answering to the Governor and so could not exercise direct command over the garrison. Officially that job fell to the commandant, Captain George Minchin, but Grant rightly reckoned him utterly incompetent and for some reason the acting Governor, Roger Drake had also taken a violent dislike to the man.
Drake himself was a weak and ineffective individual who had only landed in the post through seniority, and lacked any real authority. Consequently he was easily pressured by his fellow council members into seemingly making a bad situation worse by appointing two of their number, Charles Manningham and William Frankland, to be Colonels; outranking all of the professional soldiers in the garrison. Ironically this was probably Drake’s greatest contribution to the defence for on the one hand Captain Minchin and his cronies immediately responded to this slight by going into a monumental sulk and effectively disappearing from the story, while on the other hand Manningham in particular turned out to be easily manipulated by Grant.
Happily the junior officers were a different matter and much was to rest on a handful of young lieutenants and ensigns, and in his own estimation at least, on the Resident Magistrate, John Zephaniah Holwell. Surviving the siege and the events that followed, Holwell wrote an account of the affair that was an instant best seller and his story of the Black Hole became an imperial legend. Those who actually knew him however were less than convinced and generally regarded him as an unctuous hypocrite, while the great Robert Clive went so far as to d**n him as “unfit to preside where integrity as well as capacity is equally necessary”. Suffice it to say that although Holwell unblushingly (and quite falsely it appears) represented himself in his narrative as being the hero of the hour, the real mainspring of the defence was actually the now forgotten Captain Grant.
Initially however the trouble, as Grant found to his frustration, was persuading anybody that they were actually in trouble. When the garrison’s engineer, John O’Hara, offered the entirely sensible proposal that the houses encroaching upon the fort’s defences should be levelled, he was howled down. As an incredulous Grant grumbled; “so little credit was then given, even to the very last day that the Nabob would venture to attack us, or offer to force our lines, that it occasioned a general grumbling and discontent to leave any of the European houses without.” Instead a defensive line was sketched out to include those houses although it was an entirely imaginary one as it never got beyond erecting some barricades across the principal streets and placing small garrisons in some of the buildings. “Such was the levity of the times,” continued Grant, “that severe measures were not esteemed necessary”.
Their attitude was all the more surprising because Nawab’s army was reckoned to number upwards of 30,000 men, but although this estimate was no doubt exaggerated it quickly transpired that the British had no monopoly on military incompetence. It was the building of Perrin’s Redoubt (named after the nearby Perrin’s Garden) that had provoked the Nawab into action and presumably for that very reason he chose that very point at which to commence his attack on 16 June 1756. This was a touch unfortunate for notwithstanding being held by a rather lonely little detachment of just 25 men under Ensign John Piccard it was probably the strongest point in the defences, since he was able to call on the guns of four heavily armed Indiamen moored in the river just offshore. Supposedly some 4,000 men and six guns were directed against the redoubt by the Nawab’s general Rai Durlab, but he began by doing absolutely nothing. He merely revealed his forces and then waited in the confident expectation that sooner or later the tiny garrison’s morale would crack. Had Piccard not been so determined it well have done, for Grant had warned him that a small reinforcement under Lieutenant Thomas Blagg was going to be available during the expected lull at midday, but until then he was on his own. By 10 o’clock the waiting had indeed proved too much and Piccard’s men were on the verge of panic. He was just about to send off a messenger begging for immediate assistance when the attack finally began.
The first rush was momentarily halted by two volleys in quick succession, but then the Nawab’s guns found the range and scored a direct hit; smashing a hole in the wall, killing one man and badly wounding two more. Suitably encouraged the Nawab’s infantry came forward again, but all the while Captain Hague of the Prince George Indiaman had been waiting with two guns trained on the ditch and as soon as it filled with attackers he fired with devastating results. Crammed tightly together Rai Dulab’s best troops were quite literally blown away. There was no respite however, for a second wave quickly followed the butchered first one and this time the attackers swarmed around the redoubt and some had actually mounted the breach before being beaten off. Then came a third wave and this time it was the redoubt’s own guns which tore great gaps in the advancing ranks. Peering through the smoke Piccard saw just one man falter and then suddenly they all turned into a panic-stricken mob which was again raked by the Prince George’s guns as they fled back across the body-strewn garden.
At least two more attacks, perhaps three were launched before the noon-day sun at last imposed a temporary halt on the carnage. By then Piccard and his remaining men were utterly exhausted, but at first there was no sign of the promised reinforcement. Instead Grant had in the meantime convinced “Colonel” Manningham that something more dramatic was needed. Blagg was sent off just as the first attack began, not with 40 men, but with 50 and a big 18 pounder, and rather than simply reinforce Piccard he was ordered to swing around to the east, moving under cover of the deserted Bagh Bazaar to take Rai Dulab’s men in flank. Unsurprisingly in the circumstances it took all of four hours to get the big gun into position but Grant got a message to Piccard, telling him to hang on and then to open up with every gun he had at 2.15pm. Captain Hague of the Prince George was similarly instructed and warped his ship around to bring eight guns to bear on the enemy camp.
Hague in fact was the first to fire, Piccard fired immediately afterwards and then right on time came the heavy crash of Blagg’s 18 pounder. By sheer chance its first round smashed two of Rai Dulab’s French manned guns, causing several kegs of gunpowder to blow up, flinging debris and body parts high in the air. Unsurprisingly, there was no reply and after being pounded unmercifully for some time (no-one thought to record how long) Rai Dulab finally succeeded in getting his men to go forward again only to see them routed when Blagg’s infantry suddenly appeared and fired a volley into their flank. Total panic ensued and this time there was no rallying them.
Afterwards Suraj ud Daulah is said to have admitted to losing 80 killed and an uncounted number of wounded, while Piccard lost 5 killed and had 5 wounded including himself. Both sides were agreed that it had been a serious repulse, but while the British were congratulating themselves the Nawab in the meantime learned that the fight had been totally unnecessary and that there were quite literally gaps in the Maratha Ditch which an army could march through – and soon did.
The next day passed quietly, apart from some premature celebrations in Fort William, but that night the Nawab’s forces started moving into Calcutta, plundering and burning the native quarter and driving a horde of refugees into the fort – wives and children of the Eurasian militia for the most part. In the morning they began infiltrating the European quarter, by-passing the barricades and occupying those houses which had been left undefended. The defenders were so thinly strung out that each little post was on its own, and as each one fell or had to be abandoned, the pressure increased on the rest.
Less than 200 metres to the east of the fort a barricade known as the East Battery had been erected next to the court house, blocking the avenue or main approach. This was guarded by 98 men under the command of Captain David Clayton, the fort’s notional second in command - and an even bigger nonentity than Captain Minchin. Happily he was seconded both by Holwell, and rather more importantly by a French adventurer named Lebeaume, who took up an advanced position at the jail with two guns and 57 men; most of them untrained Eurasians. They were to hold it against an estimated 5,000 men for nine terrible hours.
However just a short distance to the south a number of European houses were occupied by the Nawab’s men in quick succession and at this news Drake, the governor, panicked; ordering Captain Buchannan who was comfortably holding the so-called South Battery to evacuate his position before he was cut off. Buchannan in turn pulled out the little detachments holding a couple of houses nearby, but a messenger failed to get through to the intrepid Lieutenant Blagg, now holding Captain Minchin’s substantial house. The first hint that anything was wrong came with the appearance of the Nawab’s flags all around him, and then the fight began. For nearly an hour he held the ground floor, while some of his men barricaded the grand staircase, and then when the front door was finally forced they continued the fight upstairs.
