The Nawâb, however, was biding his time, and he soon found it. War was on the point of breaking out once more in Europe between France and England, and orders were, in consequence, sent out by the Directors of the Company to overhaul fortifications. Repairs were at once commenced. This was Surâj-ud-daula's opportunity. He first sent a haughty enquiry as to why, without leave, the English were building a new wall, and, pretending that the reply given was inadequate, followed up his first communication by marching to Kossimbazaar with his army, sending for Mr Watts the Governor, and with threats forcing him to sign an engagement to destroy, within fifteen days, all new works which had been begun at Calcutta, deliver up all the Nawâb's subjects he might call for, and refund any sums the Nawâb might have lost by passports of trade having been illegally granted. Now, in dealing with these Indian disputes it is notoriously difficult to read through the written lines of the formulated plaint and counter-plaint, and reach the palimpsest below; that palimpsest of fine, complicated motive which invariably underlies the simplest plea, which makes even a petty debt case in India like an English A. B. C. scrawled over a Babylonian brick, covered closely with fly-foot stipplings. But here the stipulation regarding the Nawâb's subjects gives a clear clue. Whether Surâj-ud-daula had any just cause of complaint or not, his real grievance was the loss of his aunt's treasure. This abject yielding of the English was fatal. Had any one of the type of Clive or John Nicholson been on the spot, events might have been very different; as it was, disaster and destruction followed. Surâj-ud-daula marched on Calcutta, receiving by the way the gift of two hundred barrels of gunpowder from our treaty-bound friends the French at Chandanagore! Reading the record of these few fateful days in June 1756 one knows not whether to laugh or to cry, to let pity or righteous wrath prevail, as the history of silly delay and still sillier activities unfolds itself. The feverish digging of absolutely untenable trenches, the three weeks' delay without any preparation whatever while letters were passing to and fro, the neglect to apply for reinforcements to other presidencies, the imprisonment of Omichand, the miserable fracas in his house, in which a Brahmin peon, mad with rage and professing fear lest high-caste women should be violated, rushed into his master's harem, killed a round dozen of innocent ladies, and then stabbed himself, reminds one of nothing but the fateful days of May a hundred years after, when Englishmen stood by and watched the Mutiny grow from a chance by-blow to a giant unrestrained. Calcutta was taken. Mr Drake, the governor, and Captain Minchin, the commandant, ran away. The ships weighed anchor and sailed out of gunshot, leaving one hundred and ninety deserted men in the fort. But if cowardice showed unabashed, courage was not lacking, and