Echoes from Old Calcutta: Being Chiefly Reminiscences of the Days of Warren Hastings Francis and Impey

The facts about the taking of Calcutta in 1756 and the tragedy in which it culminated are of course known in a general way to most readers and familiarly to the students of history; still it may be worth while to retell in the interest of the busy and the curious a few of the leading events which led up to attended on and followed the capture of the settlement when struggling into growth; [...] The result of the " tragedy of errors " as Holwell calls the hurried preparations for defence which were all in the wrong direction was that on the evening of the 18th June on which the enemy had surrounded the town they were in possession of all the outposts on which the chief dependence had.been placed and had driven the English inside the Fort. [...] I then represented to the Governor the cruelty of abandoning so many gentlmen to the mercy of such an enemy and requested he would order the ships and sloops to move up before the Fort by which means we should be able to send the boats under their cover to bring off our distressed friends.* But the captain of the ship representing the danger it would be attended with and the impossibility of [...] Had the ships moved up and our forces reunited and part of the ammunition on board them been disembarked for the service of the Fort the Suba might at last have been obliged to retreat with his army or at most the effects might have been shipped off on the 20th even in the face of the enemy without their having power to obstruct it and a general retreat made of the whole garrison as gloriou [...] by the curtain wall and by a portion of the S. E. bastion) on the north by the partition wall and door and on the west by the bricked-up arches the windows in which strongly barred with iron afforded the only inlets for light and air from the dark verandah.