Watts had served his time she was to enjoy a fourth union with the Reverend William Johnson (known locally as the Reverend Tally-Ho), the Presidency chaplain. He eventually retired to England with a fortune but ‘Begum’ Johnson was really wedded to Calcutta and stayed behind, holding celebrated whist parties in Clive Street, the ever engaging topic of conversation in the city. She died in 1812, when she was eighty-seven, much loved, much spoken of and always absorbing ; having grandmothered an English Prime Minister (the second Lord Liverpool) and having chosen her burial place at the invitation of an Indian Governor-General; it was almost alongside Job Charnock’s in St John’s churchyard and richly deserved by then.
A little farther up-country, in his palace at Murshidabad, the Nawab of Bengal was dying. Mahabat Jang’s name meant terror of war, but he had been chiefly noted for a rule of some dignity and wisdom and for a singular aversion to the harem, having taken but one wife at a period when the Nawab of Oudh was said to accommodate 800 women in his quarters. He had no son, and when the throne became vacant in April 1756 it was occupied by his grandson Siraj-ud-Daula. He had certainly been spoilt as a child groomed for succession, and what followed after his enthronement at the age of twenty-five was doubtless an impulsive attempt to enrich himself quickly. He picked a quarrelwith the Company and, with the first signs of monsoon in the sky, he marched on Calcutta with 30,000 foot, 20,000 horse, 400 trained elephants and 80 pieces of cannon. He also held Mr and Mrs Watts captive, for Kasimbazar had been taken en route without a fight, Ensign Elliott, in command, having shot himself in despair. This was the first British indignity in an episode which, wretched and heroic in turn, has been codified for ever as the Black Hole incident. It is a disputed story, but let us have it now in the standard version received from the man who comes best out of it, John Zephaniah Holwell.
Calcutta, in 1756, was a decently held place but it was not heavily fortified. Fort William protected a number of warehouses on the river bank, it included a large tank of rainwater, it could be used as a refuge by the Europeans of the city, who were only a fraction of the 400,000 population. It had four bastions , with between eight and ten guns apiece, and curtain walls that were eighteen feet high but not four feet thick, and the whole enclosure was 210 yards by 120. Apart from this, Calcutta’s only defence was the unfinished Mahratta Ditch and for at least a couple of years there had been an anxious correspondence with London on this inadequate state of affairs. ‘When the Nawab’s intention of marching on Calcutta was known,’ writes Captain Grant, who was the Fort’s Adjutant-General, ‘it was felt time to inquire into the state of defence of a garrison neglected for so many years, and the managers of it lulled in so infatuate a security that every rupee expended in military service was esteemed so much loss to the Company.’ The defences, such as they were, had about 250 men manning them, of whom only sixty were Europeans; the rest, mainly Indo-Portuguese, were commonly referred to as ‘black Christians’. And only one officer, Captain Buchanan, had ever seen active service. To this uncertain collection of soldiers was now added a swiftly drummed up militia of perhaps 260, again mostly Armenians, Portuguese and ‘Slaves’.
Grant says that the military wanted the European houses close to the Fort demolished, to allow a better field of fire, but their owners refused to hear of it, ‘not knowing whether the Company would reimburse them the money they cost’. Siraj- ud-Daula was now, on 16 June, approaching Dum Dum and the British set fire to the native bazaars in his path; when they found their own Indians plundering the ruins they beheaded them on the spot. And then, perhaps 2,500 strong, they took refuge in the Fort and
A little farther up-country, in his palace at Murshidabad, the Nawab of Bengal was dying. Mahabat Jang’s name meant terror of war, but he had been chiefly noted for a rule of some dignity and wisdom and for a singular aversion to the harem, having taken but one wife at a period when the Nawab of Oudh was said to accommodate 800 women in his quarters. He had no son, and when the throne became vacant in April 1756 it was occupied by his grandson Siraj-ud-Daula. He had certainly been spoilt as a child groomed for succession, and what followed after his enthronement at the age of twenty-five was doubtless an impulsive attempt to enrich himself quickly. He picked a quarrelwith the Company and, with the first signs of monsoon in the sky, he marched on Calcutta with 30,000 foot, 20,000 horse, 400 trained elephants and 80 pieces of cannon. He also held Mr and Mrs Watts captive, for Kasimbazar had been taken en route without a fight, Ensign Elliott, in command, having shot himself in despair. This was the first British indignity in an episode which, wretched and heroic in turn, has been codified for ever as the Black Hole incident. It is a disputed story, but let us have it now in the standard version received from the man who comes best out of it, John Zephaniah Holwell.
Calcutta, in 1756, was a decently held place but it was not heavily fortified. Fort William protected a number of warehouses on the river bank, it included a large tank of rainwater, it could be used as a refuge by the Europeans of the city, who were only a fraction of the 400,000 population. It had four bastions , with between eight and ten guns apiece, and curtain walls that were eighteen feet high but not four feet thick, and the whole enclosure was 210 yards by 120. Apart from this, Calcutta’s only defence was the unfinished Mahratta Ditch and for at least a couple of years there had been an anxious correspondence with London on this inadequate state of affairs. ‘When the Nawab’s intention of marching on Calcutta was known,’ writes Captain Grant, who was the Fort’s Adjutant-General, ‘it was felt time to inquire into the state of defence of a garrison neglected for so many years, and the managers of it lulled in so infatuate a security that every rupee expended in military service was esteemed so much loss to the Company.’ The defences, such as they were, had about 250 men manning them, of whom only sixty were Europeans; the rest, mainly Indo-Portuguese, were commonly referred to as ‘black Christians’. And only one officer, Captain Buchanan, had ever seen active service. To this uncertain collection of soldiers was now added a swiftly drummed up militia of perhaps 260, again mostly Armenians, Portuguese and ‘Slaves’.
Grant says that the military wanted the European houses close to the Fort demolished, to allow a better field of fire, but their owners refused to hear of it, ‘not knowing whether the Company would reimburse them the money they cost’. Siraj- ud-Daula was now, on 16 June, approaching Dum Dum and the British set fire to the native bazaars in his path; when they found their own Indians plundering the ruins they beheaded them on the spot. And then, perhaps 2,500 strong, they took refuge in the Fort and
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