“Coja Wajid, who had introduced me to the Nawab, and who, it would be natural to suppose, was our patron, was a great merchant of Hugli.  He was consulted by the Nawab only because, as he had frequented the Europeans and especially the English, the Nawab imagined he knew them perfectly.  He was one of the most timid of men, who wanted to be polite to everybody, and who, had he seen the dagger raised, would have thought he might offend Siraj-ud-daula by warning him that some one intended to assassinate him.[87] Possibly he did not love the Seths, but he feared them, which was sufficient to make him useless to us.

“Rai Durlabh Ram, the other Diwan of the Nawab, was the man to whom I was bound to trust most.  Before the arrival of Clive he might have been thought the enemy of the English.  It was he who pretended to have beaten them and to have taken Calcutta.  He wished, he said, to maintain his reputation; but after the affair of the 5th of February, in which the only part he took was to share in the flight, he was not the same man; he feared nothing so much as to have to fight the English.  This fear disposed him to gradually come to terms with the Seths, of whose greatness he was very jealous.  He also hated the Nawab, by whom he had been ill-used on many occasions.  In short, I could never get him to say a single word in our favour in the Durbar.  The fear of compromising himself made him decide to remain neutral for the present, though firmly resolved to join finally the side which appeared to him to be the strongest.”

This, then, was the French party, whose sole bond was dislike to the Seths, and the members of which, by timidity or ill-health, were unable to act.  It was different with their enemies.

“The English had on their side in the Durbar the terror of their arms, the faults of Siraj-ud-daula, the ruling influence and the refined policy of the Seths, who, to conceal their game more completely, and knowing that it pleased the Nawab, often spoke all the ill they could think of about the English, so as to excite him against them and at the same time gain his confidence.  The Nawab fell readily into the snare, and said everything that came into his mind, thus enabling his enemies to guard against all the evil which otherwise he might have managed to do them.  The English had also on their side all the chief officers in the Nawab’s army—­Jafar All Khan, Khodadad Khan Latty, and a number of others who were attached to them by their presents or the influence of the Seths, all the ministers of the old Court whom Siraj-ud-daula had disgraced, nearly all the secretaries,[88] the writers[89] of the Durbar, and even the eunuchs of the harem.  What might they not expect to achieve by the union of all these forces when guided by so skilful a man as Mr. Watts?”

With such enemies to combat in the Court itself, Law heard that the English were marching on Chandernagore.  By the most painful efforts he obtained orders for reinforcements to be sent to the French.  They—­