Mr. Ellis, one of these civil servants and chief of the factory at Patna, whose opinions had more weight with the council in Calcutta than all the wisdom of such men as Vansittart and Warren Hastings, because they happened to be more consonant with the personal interests of the majority, precipitately brought on the war, and assumed the direction of all military operations, of which he knew nothing, and for which he seems to have been totally unfitted by the violence of his temper.  All his enterprises failed—­the city and factory were captured by the enemy, and the European inhabitants taken prisoners.  The Nawab, smarting under the reiterated wrongs he had received, and which he attributed mainly to the counsels of Mr. Ellis, no sooner found the chief within his grasp, than he determined to have him and all who were taken with him, save a Doctor Fullarton, to whom he owed some personal obligations, put to death.  His own native officers were shocked at the proposal, and tried to dissuade him from the purpose, but he was resolved, and not finding among them any willing to carry it into execution he applied to Sumroo, who readily undertook and, with some of his myrmidons, performed the horrible duty in 1763.[11] At the suggestion of Gregory and Sombre, Kasim Ali now attempted to take the small principality of Nepal, as a kind of basis for his operations against the English.  He had four hundred excellent rifles with flint locks and screwed barrels made at Monghyr (Munger) on the Ganges, so as to fit into small boxes.  These boxes were sent up on the backs of four hundred brave volunteers for this forlorn hope.  Gregory had got a passport for the boxes as rare merchandise for the palace of the prince at Kathmandu, in whose presence alone they were to be opened.  On reaching the palace at night, these volunteers were to open their boxes, screw up the barrels, destroy all the inmates, and possess themselves of the palace, where it is supposed Kasim Ali had already secured many friends.  Twelve thousand soldiers had advanced to the foot of the hills near Betiya, to support the attack, and the volunteers were in the fort of Makwanpur, the only strong fort between the plain and the capital.  They had been treated with great consideration by the garrison, and were to set out at daylight the next morning; but one of the attendants, who had been let into the secret, got drunk, and in a quarrel with one of the garrison, told him that he should see in a few days who would be master of that garrison.  This led to suspicion; the boxes were broken open, the arms discovered, and the whole of the party, except three or four, were instantly put to death; the three or four who escaped gave intelligence to the army at Betiya, and the whole retreated upon Monghyr.  But for this drunken man, Nepal had perhaps been Kasim Ali’s.[12]