XXII.  That the said Hastings, in asserting that he was bound to the acts aforesaid by public duty, and even by national faith, in the very instance in which that national faith was by him grossly violated, and in justifying himself by alleging that he was bound to the complete execution by a responsibility to the Company which he immediately served, and by asserting that these violent and rapacious proceedings, subjecting all persons concerned in them to obloquy, would be the means of strengthening the connection of the Nabob with the British United Company of Merchants trading to the East Indies, did disgrace the authority under which he immediately acted.  And that the said Hastings, in justifying his obligations to the said acts by a responsibility to the king, namely, to the King of Great Britain, did endeavor to throw upon his Majesty, his lawful sovereign, (whose name and character he was bound to respect, and to preserve in estimation with all persons, and particularly with the sovereign princes, the allies of his government,) the disgrace and odium of the aforesaid acts, in which a sovereign prince was by him, the said Hastings, made an instrument of perfidy, wrong, and outrage to two mothers and wives of sovereign princes, and in which he did exhibit to all Asia (a country remarkable for the utmost devotion to parental authority) the spectacle of a Christian governor, representing a Christian sovereign, compelling a son to become the instrument of such violence and extortion against his own mother.

That the said Warren Hastings, by repeated messages and injunctions, and under menaces of “a dreadful responsibility,” did urge the Resident to a completion of this barbarous act; and well knowing that such an act would probably be resisted, did order him, the said Resident, to use the British troops under his direction for that purpose; and did offer the assistance of further forces, urging the execution in the following peremptory terms:  “You yourself must be personally present; you must not allow any negotiation or forbearance, but must prosecute both services, until the Begums [princesses] are at the entire mercy of the Nabob."[61]

XXIII.  That, in conformity to the said peremptory orders, a party of British and other troops, with the Nabob in the ostensible, and the British Resident in the real command, were drawn towards the city of Fyzabad, in the castle of which city the mother and grandmother of the Nabob had their residence; and after expending two days in negotiation, (the particulars of which do not appear,) the Resident not receiving the satisfaction he looked for, the town was first stormed, and afterwards the castle; and little or no resistance being made, and no blood being shed on either side, the British troops occupied all the outer inclosure of the palace of one of the princesses, and blocked up the other.[62]