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The work, first published in 1773, sees Voltaire returning to the subject of Indian history, which had interested him since the first drafts of the Essay on Morals in the 1740s. Inspired by the prospect of rehabilitating the memory of the executed General Lally, the Fragments sur Inde are in two parts: the first explores recent colonial enterprises in India and the disastrous Pondicherry campaign, which was to cost Lally his life; while the second is a more general meditation on Indian history, religion and customs.
-- Fragments on India, by Voltaire Foundation
-- Orientalism, by Edward W. Said
-- Essays on the Religion and Philosophy of the Hindus, by Henry Thomas Colebrooke, Esq. (1858)
-- The History of British India, vol. I, by James Mill
-- The History of British India, vol. II, by James Mill
-- The History of British India, vol. III, by James Mill
-- The Black Hole -- The Question of Holwell's Veracity, by J. H. Little, Bengal, Past & Present, Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, Vol. XI, Part 1, July-Sept., 1915
-- Full Proceedings of the Black Hole Debate, Bengal, Past & Present, Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, Vol. XII. Jan – June, 1916
-- A Genuine Narrative of the deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen, and Others, who were suffocated in the Black Hole in Fort-William, at Calcutta, in the Kingdom of Bengal; in the Night succeeding the 20th Day of June 1756., In a Letter to a Friend, from India Tracts, by Mr. J.Z. Holwell, and Friends.
-- Important Facts regarding the East India Company's Affairs in Bengal, from the Year 1752 to 1760. This Treatise Contains an Exact State of the Company's Revenues in that Settlement; With Copies of several very interesting Letters Showing Particularly, The Real Causes Which Drew on the Presidency of Bengal the Dreadful Catastrophe of the Year 1767; and Vindicating the Character of Mr. Holwell From Many Scandalous Aspersions Unjustly Thrown Out Against Him, in an Anonymous Pamphlet, Published March 6th, 1764, Entitled, "Reflections on the Present State of Our East-India Affairs.", from India Tracts, by Mr. J.Z. Holwell, and Friends.
-- India Tracts, by Mr. J. Z. Holwell, and Friends.
-- Interesting Historical Events, Relative to the Provinces of Bengal, and the Empire of Indostan. With a Seasonable Hint and Persuasive to the Honourable The Court of Directors of the East India Company. As Also The Mythology and Cosmogony, Facts and Festivals of the Gentoo's, followers of the Shastah. And a Dissertation on the Metempsychosis, commonly, though erroneously, called the Pythagorean Doctrine. Part II. By J.Z. Holwell, Esq.
-- Forging Indian Religion: East India Company Servants and the Construction of ‘Gentoo’/‘Hindoo’ Scripture in the 1760s, by Jessica Patterson
-- French Jesuits in India and the Lettres Edifiantes, by Jyoti Mohan
-- Claiming India: French Scholars and the Preoccupation with India During the Nineteenth Century, by Jyoti Mohan
-- Natural Theology and Natural Religion, by Andrew Chignell & Derk Pereboom
-- The Enlightenment and Orientalist Discourse on the Aryan, Excerpt from Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity, by Dorothy M. Figueira
-- Ezourvedam: A French Veda of the Eighteenth Century, Edited with an Introduction by Ludo Rocher
-- Holwell's Religion of Paradise, Excerpt from The Birth of Orientalism, by Urs App
-- Anquetil-Duperron's Search for the True Vedas, Excerpt from The Birth of Orientalism, by Urs App
-- The Birth of Orientalism, by Urs App
-- Fort William-India House Correspondence and Other Contemporary Papers Relating Thereto, Vol. I: 1748-1756, Edited by K. K. Datta, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of History, Patna University, Patna
-- History of Hindostan; From the Earliest Account of Time, To the Death of Akbar; Translated From the Persian of Mahummud Casim Ferishta of Delhi: Together With a Dissertation Concerning the Religion and Philosophy of the Brahmins; With an Appendix, Containing the History of the Mogul Empire, From Its Decline in the Reign of Mahummud Shaw, to the Present Times, by Alexander Dow.
-- Voltaire Fragments on India, Translated by Freda Bedi, B.A. Hons. (Oxon.)
One can almost forgive Voltaire his subjective portrayal of India, given the quality of the information culled from travel accounts, missionary letters, “scholarly” works, and “translations.” Although he sought out European accounts that he felt were exempt from sectarian prejudice, he was inexorably drawn to texts glaringly slanted by Protestant anti-Catholic rhetoric, as in the case of La Croze and Niecamp. He studied those Europeans who purported to know Sanskrit, yet knew none. He studied authors who, although they had spent sufficient time in India, were nevertheless woefully ignorant of the culture. Having literally read everything available concerning India, edited and unedited, Voltaire realized only too well the necessity of basing any future discussion of India upon an authentic Sanskrit text. He, therefore, set out to discover one. After having depended so long on secondary sources, he tended to ascribe authenticity to any Sanskrit text that fell into his hands. Time and again, he was deceived by his sources.
-- The Enlightenment and Orientalist Discourse on the Aryan, Excerpt from Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity, by Dorothy M. Figueira
“It is in order to provide the tables of the citizens of Paris, of London, and of other big towns with more spices than used to be consumed at one time at Princes' tables; it is in order to load simple citizens' wives with more diamonds than queens used to wear at their coronation; it is in order to infect their nostrils with a disgusting powder, to drink deep, because the fancy took them, of certain useless liquors unknown to our fathers, that a huge trade was carried on, always disadvantageous to three-quarters of Europe; and it is in order to keep up this trade that the Powers made a war on each other, in which the first cannon shots fired in our climes set fire to all the batteries in America and in the heart of Asia."
Impiger extremos curris, mercator ad Indos,
Per mare, pauperiem fugiens, per faxa, per ignes.
— Hor. Epist. Lib. I. [This passage from Horace's Epistles may be translated thus: “You hasten, as a merchant, to India’s furthest bounds, fleeing from poverty over seas, over rocks, through burning heat." (Trans.)]
M. Godeheu was as wise and peaceful a negotiator, as his predecessor had been daring in his projects and brilliant in his administration. The former Governor had only thought of gaining fame in war. The second had orders to maintain himself by peaceful means -- and to come back and render an account of his deeds when a third Governor was established in Pondicheri.
John Zephaniah Holwell has received the eulogy of modern writers for his gallant defence of Calcutta in 1756 after the desertion of Governor Drake and his chief officers. He was the principal survivor of the Black Hole tragedy and wrote a narrative of his sufferings. When Clive left India in February 1760, Holwell succeeded him as Governor of Calcutta, but in August was superseded by Vansittart. His great achievement as Governor was to work up a case, in a most unscrupulous manner, against Nawab Mir Jafar. He prepared a memorial3 [The memorial may be found in Holwell's India Tracts and also in Vansittart’s Narrative Vol. 1 pp. 46-63.] on the state of the affairs of the province for the new Governor who was on his way to Calcutta. In this memorial he laid at the door of Mir Jafar all the evils under which the country was suffering; he charged him with treacherous dealings with the Dutch in the previous year, although Major Caillaud pointed out to him that this was never clearly proved, and even if it had been proved the fault had been condoned by Clive; he charged him with corresponding with the Shahzada, although Warren Hastings declared that the document was a forgery4 [The letters of Major Caillaud and Warren Hastings are given in India Tracts, but the writer has mislaid the exact reference.]; he charged him with the murder of persons who were alive when Mir Jafar himself was dead5 [See infra.] and he got £30,000 for himself when his scheme was successful.6 [Malcolm's Life of Clive (1836) Vol. 2, p. 289. See Bengal P. & P. Vol. VIII pp. 214-219.] The dethronement of Mir Jafar, condemned by Clive,7 [Malcolm's Life of Clive, Vol. 2, p. 255.] protested against by seven of the Company’s servants in Bengal who asserted that if the President had consulted the whole Council the measure would have been rejected,8 [Holwell’s India Tracts (1774) p. 107.] approved by the Court of Directors in such hesitating terms that Warren Hastings did not venture to translate the despatch to the new Nawab,9 [Hastings to Vansittart, July 14, 1762. (Vansittart’s Narrative Vol. 2, p. 69.)] was carried out by Governor Vansittart in October, and Mir Kasim was installed in his place.
Holwell was a man of great ability which he used unscrupulously to secure his own ends. Clive condemns him in the strongest terms: “Mr. Holwell is a specious and sensible man, but from what I have heard and observed myself I cannot be persuaded he will ever make use of his abilities for the good of the Company.”10 [Clive to William Mabbot, 31 Jan. 1757, (Hill’s Bengal in 1756-57 Vol. 2, p. 186)] He trembled to think of the fatal consequences if he were succeeded by such a mercenary man. “Mr. * * * has talents, but I fear wants a heart, therefore unfit to preside where integrity as well as capacity are equally essential.”11 [Malcolm's Life of Clive Vol. 2, p. 137 and p. 139. Asterisks are placed for the name but it is quite clear that Holwell is the man.] It seems ungenerous to add that when Siraj-ud-daula besieged Calcutta Holwell would have run away with the others if he had been able. But the statement was made at the time. Ives mentions it without condemnation12 [A Voyage from England to India in the year 1754 etc. (1773) p. 93. Ives was surgeon to Admiral Watson.] and Clive believed it. “I am well informed," he wrote, “there is no merit due to him for staying behind in the fort, nothing but the want of a boat prevented his escape and flight with the rest.”13 [In the letter quoted above. So Mr. William Lindsay who left the fort by permission on the 19th June. “It was much against his inclination being there, two gentlemen having carried away the budgerow he had waiting for him. I mention this as I understand he made a merit in staying when he found he could not get off." Letter to Mr. Robert Orme from Fulta July 1756. Hill’s Bengal in 1756-57, Vol. 1, p. 168.]
As a historian Holwell enjoys a reputation which is quite undeserved. To qualify himself to write on the history of India Holwell asserts that he “studiously perused all that has been written of the empire of Indostan, both as to its ancient as well as more modern state; as also the various accounts transmitted to us, by authors in almost all ages (from Arrian, down to the Abbé de Guyon) concerning the Hindoos, and the religious tenets of the Bramins.” He proceeds “to pronounce them all very defective, fallacious, and unsatisfactory to an inquisitive searcher after truth.”14 [Holwell's Interesting Historical Events, Part 1, p. 5.] Holwell may have been right, for all his reading did not save him from making the elementary blunder of declaring that Prince Nicosir, a pretender to the Empire in 1709, was a son of the great Akbar who died in 1605!15 [Holwell’s Interesting Historical Events, Part 1, p. 37.] If Holwell is correct in his history of the Mughal Empire from the death of Aurungzeb to the reign of Muhammad Shah then Elphinstone’s History of India needs revision for that period. If the Seir Mutaqherin approximates to history then Holwell’s account of the Transactions in Bengal from 1717 to 1750 is romance.
Here the reader may object: “Granted (though we should require better proof than you have brought forward) that Holwell was an inaccurate historian, that does not prove that he was a dishonest man." The latter point will now be established by showing (1) that Holwell fabricated a speech and fathered it on the Nawab Alivardi Khan; (2) that he brought false charges against the Nawab Mir Jafar; (3) that he fabricated a whole book and called it a translation from the ancient sacred writings of the Hindus.
(1) In a letter to the Court of Directors, dated Fulta, 30 November 1756,16 [Hill's Bengal in 1756-1757 Vol. 2, p. l.] Holwell is at pains to prove that the protection given by the Company’s servants to subjects of the Nawab was not the cause, as had been alleged, of Siraj-ud-daula’s attack on Calcutta. He asserts that Alivardi Khan “had long meditated to destroy the forts and garrisons of the Europeans,” and in support of this statement he quotes “verbatim, the last discourse and council which Mahabut Jung (Alivardi Khan) gave his grandson (Siraj-ud-daula) a few days before his death,” which, he adds, "I had from very good authority at Murshidabad, after my releasement.” Then follows the speech from which the following extract may be made:—“Keep in view the power the European nations have in the country. This fear I would also have freed you from if God had lengthened my days—The work, my son, must now be yours ....... ..Think not to weaken all three together. The power of the English is great; they have lately conquered Angria, and possessed themselves of his country; reduce them first; the others will give you little trouble, when you have reduced them. Suffer them not, my son, to have fortifications or soldiers: if you do, the country is not yours.”17 [Hill's Bengal in 1756-1757, Vol. 2, p. 16.]
This speech called forth some very plain language. Matthew Collet, second at Cassimbazar, contemptuously dismissed it with the words:—“As to Alliverde Cawn's last dying speech to his nephew, I look on it as a specious fable.”18 [Letter from Collet to Council, Fort William (Hill, Vol. 2, p. 129).] Richard Becher, chief of the Company’s factory at Dacca remarks:—“Mr. Holwell will excuse me if I do not admitt Alliverdee Cawn's speech as genuine till better proofs are brought to support it than any I have yet seen. Such advice if really given, it is reasonable to imagine had few or no witnesses, so that it appears very improbable Mr. Holwell in his distressed situation at Muxadavad should have been able to unravell the mysterries of the Cabinet and explore a secret never yet known to any one but himself.”19 [Letter from Becher to Council, Fort William (Hill, Vol. 2, p. 162).] William Watts, chief of the factory at Cassimbazar, observes:—“The last dying speech of Mahabut Jung or Alliverdi Cawn to his grandson neither he, or I believe, any of the gentlemen of the factory, ever heard of; neither have I since from any of the country people; it seems an imitation of the speech of Lewis XIV. to his grandson, and appears as Mr. Collet aptly terms it only a specious fable.”20 [Letter from Watts to Court of Directors, (Hill, Vol. 3, p. 336).]
Holwell replied to what (in his own words) was a charge of imposing on the Court of Directors a forgery that had no foundation but in his own invention. After quoting the words of Messrs. Collet, Becher and Watts he proceeds:—"That Mr. Becher should not believe the speech genuine I do not much wonder at, as he seems fully resolved that nothing shall drive him from his adopted principal cause of our misfortunes, the detention of the Nabob’s subjects, in confutation of which I have said sufficient; but the reasons this gentleman gives for his believing the speech not genuine had been better omitted for his own sake. The speech might probably enough have been a secret whilst it was necessary it should be so; but when I obtained it that necessity had long vanished, and Mr. Becher might have observed I say I had it from good authority, after my releasement, which was more than three months after the period it was uttered, and was no longer to be deemed a mystery of the cabinet, but might be judiciously enough divulged and circulated as an apology for and in support of Surajud Dowla's proceedings against the English, &c. Mr. Becher's opinion, “that I was unable to explore a secret, never yet known to any one but myself,” I would explain and reply to, could I possibly understand him. Shall only add, for Your Honours’ satisfaction, and in vindication of my own veracity, that I was released the 16th of July, and continued at the Tanksall, and the Dutch and French factories, until the 19th at night; during which period I had frequent conferences with the principal Armenians, and some the immediate servants of the late and present Suba, from whence I had the speech literally as I have given it; and notwithstanding the ingenious ridicule it meets from Messieurs Watts and Collet to cover their deficiency in matters which ought to have been known to them, I will not despair of giving Your Honours yet more convincing proofs of its being genuine.” The only proof that Holwell produces is a copy of a letter written by William Forth, surgeon at Cassimbazar, who relates that he was attending the Nawab fifteen days before his death when Siraj-ud-daula entered the room and charged the English with plotting to set up a rival to him in the succession. Alivardi Khan questioned Forth and at the end of his examination declared “he did not believe a word of the report he had heard.”21 [Letter from Holwell to Court of Directors, (Hill, Vol. 3, pp. 355, 356, 357.] How this helps Holwell it is difficult to see.
Holwell’s reply is as feeble as it could possibly be. Why did he not produce names with the date and hour of the conferences? He dared not. Watts and Collet were stationed close to Murshidabad and could have bowled him out. The only other remark of Holwell’s worthy of the slightest notice is his statement that the secret might have been circulated as an apology for the Nawab’s proceedings against the English. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Manningham, in his evidence before the Committee of the House of Commons said that “it was impossible to give any rational account of the origin of the Troubles”; that he was in Murshidabad with Clive in July 1757 and “enquiry was then made with all possible attention, but without success, into the motives of Surajah Dowla’s conduct from his principal officers, and likewise from the officers of his predecessor, from the Seats, and every other person from whom information was likely to be obtained.22 [First Report, (Hill, Vol. 3, p. 284).] Scrafton says the same. “I have made it my study since our intercourse with the great men at court, to penetrate into the cause of this event, but could never obtain anything satisfactory .... Perhaps it is a vain research to trace the motives of a capricious tyrant."23 [Scrafton, Reflections on the Government, &c., of Indostan (1763) p. 55.] Finally, on the main point we have the evidence of a relation24 [Hill, Vol. I Introduction, p. xxviii, foot note.] of Alivardi Khan’s—the author of the Seir Mutaqherin—who states:—“He (Alivardi Khan) used to compare the Europeans to a hive of bees, of whose honey you might reap the benefit, but that if you disturbed their hive they would sting you to death.” On another occasion, when his General, Mustafa Khan, supported by his nephew, Sayyid Ahmad, represented the ease with which the Europeans might be deprived of their immense wealth, he exclaimed: “My child, Mustapha Khan is a soldier, and wishes us to be constantly in need of his service, but how come you to join in his request? What have the English done against me that I should use them ill? It is now difficult to extinguish fire on land; but should the sea be in flames, who can put them out? Never listen to such advice as his, for the result would probably be fatal."25 [All this is borrowed from Hill’s Bengal in 1756-57 Vol I, Introduction p. xxxi.] Commenting on the inconsistency of these words with Holwell’s speech Dr. Busteed suggests that probably Alivardi Khan modified these views later on.26 [Echoes from Old Calcutta (2nd edition) p. 5 footnote.] Undoubtedly he did, or Holwell is guilty of forgery. Let the reader judge.
(2) With respect to the second charge against Holwell the reader will probably be disposed to accept the judgment of Clive and his Council who in 1766 considered it their duty to acquaint the Court of Directors in an official despatch that the “horrible massacres” with which Holwell had charged Nawab Mir Jafar were “cruel aspersions on the character of that prince" and had not the least foundation in truth. The persons who, according to Holwell, had been put to death by Mir Jafar “are all now living, except two, who were put to death by Meeran, without the Nawab’s consent or knowledge.“27 [Long's Selections from Unpublished Records of Government, p. 428.]
(3) Holwell asserts that the leisure hours of his thirty years’ residence in India were spent in collecting materials relative to the history and religion of the inhabitants of the country. Many curious Hindu manuscripts came into his possession and among them “two very correct and valuable copies of the Gentoo Shastah" procured with great labour and at great expense. He spent eighteen months in translating the Sastra.28 [Interesting Historical Events, Part 1, p. 3.] In one year more he would have completed the work but the catastrophe of 1756 intervened and when Calcutta was captured he lost manuscript and translation. By an unforeseen and extraordinary event “that possibly I may hereafter relate” (he never does so) he recovered some of his manuscripts.29 [Interesting Historical Events, Part 1, p. 4.] Hence he was able to give to the world an account of what he calls the “Chartah Bhade of Bramah,” the oldest and purest of the sacred writings of the Hindus. In Holwell’s time only three or four families were capable of reading and expounding it from the Sanskrit character.30 [Interesting Historical Events, Part 2, p. 15.] He obtained his information concerning it not from ordinary learned Brahmans who, in spite of their knowledge of the truth, pandered to the corrupt beliefs of the mob, but from those “whose purity of principle and manners and zeal for the primitive doctrines of Bramah’s Shastah sets them above disguising the truth."31 [Interesting Historical Events, Part 2, p 9 and p. 21.] Holwell gives an account of the doctrines contained in the “Chartah Bhade of Bramah”32 [Interesting Historical Events, Part 2, pp. 9 to 21.] and a translation of the first book and a section of the second. This version of the most ancient sacred book of the Hindus will make Sanskrit scholars stare and gasp. But what condemns the whole thing as a colossal fraud is the fact that Holwell has retained some words of the original in his translation which he explains in footnotes, and from these words it appears that his manuscript of the “Chartah Bhade” which only a few Brahman families were capable of reading and expounding from the Sanskrit character, was written in a mixture of Colloquial Bengali and Hindustani33 [Holwell starts his translation with the words "God is one" which according to a footnote are a translation of "ekhummesha" (ek, one hamesha, always?) pure Hindustani (Interesting Historical Events, Part 2 p. 31). The other words of the Sanskrit (?) original given in the translation or in footnotes are:—Debtah, angels; logue, a people, multitude or congregation; debtah-logue, the angelic host (p. 35); hazaar par hazaar (Hindustani), thousands upon thousands (p. 42); mahah surgo, supreme heaven; onderah (Hindustani) intense darkness (p. 44) dooneah or dunneah (Hindustani) the world; dunneahoudah, the worlds or the universe; boboons, regions or planets (p. 48) ghoij, the cow; ghoijal, cows; ghoijalbarry, a cowhouse; mhurd (Hindustani) the common name of man, from murto, matter or earth; jhoale, water, fluid; oustmaan (Hindustani) the air (p. 56) jogues, ages (p. 56); pereeth logue, purified people (p. 103); munnoo logue, people of contemplation, from mun or mon, thought, reflection (p. 104); modoo, discord, enmity; kytoo, confusion, tumult (p. 106); surjee, the sun; chunder, the moon (p. 110). (The meanings and derivations are Holwell’s).] —the latter apparently predominating. The fourth “sublime book" of the “Chartah Bhade" which “must lie in oblivion, until some one, blessed with opportunity, leisure, application, and genius, brings them to light" was according to Holwell, commonly called by Hindus “Bramah Ka Insoff (insaf) Bhade”! or “Bramah's Book of Justice." Such was the barefaced fraud foisted by Holwell on a Europe totally ignorant of Sanskrit, and it was for this that Voltaire gratefully thanked him.34 [Quoted in Busteed's Echoes from Old Calcutta, p. 38 (2nd edition).]
Three outrageous frauds have thus been brought home to Holwell, and we now proceed to reveal a fourth. Let us examine what he calls “a genuine Narrative of the deplorable deaths of the English gentlemen and others who were suffocated in the Black Hole in Fort William, at Calcutta."
-- The Black Hole -- The Question of Holwell's Veracity, by J. H. Little
In 1768 another Company servant, Alexander Dow, offered three alternative texts, which he said formed the core scriptures of the ‘Hindoo’ religion: the Dirm Shashter, the Bedang Sashter and the Neadrisen Shaster. The first contained the unifying doctrines of the religion. In a section provided by Dow this took the form of a dialogue between Narud, who was taken to be representative of ‘human reason’, and Birmha, the allegorical depiction of ‘Wisdom’ and the ‘genitive of case of Birmh’, which Dow takes to be ‘one of the thousand names of God’...
Despite the intricate detail presented in both offerings, however, these ‘extracts’ have proved difficult to trace. Holwell's Shastah has been thought by a number of scholars to have been a forgery, the evidence for which has been outlined most extensively by Urs App. Dow's texts are also dubious in origin. The original manuscript which Dow claimed as the Dirm Shashter, for example, is currently in the British Library and consists of fragments in Sanskrit (which he could not read) and Bengali (which he could), and do not appear to be a coherent text And yet both Holwell and Dow claimed to have achieved an unprecedented degree of insight into the mysteries of Brahminical philosophy. Moreover, this claim was widely accepted by their readership. In the 1760s, when both accounts were published, the idea of an indigenous and ancient Indian religion was greeted with interest by Enlightenment thinkers. Finding themselves with privileged access to Indian languages and advisers, British East India Company servants became instrumental in delivering information about South Asian religions to European audiences. While the knowledge produced by Company Orientalists has been most closely associated with Sir William Jones (1746‐1794), the works of Holwell and Dow were the first to circulate to a significant European reception. Holwell was hailed by Moses Mendelssohn as the first author ‘to see through the eyes of a native Brahmin’. Dow was similarly highly regarded by Voltaire, who cited him as an authority in a number of works. This article considers the construction of Indian theology that these readers were met with more critically, suggesting that Holwell's and Dow's accounts, including their translations of ancient texts, were compiled from a number of different intellectual sources, not the least of which was their own creative licence.
-- Forging Indian Religion: East India Company Servants and the Construction of ‘Gentoo’/‘Hindoo’ Scripture in the 1760s, by Jessica Patterson
In August the news of the fall of Calcutta reached Madras, and excited the fiercest and bitterest resentment. The cry of the whole settlement was for vengeance. Within forty-eight hours after the arrival of the intelligence it was determined that an expedition should be sent to the Hoogley, and that Clive should be at the head of the land forces. The naval armament was under the command of Admiral Watson. Nine hundred English infantry, fine troops and full of spirit, and fifteen hundred sepoys, composed the army which sailed to punish a Prince who had more subjects than Lewis the Fifteenth or the Empress Maria Theresa. In October the expedition sailed; but it had to make its way against adverse winds, and did not reach Bengal till December....
Clive had commenced operations with his usual vigour. He took Budgebudge, routed the garrison of Fort William, recovered Calcutta, stormed and sacked Hoogley. The Nabob, already disposed to make some concessions to the English, was confirmed in his pacific disposition by these proofs of their power and spirit. He accordingly made overtures to the chiefs of the invading armament, and offered to restore the factory, and to give compensation to those whom he had despoiled.
Clive's profession was war; and he felt that there was something discreditable in an accommodation with Surajah Dowlah. But his power was limited. A committee, chiefly composed of servants of the Company who had fled from Calcutta, had the principal direction of affairs; and these persons were eager to be restored to their posts and compensated for their losses. The government of Madras, apprised that war had commenced in Europe, and apprehensive of an attack from the French, became impatient for the return of the armament. The promises of the Nabob were large, the chances of a contest doubtful; and Clive consented to treat, though he expressed his regret that things should not be concluded in so glorious a manner as he could have wished.
With this negotiation commences a new chapter in the life of Clive. Hitherto he had been merely a soldier carrying into effect, with eminent ability and valour, the plans of others. Henceforth he is to be chiefly regarded as a statesman; and his military movements are to be considered as subordinate to his political designs. That in his new capacity he displayed great ability, and obtained great success, is unquestionable. But it is also unquestionable that the transactions in which he now began to take a part have left a stain on his moral character.
We can by no means agree with Sir John Malcolm, who is obstinately resolved to see nothing but honour and integrity in the conduct of his hero. But we can as little agree with Mr. Mill, who has gone so far as to say that Clive was a man "to whom deception, when it suited his purpose, never cost a pang." Clive seems to us to have been constitutionally the very opposite of a knave, bold even to temerity, sincere even to indiscretion, hearty in friendship, open in enmity. Neither in his private life, nor in those parts of his public life in which he had to do with his countrymen, do we find any signs of a propensity to cunning. On the contrary, in all the disputes in which he was engaged as an Englishman against Englishmen, from his boxing-matches at school to those stormy altercations at the India House and in Parliament amidst which his later years were passed, his very faults were those of a high and magnanimous spirit. The truth seems to have been that he considered Oriental politics as a game in which nothing was unfair. He knew that the standard of morality among the natives of India differed widely from that established in England. He knew that he had to deal with men destitute of what in Europe is called honour, with men who would give any promise without hesitation, and break any promise without shame, with men who would unscrupulously employ corruption, perjury, forgery, to compass their ends. His letters show that the great difference between Asiatic and European morality was constantly in his thoughts. He seems to have imagined, most erroneously in our opinion, that he could effect nothing against such adversaries, if he was content to be bound by ties from which they were free, if he went on telling truth, and hearing none; if he fulfilled, to his own hurt, all his engagements with confederates who never kept an engagement that was not to their advantage. Accordingly this man, in the other parts of his life an honourable English gentleman and a soldier, was no sooner matched against an Indian intriguer, than he became himself an Indian intriguer, and descended, without scruple, to falsehood, to hypocritical caresses, to the substitution of documents, and to the counterfeiting of hands.
The negotiations between the English and the Nabob were carried on chiefly by two agents, Mr. Watts, a servant of the Company, and a Bengalee of the name of Omichund. This Omichund had been one of the wealthiest native merchants resident at Calcutta, and had sustained great losses in consequence of the Nabob's expedition against that place. In the course of his commercial transactions, he had seen much of the English, and was peculiarly qualified to serve as a medium of communication between them and a native court. He possessed great influence with his own race, and had in large measure the Hindoo talents, quick observation, tact, dexterity, perseverance, and the Hindoo vices, servility, greediness, and treachery.
The Nabob behaved with all the faithlessness of an Indian statesman, and with all the levity of a boy whose mind had been enfeebled by power and self-indulgence. He promised, retracted, hesitated, evaded. At one time he advanced with his army in a threatening manner towards Calcutta; but when he saw the resolute front which the English presented, he fell back in alarm, and consented to make peace with them on their own terms. The treaty was no sooner concluded than he formed new designs against them. He intrigued with the French authorities at Chandernagore. He invited Bussy to march from the Deccan to the Hoogley, and to drive the English out of Bengal. All this was well known to Clive and Watson. They determined accordingly to strike a decisive blow, and to attack Chandernagore, before the force there could be strengthened by new arrivals, either from the south of India, or from Europe. Watson directed the expedition by water, Clive by land. The success of the combined movements was rapid and complete. The fort, the garrison, the artillery, the military stores, all fell into the hands of the English. Near five hundred European troops were among the prisoners.
The Nabob had feared and hated the English, even while he was still able to oppose to them their French rivals. The French were now vanquished; and he began to regard the English with still greater fear and still greater hatred. His weak and unprincipled mind oscillated between servility and insolence. One day he sent a large sum to Calcutta, as part of the compensation due for the wrongs which he had committed. The next day he sent a present of jewels to Bussy, exhorting that distinguished officer to hasten to protect Bengal "against Clive, the daring in war, on whom," says his Highness, "may all bad fortune attend." He ordered his army to march against the English. He countermanded his orders. He tore [up] Clive's letters. He then sent answers in the most florid language of compliment. He ordered Watts out of his presence, and threatened to impale him. He again sent for Watts, and begged pardon for the insult. In the meantime, his wretched maladministration, his folly, his dissolute manners, and his love of the lowest company, had disgusted all classes of his subjects, soldiers, traders, civil functionaries, the proud and ostentatious Mahommedans, the timid, supple, and parsimonious Hindoos. A formidable confederacy was formed against him, in which were included Roydullub [Roy Dullob], the minister of finance, Meer Jaffier, the principal commander of the troops, and Jugget Seit, the richest banker in India. The plot was confided to the English agents, and a communication was opened between the malcontents at Moorshedabad and the committee at Calcutta.
In the committee there was much hesitation; but Clive's voice was given in favour of the conspirators, and his vigour and firmness bore down all opposition. It was determined that the English should lend their powerful assistance to depose Surajah Dowlah, and to place Meer Jaffier on the throne of Bengal. In return, Meer Jaffier promised ample compensation to the Company and its servants, and a liberal donative to the army, the navy, and the committee. The odious vices of Surajah Dowlah, the wrongs which the English had suffered at his hands, the dangers to which our trade must have been exposed, had he continued to reign, appear to us fully to justify the resolution of deposing him. But nothing can justify the dissimulation which Clive stooped to practise. He wrote to Surajah Dowlah in terms so affectionate that they for a time lulled that weak prince into perfect security. The same courier who carried this "soothing letter," as Clive calls it, to the Nabob, carried to Mr. Watts a letter in the following terms: "Tell Meer Jaffier to fear nothing. I will join him with five thousand men who never turned their backs. Assure him I will march night and day to his assistance, and stand by him as long as I have a man left."
It was impossible that a plot which had so many ramifications should long remain entirely concealed. Enough reached the ear of the Nabob to arouse his suspicions. But he was soon quieted by the fictions and artifices which the inventive genius of Omichund produced with miraculous readiness. All was going well; the plot was nearly ripe; when Clive learned that Omichund was likely to play false. The artful Bengalee had been promised a liberal compensation for all that he had lost at Calcutta. But this would not satisfy him. His services had been great. He held the thread of the whole intrigue. By one word breathed in the ear of Surajah Dowlah, he could undo all that he had done. The lives of Watts, of Meer Jaffier, of all the conspirators, were at his mercy; and he determined to take advantage of his situation and to make his own terms. He demanded three hundred thousand pounds sterling as the price of his secrecy and of his assistance. The committee, incensed by the treachery and appalled by the danger, knew not what course to take. But Clive was more than Omichund's match in Omichund's own arts. The man, he said, was a villain. Any artifice which would defeat such knavery was justifiable. The best course would be to promise what was asked. Omichund would soon be at their mercy; and then they might punish him by withholding from him, not only the bribe which he now demanded, but also the compensation which all the other sufferers of Calcutta were to receive.
His advice was taken. But how was the wary and sagacious Hindoo to be deceived? He had demanded that an article touching his claims should be inserted in the treaty between Meer Jaffier and the English, and he would not be satisfied unless he saw it with his own eyes. Clive had an expedient ready. Two treaties were drawn up, one on white paper, the other on red, the former real, the latter fictitious. In the former Omichund's name was not mentioned; the latter, which was to be shown to him, contained a stipulation in his favour.
But another difficulty arose. Admiral Watson had scruples about signing the red treaty. Omichund's vigilance and acuteness were such that the absence of so important a name would probably awaken his suspicions. But Clive was not a man to do anything by halves. We almost blush to write it He forged Admiral Watson's name.
All was now ready for action. Mr. Watts fled secretly from Moorshedabad. Clive put his troops in motion, and wrote to the Nabob in a tone very different from that of his previous letters. He set forth all the wrongs which the British had suffered, offered to submit the points in dispute to the arbitration of Meer Jaffier, and concluded by announcing that, as the rains were about to set in, he and his men would do themselves the honour of waiting on his Highness for an answer.
Surajah Dowlah instantly assembled his whole force, and marched to encounter the English. It had been agreed that Meer Jaffier should separate himself from the Nabob, and carry over his division to Clive. But, as the decisive moment approached, the fears of the conspirator overpowered his ambition. Clive had advanced to Cossimbuzar; the Nabob lay with a mighty power a few miles off at Plassey; and still Meer Jaffier delayed to fulfil his engagements, and returned evasive answers to the earnest remonstrances of the English general.
Clive was in a painfully anxious situation. He could place no confidence in the sincerity or in the courage of his confederate; and, whatever confidence he might place in his own military talents, and in the valour and discipline of his troops, it was no light thing to engage an army twenty times numerous as his own. Before him lay a river over which it was easy to advance, but over which, if things went ill, not one of his little band would ever return. On this occasion, for the first and for the last time, his dauntless spirit, during a few hours, shrank from the fearful responsibility of making a decision He called a council of war. The majority pronounced against fighting; and Clive declared his concurrence with the majority. Long afterwards, he said that he had never called but one council of war, and that if he had taken the advice of that council, the British would never have been masters of Bengal. But scarcely had the meeting broken up when he was himself again. He retired alone under the shade of some trees, and passed near an hour there in thought. He came back determined to put everything to the hazard, and gave orders that all should be in readiness for passing the river on the morrow.
The river was passed; and, at the close of a toilsome day's march, the army, long after sunset, took up its quarters in a grove of mango-trees near Plassey, within a mile of the enemy. Clive was unable to sleep; he heard, through the whole night the sound of drums and cymbals from the vast camp of the Nabob. It is not strange that even his stout heart should now and then have sunk, when he reflected against what odds, and for what a prize, he was in a few hours to contend.
Nor was the rest of Surajah Dowlah more peaceful. His mind, at once weak and stormy, was distracted by wild and horrible apprehensions. Appalled by the greatness and nearness of the crisis, distrusting his captains, dreading every one who approached him, dreading to be left alone, he sat gloomily in his tent, haunted, a Greek poet would have said, by the furies of those who had cursed him with their last breath in the Black Hole.
The day broke, the day which was to decide the fate of India. At sunrise the army of the Nabob, pouring through many openings of the camp, began to move towards the grove where the English lay. Forty thousand infantry, armed with firelocks, pikes, swords, bows and arrows, covered the plain. They were accompanied by fifty pieces of ordnance of the largest size, each tugged by a long team of white oxen, and each pushed on from behind by an elephant. Some smaller guns, under the direction of a few French auxiliaries, were perhaps more formidable. The cavalry were fifteen thousand, drawn, not from the effeminate population of Bengal, but from the bolder race which inhabits the northern provinces; and the practised eye of Clive could perceive that both the men and the horses were more powerful than those of the Carnatic. The force which he had to oppose to this great multitude consisted of only three thousand men. But of these nearly a thousand were English; and all were led by English officers, and trained in the English discipline. Conspicuous in the ranks of the little army were the men of the Thirty-Ninth Regiment, which still bears on its colours, amidst many honourable additions won under Wellington in Spain and Gascony, the name of Plassey, and the proud motto, Primus in Indis.
The battle commenced with a cannonade in which the artillery of the Nabob did scarcely any execution, while the few field-pieces of the English produced great effect. Several of the most distinguished officers in Surajah Dowlah's service fell. Disorder began to spread through his ranks. His own terror increased every moment. One of the conspirators urged on him the expediency of retreating. The insidious advice, agreeing as it did with what his own terrors suggested, was readily received. He ordered his army to fall back, and this order decided his fate. Clive snatched the moment, and ordered his troops to advance. The confused and dispirited multitude gave way before the onset of disciplined valour. No mob attacked by regular soldiers was ever more completely routed. The little band of Frenchmen, who alone ventured to confront the English, were swept down the stream of fugitives. In an hour the forces of Surajah Dowlah were dispersed, never to reassemble. Only five hundred of the vanquished were slain. But their camp, their guns, their baggage, innumerable waggons, innumerable cattle, remained in the power of the conquerors. With the loss of twenty-two soldiers killed and fifty wounded, Clive had scattered an army of near sixty thousand men, and subdued an empire larger and more populous than Great Britain.
Meer Jaffier had given no assistance to the English during the action. But, as soon as he saw that the fate of the day was decided, he drew off his division of the army, and, when the battle was over, sent his congratulations to his ally. The next morning he repaired to the English quarters, not a little uneasy as to the reception which awaited him there. He gave evident signs of alarm when a guard was drawn out to receive him with the honours due to his rank. But his apprehensions were speedily removed, Clive came forward to meet him, embraced him, saluted him as Nabob of the three great provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, listened graciously to his apologies, and advised him to march without delay to Moorshedabad.
Surajah Dowlah had fled from the field of battle with all the speed with which a fleet camel could carry him, and arrived at Moorshedabad in little more than twenty-four hours. There he called his councillors round him. The wisest advised him to put himself into the hands of the English, from whom he had nothing worse to fear than deposition and confinement. But he attributed this suggestion to treachery. Others urged him to try the chance of war again. He approved the advice, and issued orders accordingly. But he wanted spirit to adhere even during one day to a manly resolution. He learned that Meer Jaffier had arrived, and his terrors became insupportable. Disguised in a mean dress, with a casket of jewels in his hand, he let himself down at night from a window of his palace, and, accompanied by only two attendants, embarked on the river for Patna.
In a few days Clive arrived at Moorshedabad, escorted by two hundred English soldiers and three hundred sepoys. For his residence had been assigned a palace, which was surrounded by a garden so spacious that all the troops who accompanied him could conveniently encamp within it. The ceremony of the installation of Meer Jaffier was instantly performed. Clive led the new Nabob to the seat of honour, placed him on it, presented to him, after the immemorial fashion of the East, an offering of gold, and then, turning to the natives who filled the hall, congratulated them on the good fortune which had freed them from a tyrant. He was compelled on this occasion to use the services of an interpreter; for it is remarkable that, long as he resided in India, intimately acquainted as he was with Indian politics and with the Indian character, and adored as he was by his Indian soldiery, he never learned to express himself with facility in any Indian language. He is said indeed to have been sometimes under the necessity of employing, in his intercourse with natives of India, the smattering of Portuguese which he had acquired, when a lad, in Brazil.
The new sovereign was now called upon to fulfil the engagements into which he had entered with his allies. A conference was held at the house of Jugget Seit, the great banker, for the purpose of making the necessary arrangements. Omichund came thither, fully believing himself to stand high in the favour of Clive, who, with dissimulation surpassing even the dissimulation of Bengal, had up to that day treated him with undiminished kindness. The white treaty was produced and read. Clive then turned to Mr. Scrafton, one of the servants of the Company, and said in English, "It is now time to undeceive Omichund." "Omichund," said Mr. Scrafton in Hindostanee, "the red treaty is a trick, you are to have nothing." Omichund fell back insensible into the arms of his attendants. He revived; but his mind was irreparably ruined. Clive, who, though little troubled by scruples of conscience in his dealings with Indian politicians, was not inhuman, seems to have been touched. He saw Omichund a few days later, spoke to him kindly, advised him to make a pilgrimage to one of the great temples of India, in the hope that change of scene might restore his health, and was even disposed, notwithstanding all that had passed, again to employ him in the public service. But from the moment of that sudden shock, the unhappy man sank gradually into idiocy. He who had formerly been distinguished by the strength of his understanding and the simplicity of his habits, now squandered the remains of his fortune on childish trinkets, and loved to exhibit himself dressed in rich garments, and hung with precious stones. In this abject state he languished a few months, and then died....
Omichund was not the only victim of the revolution. Surajah Dowlah was taken a few days after his flight, and was brought before Meer Jaffier. There he flung himself on the ground in convulsions of fear, and with tears and loud cries implored the mercy which he had never shown. Meer Jaffier hesitated; but his son Meeran, a youth of seventeen, who in feebleness of brain and savageness of nature greatly resemble the wretched captive, was implacable. Surajah Dowlah was led into a secret chamber, to which in a short time the ministers of death were sent. In this act the English bore no part; and Meer Jaffier understood so much of their feelings that he thought it necessary to apologise to them for having avenged them on their most malignant enemy.
The shower of wealth now fell copiously on the Company and its servants. A sum of eight hundred thousand pounds sterling, in coined silver, was sent down the river from Moorshedabad to Fort William. The fleet which conveyed this treasure consisted of more than a hundred boats, and performed its triumphal voyage with flags flying and music playing. Calcutta, which a few months before had been desolate, was now more prosperous than ever. Trade revived; and the signs of affluence appeared in every English house. As to Clive, there was no limit to his acquisitions but his own moderation. The treasury of Bengal was thrown open to him. There were piled up, after the usage of Indian princes, immense masses of coin, among which might not seldom be detected the florins and byzants with which, before any European ship had turned the Cape of Good Hope, the Venetians purchased the stuffs and spices of the East. Clive walked between heaps of gold and silver, crowned with rubies and diamonds, and was at liberty to help himself. He accepted between two and three hundred thousand pounds.
-- Lord Clive, by Thomas Babington Macaulay, January 1840
“I see with surprise very many authors assert that possession of land is not hereditary in this country and that the Emperor is the universal inheritor. It is true that there are no Acts of Parliament in India, no intermediate power which can hold the imperial authority legally within its limits, but the sacred and invariable custom of all the courts is that every man inherits from his father. This unwritten law is more rigidly observed than in any monarchical state. [P. 26 Scrafton’s book.]
1924 India Map
Map of India to Illustrate the History of Mysore
Map of India 1805
Roger Drake was a British administrator in the East India Company. He served as President of Fort William in Bengal between 1752 and 1756 and was later reprimanded for his actions during the Siege of Calcutta in 1756.
Drake was the nephew of financier Roger Drake, of the firm Drake and Long based in Leadenhall Street and prominent director of the East India Company. Drake joined the service of the East India Company and arrived in Bengal on 26 May 1737. He rose through the ranks and became President of Fort William on 8 August 1752 following the death of William Fytche.
William Fytche (1716 – 10 August 1753) was an administrator of the English East India Company. He served as President of Bengal in the mid-eighteenth century. He was one of the last administrators before the Battle of Plassey allowed the company to firmly establish its rule in India.
Fytche was the youngest son of William Fytche, Member of Parliament for Maldon, and his wife Mary, daughter of Robert Corey of Danbury. He became a member of the Calcutta council of merchants in 1746. In 1749 he went to Murshidabad, to take charge of the factory at Cossimbazaar there. He became President (Governor) on 8 January 1752. According to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1794, he had been in India for 21 years.
Fytche married Lucia Beard on 25 February 1744 at Fort St George, Madras, where he was before being sent to Bengal...
Fytche died of dysentery at the age of 35.
-- William Fytche, by Wikipedia
In April 1756, Siraj Ud Daulah became Nawab of Bengal and sought to reprimand the company for abusing their privileged trading rights. He wrote a letter to both the French and British Company's requesting that they remove all fortifications at Chandannagore and Calcutta. The French replied tactfully claiming they were merely repairing existing structures whilst Drake replied that he was improving the defences in case of war with France. Siraj Ud Daulah was angered by Drake's perceived insolent response and tone and began plotting to punish the company. On 16 June 1756, Siraj Ud Daulah approached Calcutta with an army numbering 30,000 and within four days the town and Fort were captured. During the siege Drake controversially abandoned his post and with a handful of fellow officers sought refuge with the women and children on ships moored nearby Later, eye-witnesses reported that his ship was fired on by the men he deserted as he sailed away down the river. In his absence, [url=x]John Zephaniah Holwell[/url] was placed in charge and led the defence until their capitulation in the evening of 20 June. Calcutta was subsequently sacked and the remaining Europeans were held captive in the Black Hole of Calcutta.
Drake was disgraced by his actions in the Siege and an inquiry was held to investigate his actions. He was officially removed from his post by the company on 13 November 1757. He was succeeded as Governor by Robert Clive, who would re-capture Calcutta following the Battle of Plassey and firmly establish Company rule in India. Despite his disgrace, Drake benefited from Mir Jafar's payment of compensation and damages following the Battle of Plassey, and in 1759 returned to England with eight fellow Company officials and a considerable fortune.
-- Roger Drake (colonial administrator), by Wikipedia
A Kingdom sold away and sworn on the Koran
“In the presence of God and his Prophet, I swear I will abide by this treaty as long as I live. I, Jaffer, etc., etc.”
“The enemies of the English shall be my enemies, etc.”
"In order to indemnify them for the loss that Levia-Oda [This is most probably a French name for Seraj-ud-Daula. This belief is confirmed by the Government of India publication, The Indian Record Series, Bengal, 1856-57, Vol. II, 1905 edition. On pp. 383-84 of this book are given the agreement between Jafar Ali Khan Bahadur and the Honourable East India Company. This agreement was accepted, signed and sworn to by Mir Jafar on June 3, 1757. Article four of the agreement runs thus: “In consideration of the heavy losses the English Company sustained by the destruction of Calcutta by Serajah Dowlat, and also on account of war they shall receive the sum of [one hundred lack of sicca rupees. (Trans).] has made them suffer, I shall give them a hundred lakhs (that is, twenty-four million pounds in our currency).
“For the other inhabitants, fifty more lakhs (twelve millions).”
“For the Moors and the Hindus in the service of the English, twenty lakhs (four millions eight hundred thousand pounds).”
“For the Armenians, who trade in Calcutta, seven lakhs (sixteen hundred and eighty thousand). The whole making about forty-two millions, four hundred and eighty thousand.”
"I shall pay in cash without delay all these sums as soon as I am made Soubeidar of these provinces.”
“The Admiral, the Colonel and four other officers (whom he names) can dispose of this money as they like.”
“This was stipulated in order to save them from all blame.”
Grand buildings replete with turrets, picture windows and kitchen gardens. Perfectly manicured lawns. And hundreds of rooms stuffed with antiques and objet d'arts from across the globe.
Few things are as quintessentially English as a stately home. Tourists love them. And they're a guaranteed box office draw, as "Downton Abbey" and "Pride and Prejudice" can attest.
But there's a more disturbing side.
Many of these country estates are indelibly linked to brutal legacies of slavery and colonialism. And while their grim origins may have been previously overlooked, they're now facing a new level of scrutiny that -- amid raging debates over how Britain reckons with its imperial past -- has exploded into its own cultural conflict.
At the center of the controversy is a new report into the matter by the National Trust, a heritage body created in 1895 to preserve places of natural beauty and historic interest across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Published this month, the report identifies 93 places, roughly one third of all of its properties, that it says were built, benefited from or connected to the spoils of slavery and colonialism.
They include Chartwell, Winston Churchill's former home in the southeastern county of Kent, Devon's spectacular Lundy Island, where convicts were used as unpaid labor and Speke Hall, near Liverpool, whose owner, Richard Watt traded rum made by slaves and purchased a slave ship in 1793 that trafficked slaves from Africa to Jamaica.
Some 29 properties were found to have benefited from compensation after owning slaves was abolished in Great Britain in 1837, including Hare Hill in Cheshire, where the owners, the Hibbert family, received the equivalent of £7 million ($8.8 million) to make up for the loss of slaves.
The National Trust says it's chosen now to highlight this issue because of rising public awareness that, in the UK, hit the headlines with the divisive tearing down of an 18th-century slave trader's statue in the port city of Bristol.
"At a time when there's an enormous interest around colonialism more broadly and indeed slavery more specifically, it felt very appropriate, given that we care for so many of these places of historical interest, to commission a report that looks right across them and try to assess the extent of those colonial legacies still reflected in the places we look after today," says John Orna-Ornstein, the National Trust's director of culture and engagement...
-- The grim truth behind Britain's stately homes, by Joe Minihane, CNN
“My resources are exhausted and we have no longer any hope left unless we are successful. Where shall I find resources in a country ruined by fifteen years of war, enough to pay the expenses of your army and of a squadron from which we were hoping for a great deal of help. On the contrary, there is nothing.”
”The law of succession in those countries is the law of the strongest. You must not regard the expulsion of a prince here as on the same level as in Europe.”
You must not work simply for the glory of the King’s arms. A word to the wise ...”
By the seventeenth century, Europeans had made themselves heartily disliked in India by their complete indifference to the customs of the area. As Father Martin explained,...The people of Madura have no Communication with the Europeans, who, by their riotous Excesses, have corrupted all the Christians in India…The Missionaries lead an extremely mortified Life…They are not known to be Europeans; for were the Natives to have the least Notion of this, the Fathers would be obliged to quit the Country…Several Motives prompt the Indians to have the Europeans in so much Horror. Great Cruelties have been committed in their Countries; they have been Eye Witnesses to the most shocking examples of Vices of every Kind…
By the mid-seventeenth century, however, the Europeans had become so confident of their superiority that they flouted the laws of the nations they traded with—eating meat, disobeying the rules of social interaction and etiquette -- and consequently became social pariahs. When the Jesuits came to south India, their first task was to make themselves acceptable members of society, which they could only accomplish by posing as Brahmin ascetics from the north.
-- French Jesuits in India and the Lettres Edifiantes, by Jyoti Mohan
Swiss Companies and Captain Polier
During the wars in Peninsular India the Court of Directors had sent to India four companies of Swiss troops, each composed of 100 men. Their services were utilised particularly against the French. Orme refers to the arrival at Madras in 1752 of two Swiss companies commanded by Swiss captains. [Orme, A History of the Military Transactions of the British in Indostan I, p. 255.] When the French had reached the proximity of Fort St. David in 1752, a company of the Swiss under Captain Schaub was sent on boats from Madras to intercept them. But they were captured by some Frenchmen sent by Dupleix on a vessel from Pondicherry and were detained there as prisoners of war. Immediately on hearing this news, Major Lawrence embarked for Fort St. David with another party of Swiss troops under Captain Gaupp. [Lawrence, A Narrative of the War on the Coromandel Coast, p. 34.]
Captain Paul Philip Polier was the commander of one such company. The services of his company were for some time transferred from Madras to Bengal, most probably in 1752. [Letter to Court, 11 February 1753, para. 61.] On 11 January 1753 he presented himself before the Council in Calcutta and informed the members that his men were daily deserting that place, and that sixteen of them, some belonging to his own town and enjoying his greatest confidence, had already gone. He observed that the French (at Chandernagore) seduced them by indirect means and sent them to Pondicherry, the "open situation” of Calcutta making it impossible for him to prevent their flight. He proposed to take back his officers and men to the southern coast, where he hoped to take effective steps against such occurrences and to render better service to the English Company. [Letter to Court, 15 January 1753, para 4.] Polier joined Major Lawrence with 100 soldiers on 1 April 1753. With this reinforcement Lawrence wished to storm the French camp at Trivadi, but on arriving at Trichinopoly on 6 May 1753 found that, among others, one sergeant and fifteen men of a Swiss company had deserted his detachment. But Polier and his party remained faithful, though, they unknowingly committed a tactical military blunder. On 12 May 1754 Polier commanded some British troops as well. While he was trying to assist one detachment under Captain Caillaud, the French “disabled one of his field pieces” as also one of Caillaud’s. Polier’s battalion served in the army under Colonel Alexander Heron during its march from Madura towards the end of May 1755. Advised by the Madras Council to return to Arcot, the Nawab of the Carnatic left Trichinopoly for his capital on 9 July 1755, accompanied by an escort of 300 Europeans and 1,000 sepoys under the command of Polier. Towards the end of 1755, the Court of Directors decided to stop the recruitment of men from Switzerland for the four Swiss companies and to put them on an equal footing with the English companies in all respects, except that a Swiss company was to be limited to 140 men. Captain Polier, being the oldest of the Swiss military officers in India, was given a new commission investing him with the seniormost rank among them. [Letter from Court, 11 February 1756, para. 113.]
-- Fort William-India House Correspondence and Other Contemporary Papers Relating Thereto, Vol. I: 1748-1756, edited by K. K. Datta, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of History, Patna University, Patna (1958)
“We summon you, in the name of the religious orders, of all the inhabitants and of ourselves to order Mr. Coote (the English commander) to suspend arms immediately, and we hold you responsible to the King for all the misfortunes to which ill-timed delay may give rise.”
“Colonel Coote desires the French to offer themselves as prisoners of war, to be treated according to interests of his master the King. He will show them every indulgence that humanity demands.
He will send tomorrow morning, between eight and nine o'clock, the grenadiers of his regiment, who will take possession of the Vilnour door.
The day after tomorrow, at the same time, he will take possession of the St. Louis door.
The mother and the sisters of the Rajah will be escorted to Madras. Every care will be taken of them, and they will not be given up to their enemies.
Written in our General Headquarters, near Pondicherry, on the 15th January 1761.”
George Pigot, 1st Baron Pigot (4 March 1719 – 11 May 1777) was twice the British President of the British East India Company.
Pigot was the eldest son of Richard Pigot of Westminster, by his wife Frances, daughter of Peter Goode, a Huguenot who had come to England in the late seventeenth century. Frances was a "tirewoman" [lady's maid] to Queen Caroline. His brothers were Admiral Hugh Pigot (1722–1792) [Royal Navy officer. He commanded York at the reduction of Louisbourg in June 1758 and commanded Royal William at the capture of Quebec in September 1759 during the Seven Years' War. He went on to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Leeward Islands Station during the American Revolutionary War and then became First Naval Lord.] and Sir Robert [a British Army officer during the American Revolutionary War.].
Pigot entered the service of the East India Company in 1736, at the age of 17; after nineteen years he became governor and commander-in-chief of Madras in 1755. Having defended the city against the French in 1758-1759 and occupied Pondichéry on behalf of the company, he resigned his office in November 1763 and returned to the Kingdom of Great Britain, being made a baronet in 1764. After selling the family seat of Peplow Hall, Shropshire, he purchased Patshull Hall, Staffordshire, in 1765 for £100,000.
Patshull Hall
That year he obtained the seat of Wallingford in the Parliament of Great Britain, which he retained until 1768. In 1766 he was created an Irish peer as Baron Pigot, of Patshull in the County of Dublin. From 1768 until his death he sat in the British House of Commons for Bridgnorth. Pigot was created an LL.D. of the university of Cambridge on 3 July 1769.
Returning to India in 1775 to reoccupy his former position at Madras, Pigot was at once involved in a fierce quarrel with the majority of his council which arose out of the proposed restoration of Thuljaji, the rajah of Tanjore. The governor was arrested by order of his opponents and was still a prisoner when he died.
Meanwhile, the conduct of Pigot was censured by the court of directors in Great Britain, and the order for his restoration was followed immediately by another for his recall. This happened about a month after his death, but before the news had reached Great Britain. In 1779 the matter was discussed in Parliament, and four of those who were responsible for his arrest were tried and were fined £1000 each. Pigot, who left several illegitimate children, was never married, and his barony became extinct.
George entered the service of the British East India Company in 1736 as a writer, and arrived at Madras on 26 July 1737. When a member of council at Fort St. David, Pigot was sent with Robert Clive to Trichinopoly in charge of some recruits and stores. On their return with a small escort of sepoys, they were attacked by a large body of polýgars, and narrowly escaped with their lives. Pigot succeeded Thomas Saunders as governor and commander-in-chief of Madras on 14 January 1755. He conducted the defence of the city, when besieged by Thomas-Arthur de Lally in the winter of 1758–9, with considerable skill and spirit. On the capture of Pondichéry by Lieutenant-colonel (afterwards Sir) Eyre Coote (1726–1783) in January 1761, Pigot demanded that it should be given up to the presidency of Madras as the property of the East India Company. This Coote refused after consulting his chief officers, who were of opinion that the place ought to be held for the Crown. Pigot thereupon declared that unless his demand was complied with, he would not furnish any money for the subsistence of the King's troops or the French prisoners. Upon this, Coote gave way, and Pigot took possession of Pondichéry, and destroyed all the fortifications in obedience to the orders previously received from England. Pigot resigned office on 14 November 1763, and forthwith returned to England. He was created a baronet on 5 December 1764, with remainder in default of male issue to his brothers Robert and Hugh, and their heirs male.
-- George Pigot, 1st Baron Pigot, by Wikipedia
that it was shameful to demand in London from Lord Clive and his brave officers the legitimate reward of their fine deeds in India; that this act would be as unjust as if they had wanted to punish Admiral Anson for having made a tour of the world as a conqueror; and, finally, that the most certain method of encouraging men to serve their country was to let them work at the same time for themselves.
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In temples and in private shrines, Shiva is . .. worshipped in the form of the lingam, or phallus, often embedded in the yoni, the symbol of the female sexual organ.
In temples and in private shrines, Shiva is worshipped in the form of the lingam, a cylindrical votary object that is often embedded in a yoni, or spouted dish. Together they symbolize the eternal process of creation and regeneration. Since the late 19th century, some scholars have interpreted the lingam and yoni as being aniconic representations of the male and female sexual organs, respectively.
Biach. Bramma and Vichnou, accompanied by a numerous cortege of Brammes, were formerly on the mountain Keilassan to visit Chib [Siva]. They found him enjoying his wife. Their arrival did not urge him to stop. He saw them, but without saying a word to them, or giving them the slightest courtesy, due to the fury of his passion, and inflamed by the drunkenness into which he was plunged, had knocked him out of himself, and he was no longer capable of shame or modesty. At this sight, some of those who made up this illustrious assembly, among others, Vishnu, only laughed, and felt ashamed for him. Others, outraged with annoyance and anger, testified to all their indignation, and charged him with insults. "No, you are only a demon," they said to him, "and even worse than a demon, who gives everything to passion. You wear the face, and you have the game, since you are not even susceptible to shame in the presence of such an illustrious assembly." All equally unworthy [finally] held the same language, and entered into the same sentiments. "The friendship we had for him," they all said unanimously, "had taken us to his house to pay him a visit, and we only find in him a man completely devoted to passion and drunkenness, who takes no notice of us, and who continues his infamies even in our presence. Therefore, no virtuous man, from now on, has any trade with him, and those who frequent him will be regarded as fools, and as men unworthy of any society with honest people." Having said this, they all withdrew, each at soy.
Chib, a short time later, having returned to himself, asked his guards who were those who had come to his house. "It is Bramma and Vishnou," they said to him, "accompanied by a numerous troop of penitents; but seeing you in this state, they loaded you with curses and insults and withdrew." These words were like a thunderbolt which penetrated to the heart of Chib and Dourgua. They both died, and died in the same posture they had been in until then. Chib wanted this action which had made him experience shame to be celebrated by men. This is how he expressed it: "Shame made me die, but it gave me a new figure, and this new figure is the Lingam. You, demons, my subjects, look at it therefore as another means itself. It is indeed a part of it. Moreover, I want all men to offer their sacrifices to Lingam. Those who honor me under this figure will surely get the object of [all] their wishes and a place in the Veikuntam. I am the supreme being. My Lingam is too. Therefore, to render it the honors of the divinity is a work of virtue, and you could not do anything more useful, nothing more meritorious. The tree of Marmélle is, of all trees, the one I love the most. If they want to please me, they must offer me the flowers, the leaves, and the fruits. Hear more what I have to add. Those who will fast on January 14th in honor of the Lingam, and who the following night will offer it the sacrifice, will present it with leaves from the Marmelle tree, and will ensure a place in the Keilassan. Listen again, demons. If you have any desire to become virtuous, learn what are the fruits that should be derived from the honors that will be paid to Lingam. Those who make it out of earth and sacrifice to it, will receive their reward. Those who make it out of stone, will merit seven times more, and will never see the gates of hell. Those who make it with silver will deserve seven times more, and with gold, seven times more. My ministers, go and teach this truth to men, and urge them to embrace it."
Indeed, they did, and all peoples were instructed. Some have adopted it and are offering their sacrifices to the Lingam today. Others did not want to add foy to it, and did not consider it. Others, finally, have regarded it as an infamy, and refused to hear about it. For me, I have known for a long time, and I am fully convinced, that the Lingam is Chïb himself, and therefore the supreme being. So I am going to design the figure as I traced it to men to give them an idea. I told them that this Lingam was whitish in color, that he had 3 eyes, 5 faces, and that he liked to cover himself with tiger skin; that he was before the world, that he was the principle of the world, that he dispels our fears, and always grants us the object of all our wishes. Bramma himself offered him sacrifices in Keilassan. The Brames, the penitents, the Kings, the merchants, the Choutres, recognize no other god than Chib. He alone receives their homage and their wishes. I have just given you a short summary of the history of Lingam, and of what gave rise to it, and how his cult spread. Tell me now what you think. I don't know of anyone more enlightened than you. Therefore continue to remove my doubts, and destroy my errors, in order to save me.
Chumantou. What you just said is the crowning achievement of everything you have already said. No matter how much I think and dream, I don't know how to go about making you reasonable, and make you recognize the monstrous errors in which I see you plunged. A man who has given in to passing errors, but who does not have a completely corrupt heart, is still capable of tasting reason, and clinging to the truth as soon as it is shown to him. But he who has both a corrupt mind and heart are quite incapable of it. It is therefore impossible to make him know the truth, even less to make him love. It is with him, as with dry wood, that you can break it, but you cannot make it bend. You first said that Chib was the supreme being, [but] how, after all you have just said about him, can it even occur to you? One would regard the world as vile and despicable, if the supreme being would give himself up to women until he could no longer part with them. Such is the character that you make him have. Such a name and such behavior cannot therefore suit him that we regard as the supreme being, and that we adore as our god. God is essentially happy. He is sovereign. He can therefore desire nothing outside of himself, and all that is external to him can in no way contribute to his happiness or his felicity. Indeed, when you give Chib the name of being supreme, you represent him to us immersed in drunkenness, and delivering everything to a woman whom he enjoyed without interruption. If he was, in fact, the supreme being, we should see men who depend on him, like his creatures, let themselves be inflamed with anger, and make him bear its effects. Is it possible that you did not feel [all] the indecency of such conduct? Don't you see what's going on in front of your eyes? If a Roy makes a mistake, we would see a slave going to load him with insults and curses. Learn from this that the God whom one recognizes as master, and who is in fact above the anger of men, does not have to bear the weight or feel the effects of his actions. You add that Bochisto and the other penitents offered the Lingam their homage, and honored him like a deity. What does this prove? That they have both been as perverted, as corrupt, as toy, and nothing more? The most virtuous men desire only to possess God, and only after death are we are allowed to see him and enjoy him. Chib's house is always full of demons. His suite is made up of them. The demons must therefore enjoy a privilege which is not granted to even the most virtuous. God has no body. Chib certainly has one, and his pleasure is to cover himself with a tiger skin. God does not desire anything outside of Himself. All of Chib's mind, heart and attention, is on a woman. How can you confuse the two and give them the same name? God, by an act of his will, created the world, so we [all] give him the name of father, and recognize him as such. It is only Kartiko and Gonecho who give this name to Chib, and who recognize being his children. You have said on other occasions that Bramma and Vishnu were enlightened and virtuous men. But if they were indeed, would they curse someone who must be regarded as the supreme being? Would they throw curses at him? To see God, to enjoy him, is the reward of virtue. It is the height of happiness. Seeing and hanging out with Chib is a crime, because all you see in him is a shameless monster. You say that Chib, at the time of death, remained under the figure of Lingam. You are wrong at first to put him to death, since God is eternal and does not die. But besides, there was no more decent figure in the world which could better suit the divinity. You are going to tell these fables to an ignorant people who are hardly able to distinguish their left hand from their right hand. But lacking even in light, can you carry deceit and wickedness to this point? You are not ignorant of what is excellent in God's nature, and know, above all, that he cannot be transformed into what is most base. You are not unaware, either, that one should offer the sacrifice only to the being who is above all. How then, unhappy that you are, can you resolve to engage the people to honor by this act of religion what is most despicable and most base? The lingam is the shameful part of the body. All men hide it out of modesty. And you, unhappy man, you carry infamy to the point of urging them to offer it their sacrifices, and to pay it the honors which are only due to the divinity. What use is it to instruct you in the truth? To what end are all the pains that I take upon myself, since you are still capable of such infamies and such abominations? If you want me to continue to instruct you, leave therefore, forever, such a monstrous error. No matter how much I tell you, I foresee that you will do nothing. A spirit spoiled by impurity feeds only on impure ideas, and must, in fact, make gods of this species. A heart completely corrupted, surrendered to sin, must consequently offer its incense to base and contemptible objects, and nothing should appear to him to be more worthy of it than that which serves as an instrument of pleasure. I will not, however, stop telling you that Bramma is not a God, that Vishnu is not a God, that Indro is not a God, nor all the others to whom you lavish this name, and that Chib, finally, is not a God, still less the Lingam.
-- Ezourvedam: A French Veda of the Eighteenth Century, Edited with an Introduction by Ludo Rocher
The creator, Brahma, wishing to create creatures, said to Shiva, the first being, "Create creatures, without delay." Shiva said, "Yes," but seeing that all creatures were flawed, he who had great ascetic heat plunged into the water and generated ascetic heat. Brahma waited for him for a very long time and then created another creator, a Prajapati ("lord of creatures"). The Prajapati, seeing Shiva submerged in the water, said to his father, Brahma, "I will create creatures, if there is no one who has been born before me." His father said to him, "There is no other male (purusha) born before you. This is just a pillar (or, Shiva who is called The Pillar) submerged in the water. Rest assured, and do the deed." And so the Prajapati created creatures. They were hungry and tried to eat the Prajapati, until Brahma provided them with food, plants, and animals, and then they began to procreate and increased in number.
Then Shiva stood up from the water. When he saw those creatures of various forms, increasing by themselves, he became angry, and he tore off his own lingam and threw it down on the ground, where it stood up just as it was. Brahma said to him, hoping to conciliate him with words, "What did you accomplish by staying so long in the water? And why did you tear out this lingam and plant it in the ground?" Then Shiva, becoming truly furious, said to Brahma, "Since someone else created these creatures, what will I do with it? The creatures can go on recycling forever, eating the food that I obtained for them through my ascetic heat." And Shiva went to his place on the mountain, to generate ascetic heat (M 10.17.10-26 [parentheses added]; see also Doniger O'Flaherty 1973: 131).
One day, Kannappar, the chief of a tribe of hunters, found Shiva in the jungle. Filled with love for the god and pity that he seemed to be all alone, Kannappar resolved to feed Shiva. He kicked aside the flowers that a Brahmin priest had left on the head of Shiva and gave him the flowers that he had worn on his own head. His feet, and his dogs' paws, left their marks on Shiva. He stayed with him all night, and left at dawn to hunt again.
In order to demonstrated to the Brahmin priest the greatness of Kannappar's love, Shiva caused blood to flow from one of his eyes. To staunch the flow, Kannappar gouged out his own eye with an arrow and replaced the god's eye with his. When Shiva made his second eye bleed, Kannappar put his foot on Shiva's eye to guide his hand, and he was about to pluck out his remaining eye when Shiva stretched out his hand to stop him, and placed Kannappar at his right hand (Periya Puranam 16; McGlashan 2006: 71-86).
Shiva stood up from the water. When he saw those creatures of various forms, increasing by themselves, he became angry, and he tore off his own abstract symbol of god and threw it down on the ground, where it stood up just as it was. Brahma said to him. "Why did you tear out your abstract symbol of god and plant it in the ground?" And Shiva replied. "Since someone else created these creatures, what will I do with my abstract symbol of god?" and so forth.
One day, Kannappar, the chief of a tribe of hunters, found the male organ of Shiva in the jungle; filled with love for the god and pity that he seemed to be all alone, Kannappar resolved to feed the male organ of Shiva. He kicked aside the flowers that a Brahmin priest had left on the head of the male organ of Shiva and gave him the flowers that he had worn on his own head. His feet, and his dogs' paws, left their marks on the male organ of Shiva ... [and so forth].
-- The Black Hole -- The Question of Holwell's Veracity, by J. H. Little, Bengal, Past & Present, Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, Vol. XI, Part 1, July-Sept., 1915
-- Full Proceedings of the Black Hole Debate, Bengal, Past & Present, Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, Vol. XII. Jan – June, 1916
-- A Genuine Narrative of the deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen, and Others, who were suffocated in the Black Hole in Fort-William, at Calcutta, in the Kingdom of Bengal; in the Night succeeding the 20th Day of June 1756., In a Letter to a Friend, from India Tracts, by Mr. J.Z. Holwell, and Friends.
-- Interesting Historical Events, Relative to the Provinces of Bengal, and the Empire of Indostan. With a Seasonable Hint and Persuasive to the Honourable The Court of Directors of the East India Company. As Also The Mythology and Cosmogony, Facts and Festivals of the Gentoo's, followers of the Shastah. And a Dissertation on the Metempsychosis, commonly, though erroneously, called the Pythagorean Doctrine. Part II. By J.Z. Holwell, Esq.
-- Forging Indian Religion: East India Company Servants and the Construction of ‘Gentoo’/‘Hindoo’ Scripture in the 1760s, by Jessica Patterson
-- French Jesuits in India and the Lettres Edifiantes, by Jyoti Mohan
-- Claiming India: French Scholars and the Preoccupation with India During the Nineteenth Century, by Jyoti Mohan
-- Natural Theology and Natural Religion, by Andrew Chignell & Derk Pereboom
-- The Enlightenment and Orientalist Discourse on the Aryan, Excerpt from Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity, by Dorothy M. Figueira
-- Ezourvedam: A French Veda of the Eighteenth Century, Edited with an Introduction by Ludo Rocher
-- Holwell's Religion of Paradise, Excerpt from The Birth of Orientalism, by Urs App
The appointment of Apothecary General in the British (or English) Army dated from 1686; it lapsed in 1826, by which time it was little more than an honorary title.
According to British regulations, the Apothecary General, like the Judge Advocate General, was a noncombatant officer who, under directions from the secretary at war, supplied the army with medicines, hospital stores, surgical instruments, etc. Semi-annually he presented a bill to the Treasury, having previously submitted it for approval to the surgeon and physician generals and to the secretary at war, who certified that the medicines specified had been forwarded to their respective destinations.
-- Apothecary General, by Wikipedia
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find themselves dishonourable graves.
The genesis of the National Archives of India may be traced back to the year 1860 when Sandeman, the Civil Auditor, in his report stressed the need of relieving the offices of congestion by destruction of the papers of routine nature and transfer of all valuable records to a ‘Grand Central Archive’. However, things took a concrete shape in 1889, when Professor G.W. Forrest of Elphinstone College, Bombay was entrusted the job of examining the records of the Foreign Department of the Government of India. Earlier, he had earned reputation as an Archivist for his work in the Bombay Records Office. In his report, he made a strong plea for transferring all records of the administration of East India Company to a Central Repository. As a result, Imperial Records Department (IRD) came into existence on 11 March 1891 which was located in Imperial Secretariat Building at Calcutta (Kolkata). Professor G.W Forrest was made its Officer in Charge. His main task was to examine, transfer, arrange and catalogue records of all the Departments and to organise a Central Library in place of various Departmental Libraries. After G.W. Forrest, the work at Imperial Records Department (IRD) progressed well under S.C. Hill (1900), C.R. Wilson (1902), N.L. Hallward (1904), E. Denison Ross (1905), A.F. Scholfield (1915), R.A. Blaker (1919), J.M. Mitra (1920) and Rai Bahadur A.F.M. Abdul Ali (1922-1938) who were scholars as well as Records Keepers in their own right.
-- History of National Archives of India, by National Archives of India
Walter Kelly Firminger (28 September 1870 - 1940) was archdeacon of Calcutta and a historian of India who was the first editor of Bengal, Past & Present, the journal of Calcutta Historical Society. He was a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society....
Firminger was ordained deacon at Hereford in 1893. He served as a UMCA missionary in Zanzibar from 1893 to 1897 and was subdean in 1896. He was a curate in Margate from 1897 to 1898. He had clerical appointments in India from 1899 to 1923 being Archdeacon of Calcutta from 1914 to 1923. He was editor of the Indian Churchman from 1900 to 1905. He was Vicar of Padbury, Bucks from 1923 to 1926. He was Chaplain to the King at Hampton Court Palace from 1926 until he died in 1940. B.Litt. and D.D.
-- Walter K. Firminger, by Wikipedia
Credit Charles Dickens for creating Rev. Mr. Chadband, a greedy preacher, in his 1853 novel “Bleak House”; hence, a chadband is an oily, hypocritical person.
-- Put on your Mae West, but try to avoid being a Chadband, by Bill & Rich Sones
Walpole talked of ‘a man and his price’;
Nobody’s virtue was over-nice.
a lamentable tale of things
Done long ago, and ill done.
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