HE name
of Governor Pigott, connected as it is with that of the Subahdar
Sooray-oo-Doulah, opens up a dark page in our Indian history. Mr.
Drake, the Governor of the English settlement in Calcutta, with the
Commandant, Captain Minchen, fled in the middle of the night, leaving
the honor of their country, and the lives of a large body of their
countrymen, exposed to the frightful rancour of an inexperienced,
illiterate, self-indulgent prince, hardly eighteen at the time,
marching with a numerous army, and within a few hours march of
Cossimbazar, to seize the English possessions, and enrich himself with
the fabulous wealth supposed to be stored up in their factories (a.d. 1756).
Governor Drake and Commandant Minchen, possessed of the one idea that
self-preservation was the first and only law which they had to observe,
came to the conclusion that the Subahdar's army boded them harm, and
therefore, that the thing to be done was to decamp
