CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
company, and the junior chaplain, the Reverend Robert Mapletoft, as one of the captain-lieutenants. Several others of the Company's civil servants formed themselves into a company of Volunteers, and did excellent service. The Militia, too, fought well in the earlier part of the siege, but became disheartened, and finally collapsed in abject fear, adding greatly to the difficulties of the defenders.
After the fall of Calcutta, the Militia were re-organized at Fulta, and we can fancy that drilling at that time was carried out in deadly earnest Many of the Company's servants joined the Regulars, but the others formed a company of Volunteers, who marched, and fought with Clive's troops at the recapture of Calcutta and in the operations that followed. Colonel Broome, in his "History of the Bengal Army," states that when, in October, 1759,—
"a Dutch fleet arrived in the river, with seven hundred Europeans and eight hundred Malay troops, and, under secret agreement with Meer Jaffir, threatened to dispossess the English of their privileges of trade, etc., Clive called out the Militia, a body of about three hundred, of whom nearly two hundred and fifty were Europeans; and a body of Volunteers was formed from amongst the respectable class of English, of
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