THE SIEGE AND CAPTURE
Which may be translated—
"Howda on elephant, saddle on horse,
On fort bastion the war-drum
Snatched Calcutta by force."
Very possibly a sarcastic version of the jingle may have been applied to Hastings' retreat, and it may also have been varied in the same way to suit other occasions.
Calcutta having been pillaged and the garrison destroyed or driven away, Suraj-ud-Dowlah changed the name of the town to Allynagore, and appointed a native Governor, a Hindu, Raja Manickchand. He then returned in triumph to his own capital, exacting payment as he went of large sums of money from the French and Dutch settlements at Chandernagore and Chinsurah, as the price of their exemption from similar treatment.
Holwell and his companions had, in the mean time, been carried to Murshedabad. The rains broke over Calcutta the day after its capture, and the wretched prisoners, journeying by boat, were given no shelter, but lay on a platform of bamboos at the bottom of the boat, exposed alike to the soaking rain and the scorching sun, laden with heavy fetters, covered with terrible boils the result of breathing the poisoned atmosphere during that night of agony in the Black Hole, and given only a little boiled rice
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