formally entered on the duties of his office. But in this comparatively quiet post he had not remained quite two months, when the aid of his military talents was called for in a part of India where they had never yet been exercised, and to which we must now, for the first time, introduce the reader.
Aliverdi Khan, Soubahdar of the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, having died in the month of April, 1756, was succeeded by Mirza Mahmood, better known by his assumed name of Suraja Dowlah, who appears to have been both the grand-nephew and grandson of his predecessor. Aliverdi Khan had been the architect of his own greatness, and his career was not unstained by crime; but his talents were considerable, his habits of life grave, and his government as free from oppression as was consistent with the maintenance of an Oriental despotism. It has been even said that he was "perhaps the only prince in the East whom none of his subjects wished to assassinate."[1]
The character of his successor was widely different: his intellect was feeble, his habits low and depraved, and his propensities vicious in the extreme. From a child he had been sullen, capricious, and cruel; while his education afforded no corrective of these evil dispositions, but, on the contrary, tended to foster them. He was the idol of the prince whom he was destined to succeed; and through the doating fondness of age his early years were passed amidst unbounded indulgence. Such a training, operating on such a nature as that of Suraja Dowlah, produced the result which might have been anticipated. His advance towards manhood was marked by a corresponding advance in vice; his companions were selected from the lowest and basest of mankind, and with these congenial associates his days and nights were passed amidst every species of intemperance.
Aliverdi Khan had occasionally called upon the Eng-
- ↑ Orme's History, Vol. II., p. 46.
