hout air, in the
fearful summer heat, stir the profoundest pity, the profoundest
anguish. The Nabob's soldiers all through that fearful night revelled
in the sights and sounds that their victims' sufferings offered to them.

When the night did end and the awakened despot did allow the door of
the Blackhole to be opened, only twenty-three out of the hundred and
forty-six victims were alive. The hundred and twenty-three dead bodies
were hurriedly buried in a common pit.

{268}

It is simply impossible to exonerate Surajah Dowlah from the shame and
stain of that deed. The savage who passed "the word of a soldier" that
the lives of his prisoners should be spared took no precautions to
insure the carrying out of his promise. If, as Mr. Holwell says, the
lower jemidars were thirsting for revenge, then the Nabob, who gave his
prisoners over to the care of those jemidars, was directly responsible
for their deeds. Even in Surajah Dowlah's army there must have been
men, there must have been officers, to whom the tyrant, if he had
wished his prisoners to be well treated, could have intrusted them, in
the full confidence and certainty that his commands would be carried
out, and his humane wishes humanely interpreted. But even if by the
utmost straining we can in any degree acquit the Nabob of direct
personal responsibility before the act, his subsequent conduct involves
him in direct complicity, and forces upon him all the responsibility
and all the infamy. He did not punish the miscreants who forced their
victims into the Blackhole, and who gloated over their appalling
sufferings. He did not treat the survivors with ordinary humanity. He
was evidently convinced that he could deal with the wretched English as
he pleased, that their power in India was annihilated, that Surajah
Dowlah was among the mightiest princes of the earth.

[Sidenote: 1757--Plot and counterplot]

For six long months, for a fantastical half-year, Surajah Dowlah
revelled in the crazy dream of his own omnipotence. Then came
retribution, swift, successive, comprehensive. Clive was upon
him--Clive the unconquerable, sacking his towns, putting his garrisons
to the sword, recapturing those places from which Surajah Dowlah had
imagined that he had banished the Englishman forever. The news of the
tragedy of the Blackhole, and of the capture of Calcutta and Fort
William, had reached Madras in August, and the warlike community had
resolved upon prompt a