e Tury and 10 officers. There were also 10 officers of the
French East India Company's vessels, and 107 persons of sufficient
importance for their _parole_ to be demanded when the Fort fell.
Apparently these Returns do not include those who were killed in the
defence, nor have we any definite information as to the number of
French sepoys, but Eyre Coote[16] says there were 500.

The story of the siege is to be gathered from many accounts. M.
Renault and his Council submitted an official report; Renault wrote
many letters to Dupleix and other patrons or friends; several of the
Council and other private persons did the same.[17] M. Jean Law,
whose personal experiences we shall deal with in the next chapter,
was Chief of Cossimbazar, and watched the siege, as it were, from
the outside. His straightforward narrative helps us now and then to
correct a mis-statement made by the besieged in the bitterness of
defeat. On the English side, besides the Bengal records, there are
Clive's and Eyre Coote's military journals, the Logs of the British
ships of war, and the journal of Surgeon Edward Ives of His
Majesty's ship _Kent_. Thus this passage of arms, almost the only
one in Bengal[18] in which the protagonists were Europeans, is no
obscure event, but one in which almost every incident was seen and
described from opposite points of view. This multiplicity of
authorities makes it difficult to form a connected narrative, and,
in respect to many incidents, I shall have to follow that account
which seems to enter into the fullest or most interesting detail.

It will now be necessary to go back a little. After the capture of
Calcutta in June, 1756, the behaviour of the Nawab to all Europeans
was so overbearing that Renault found it necessary to ask the
Superior Council of Pondicherry for reinforcements, but all that he
received was 67 Europeans and 167 Sepoys. No money was sent him, and
every day he expected to hear that war had broken out between
France and England.

"Full of these inquietudes, gentlemen, I was in the
most cruel embarrassment, knowing not even what to
desire. A strong detestation of the tyranny of the Nawab,
and of the excesses which he was committing against
Europeans, made me long for the arrival of the English in
the Ganges to take vengeance for them. At the same time
I feared the consequences of war being declared. In every
letter M. de Leyrit[19] impressed upon me the necessity of
fortifyin