for the protection of the city were encamped.  General Erskine, on learning what had occurred, dispatched a party to the relief of Mr. Davis, and Wazir Ali thereupon retired to his own residence.’  Wazir Ali escaped, but was ultimately given up by a chief with whom he had taken refuge, ’on condition that his life should be spared, and that his limbs should not be disgraced by chains’.  Some of his accomplices were executed.  ’He was confined at Port William, in a sort of iron cage, where he died in May, 1817, aged thirty-six, after an imprisonment of seventeen years and some odd months.’ (Men whom India has Known, 2nd ed., 1874, art.  ’Vizier Ali.’) But Beale asserts that after many years’ captivity in Calcutta, the prisoner was removed to Vellore, where he died (Or.  Biogr.  Dict., ed.  Keene, 1894, p. 416).  It will be observed that the author was mistaken in supposing that ’all the European gentlemen, except Mr. Davis and his family, were included in the massacre.’

21.  These names stand in the original edition as ’Tyz Mahomed Khan, of Ghujper,’ and ‘Tyz Alee Khan’.  In 1857 the then Nawab of Jhajjar joined the rebels.  He was accordingly hanged, and his estate was confiscated.  It is now included in the Rohtak District.  See Fanshawe’s Settlement Report of that District.

22.  The disastrous retreat of Colonel Monson before Jeswant Rao Holkar during the rainy season of 1804 is one of the few serious reverses which have interrupted the long series of British victories in India.  A considerable force under the command of Colonel Monson, sent out by General Lake at the beginning of May in pursuit of Holkar, was withdrawn too far from its base, and was compelled to retreat through Rajputana, and fall back on Agra.  During the retreat the rains broke, and, under pressure caused by the difficulties of the march and incessant attacks of the enemy, the Company’s troops became disorganized, and lost their guns and baggage.  The shattered remnants of the force straggled into Agra at the end of August.  The disgrace of this retreat was speedily avenged by the great victory of Dig.

23.  This old Norman-French formula.  Oyez, Oyez, meaning ‘Hear!’ is still, or recently was, used at the Assizes in the High Court, Calcutta.  The formula would not now be heard at Delhi, or elsewhere beyond the precincts of the High Court.

CHAPTER 65

Marriage of a Jat Chief.

ON the 19th[1] we came on to Balamgarh,[2] fifteen miles over a plain, better cultivated and more studded with trees than that which we had been coming over for many days before.  The water was near the surface, more of the field were irrigated, and those which were not so looked better—­[a] range of sandstone hills, ten miles off to the west, running north and south.  Balamgarh is held in rent-free tenure by a young Jat chief, now about ten years of age.  He resides in a mud fort in a handsome palace