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The Pigott

THE Early Days of the Indian Empire--The Black Hole of Calcutta--The Successes of Clive--"Trifling Gifts"--A Lottery Prize--Sold to Ali Pasha for pound 30,000, and by him Destroyed--Only the Model of the "Pigott" remains. THE name of Governor Pigott, connected as it is with that of the Subahdar Sooray-oo-Doulah, opens up a dark page in our Indian history. Mr. Drake, the Governor of the English settlement in Calcutta, with the Commandant, Captain Minchen, fled in the middle of the night, leaving the honor of their country, and the lives of a large body of their country-men, exposed to the frightful rancour of an inexperienced, illiterate, self-indulgent prince, hardly eighteen at the time, marching with a numerous army, and within a few hours march of Cossimbazar, to seize the English possessions, and enrich himself with the fabulous wealth supposed to be stored up in their factories (A. D. 1756). Governor Drake and Commandant Minchen, possessed of the one idea that self-preservation was the first and only law which they had to observe, came to the conclusion that the Subahdar's army boded them harm, and therefore, that the thing to be done was to decamp at midnight, to leave Cossimbazar well-nigh defenceless, and thereby to give up Calcutta, with all it contained, to a mixed Mohammedan and native force. This they did with cruel promptitude. The triumphant garrison thereupon drove the helpless foreigners, 146 of them, into the strong room used for the confinement of military offenders, since called the "Black Hole," where seven-tenths died in unexampled horror during the night, and the whole English population were exposed to miseries, in comparison of which the death on duty of every man in the city would have been a glory and a paradise.