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These contradictory orders, and even letters of recall, reached Law on his march, but though he sent back M. Sinfray with letters to M. Bugros and Coja Wajid which the latter afterwards made over to Clive he continued his march to Patna, where he arrived on the 3rd of June, and was well received by Raja Ramnarain, and where he was within four or five days' march or sail from Sooty, the mouth of the Murshidabad or Cossimbazar river, and therefore in a position to join the Nawab whenever it might be necessary.
I thought that by taking presents I could avoid the inconveniences I feared, so I arranged to start early on the morning of the 13th with five or six persons well armed. A slight rain detained us till 10 o'clock. On leaving I told my people that M. Sinfray was their commandant, and ordered him, if I did not return by 2 o'clock, to send a detachment of forty men to meet me.
The team halted at a lonely house surrounded by a high wall, once the residence of a zamindar, now owned by Coja Solomon of Cossimbazar, and leased to a fellow Armenian of Chandernagore. It had been hired more than once by Monsieur Sinfray, the secretary to the Council at Chandernagore and a persona grata with the Nawab, for al fresco entertainments got up in imitation of the fetes at Versailles.
Germain, the private inhabitant Renault de la Fuye, and the two supercargoes of Indiamen Delabar and Chambon. The official report of the loss of Chandernagore was drawn up on the 29th of March, 1757. The original is in the French Archives, and Caillaud's signature shows that he was still suffering from his wound. Sinfray we shall come across again.
"Nay, indeed, I marveled not at that, for Sinfray Sahib is indeed a great man. We who dwell upon the kala pani know well his name. Is it not known in the bazaars in Pondicheri and Surat?
How they had been trapped by Diggle, pretending to be a Monsieur de Bonnefon: how he had conveyed them to the house of his friend Sinfray: how after many months their whereabouts had been revealed to Surendra Nath by one of his numerous relatives, a man who had a distant cousin among Sinfray's servants: how the Babu, displaying unwonted energy, had come with a number of friends and fallen unawares upon their captors, afterward taking them to a house of his father's in this village: how the old man and his son had both been stricken with jungle fever, and the father died, and when the Babu lay helpless and unconscious on his sickbed they had found no means of communicating with their friends.
The friend had a spite against Merriman Sahib, the merchant at Calcutta; and when the bibi and the chota bibi came down the river he seized them. Sinfray Sahib believes there was an attack by dacoits; but the bibi's peons were carried away by the sahib's friend: it was he that brought the evidence against them.
His army numbered nearly seventy thousand men, of whom fifty thousand were infantry, armed with matchlocks, bows and arrows, pikes and swords. He had in all fifty-three guns, mounted on platforms drawn by elephants and oxen. The most efficient part of his artillery was commanded by Monsieur Sinfray, who had under him some fifty Frenchmen from Chandernagore.
M. Sinfray had returned to Murshidabad, but could not obtain an interview with the Nawab till the 8th of June, when he found him still absolutely tranquil; and even on the 10th the Nawab wrote to Law to have no fears on his account; but this letter did not reach Law till the 19th.
For a short time Sinfray and his gallant Frenchmen showed a bold front; but the vigorous onslaught of the English struck fear into the hearts of his native allies; the news that the Nawab had fled completed their panic; and then began a wild and disorderly flight; horsemen galloping from the field; infantry scampering this way and that; elephants trumpeting; camels screaming, as they charged through the rabble.
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