Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 25.12.7

25.12.7

For it is reported that Haider-naic does not care to fight against walls and fortresses, and has been heard more than once to say, that it would be a folly to expose the lives of so many brave men for the sake of acquiring the possession of three or four thousand yards of ground; and that, provided God Almighty would give him the open country, and victory against the English, he did not care to dispute walls and brick-bats with them. This much is certain, that he must have known how little they could hold in a place destitute of every thing. He knew that as the fortress of Mendradj is seated by the sea-side, it has no sweet water at all; and although provisions of it are daily imported from abroad, it was impossible that they should answer the necessities of twenty or thirty thousand persons of all professions and sexes, which were shut up within its walls, and that too for a space of three or four months. Add to this that Mendradj is not really a fortress; it is only a wall drawn round the habitations of an infinity of merchants and other numerous people residing there. These men daily import their own water from without the walls, where there is a city apart. But even supposing that in times of full peace, they should have formed an aqueduct or a rill that should carry a supply of water up to their habitations, still such a contrivance would prove of little avail, as an approach to that rill is now opposed and full of danger.