Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 42.19.5

42.19.5

nor is any thing advanced here, but which is confirmed, or virtually understood, by Hashem-aaly-qhan, the other historian, although he seems evidently to write with the greatest precaution. The siege drew to a length, and nothing was heard from both sides but a continual roaring of musketry, rockets, and artillery. The besiegers, however, had a considerable advantage over the besieged. They had plenty of those destructive machines called bombs; and the firing was so continual, and the smoke so thick and constant, that people came at last not to distinguish the day from the night; and not a day passed but some of the most forward amongst the Imperial Generals either fell dead, or were grievously wounded. After a month and some days' continual labour and slaughter, the trenches were brought close to the fosse, and the Emperor, informed of this, ordered his Taht-revan, or moving throne, to be carried close to the counterscarp. where he took the legal ablutions, pronounced the office of the dead upon himself, made his death-bed prayers, and having sewn a bag of canvass with his own hands, he saw it filled with earth and placed properly; he also ordered cannon to be mounted on some new batteries. But the army, meanwhile, had suffered so much from want of grain and necessaries, that even men of property being emaciated, little could be expected from common soldiers. There is no describing the miseries they suffered. Vast numbers of them died of mere want.