A History of the Mahrattas v2.c58.28

v2.c58.28

Sir Thomas Hislop, as Commander-in-Chief at Madras, proceeded to Fort St. George; but on his way to the southward, he took possession of those places in his immediate route which were ceded to the British Government by Holkar. The Killidar of Talneir,¹ from a pertinacity common to governors of forts in India, resisted the order of surrender; and although warned from the first that he should be treated as a rebel, if he refused to obey the orders of his government, he continued to fire upon the British troops. A storming party was therefore sent to force the entrance of the fort, which is by five successive gates; of these the first and second were passed without difficulty, and at the third, the Killidar came out and surrendered himself. He also returned with the party through the third and fourth gates which were opened, but at the fifth gate there was some demur made by the Arabs, when told they must surrender at discretion; the wicket, however, was at last opened, and a few officers and men had entered, when the Arabs, from some misapprehension, rushed upon them, cut most of them down, and amongst the number killed Major Gordon and Captain Macgregor. Their companions behind, hearing of what had been perpetrated, with the exasperated feelings of British troops where they suspect treachery, rushed in as fast as they could gain admittance, and of a garrison of about three hundred men, one only, by leaping the wall, escaped with life. Sir Thomas Hislop, under the same impulse by which the troops were actuated, ordered the Killidar to be hanged as the cause of all the bloodshed, without reflecting on the probability of his not being, even in the first instance, wholly to blame for this lamentable catastrophe, and that his subsequent conduct entitled him to clemency.