"After some reflection, I determined to obey. I thoughtthat by taking presents I could avoid the inconveniences Ifeared, so I arranged to start early on the morning of the 13thwith five or six persons well armed. A slight rain detainedus till 10 o'clock. On leaving I told my people that M.Sinfray was their commandant, and ordered him, if I did notreturn by 2 o'clock, to send a detachment of forty men tomeet me. We arrived at the Nawab's palace about midday.He had retired to his harem. We were taken into theAudience Hall, where they brought us a very bad dinner.The Nawab, they said, would soon come. However, 5 o'clockhad struck and he had not yet dressed. During this wearisomeinterval I was visited by some of theDiwans, amongothers by theArzbegi.[94] I asked him why the Nawab hadcalled me. He replied with an appearance of sincerity thatas the Nawab was constantly receiving complaints from theEnglish, about the numerous garrison we had in our Factory,he had judged it proper to summon both Mr. Watts andmyself in order to reconcile us, and that he hoped to arrangematters so that the English should have nothing to fear fromus nor we from them. He added that the Nawab was quitesatisfied with my behaviour, and wished me much good. Atlast theDurbarhour arrives. I am warned. I pass into ahall, where I find Mr. Watts and a number ofDiwans. Theagent of the Seths is present Compliments having passed,one of theDiwansasks me if I have anything particular tosay to Mr. Watts. I answer that I have not. ThereuponMr. Watts addresses me in English: 'The question is, sir,whether you are prepared to surrender your Factory to meand to go down to Calcutta with all your people. You willbe well treated, and will be granted the same conditions asthe gentlemen of Chandernagore. This is the Nawab's wish.'I reply I will do nothing of the kind, that I and all thosewith me are free, that if I am forced to leave CossimbazarI will surrender the Factory to the Nawab, and to no one else.Mr. Watts, turning round to theDiwans, says excitedly, thatit is impossible to do anything with me, and repeats to themword for word all that has passed between us."From that moment I saw clearly that the air of theCourt was not healthy for us. It was, however, necessary toput a good face on matters. TheArzbegiand some others,taking me aside, begged me to consider what I was doing inrefusing Mr. Watts's propositions, and said that as the Nawabwas determined to have a good understanding with theEnglish, he would force me to accept them. They thenasked what I intended to do. I said I intended to stay atCossimbazar and to oppose, to the utmost of my power, theambitious designs of the English. 'Well, well, what canyou do?' they replied. 'You are about a hundred Europeans;the Nawab has no need of you; you will certainly be forcedto leave this place. It would be much better to accept theterms offered you by Mr. Watts.' The same persons who hadbegged me to do this then took Mr. Watts aside. I do notknow what they said to each other, but a quarter of an hourafter they went into the hall where the Nawab was."I was in the utmost impatience to know the result ofall these parleyings, so much the more as from some wordsthat had escaped them I had reason to think they intendedto arrest me."Fire or six minutes after Mr. Watts had gone to theNawab, theArzbegi, accompanied by some officers and theagents of the Seths and the English, came and told me aloud,in the presence of some fifty persons of rank, that the Nawabordered me to submit myself entirely to what Mr. Wattsdemanded. I told him I would not, and that it wasimpossible for the Nawab to have given such an order.I demanded to be presented to him. 'The Nawab,' theysaid, 'does not wish to see you.' I replied, 'It was he whosummoned me; I will not go away till I have seen him.'TheArzbegisaw I had no intention of giving way, and thatI was well supported, for at this very moment word wasbrought of the arrival of our grenadiers, who had beenordered to come and meet me. Disappointed at not seeingme appear, they had advanced to the very gates of the palace.TheArzbegi, not knowing what would be the result of thisaffair, and wishing to get out of the scrape and to throw theburden of it on to the Seths' agent, said to him, 'Do youspeak, then; this affair concerns you more than us.' TheSeths' agent wished to speak, but I did not give him time.I said I would not listen to him, that I did not recognizehim as having any authority, and that I had no businessat all with him. Thereupon theArzbegiwent back to theNawab and told him I would not listen to reason, and thatI demanded to speak to him. 'Well, let him come,' saidthe Nawab, 'but he must come alone.' At the same timehe asked Mr. Watts to withdraw and wait for him in acabinet. The order to appear being given me, I wish togo—another difficulty! The officers with me do not wish tolet me go alone! A great debate between them and theNawab's officers! At last, giving way to my entreaties,and on my assuring them that I have no fears, I persuadethem to be quiet and to let me go."I presented myself before the Nawab, who returned mysalute in a kindly manner. As soon as I was seated, he toldme, in a shamefaced way, that I must either accept Mr.Watts's proposals, or must certainly leave his territories.Your nation is the cause, he said,of all the importunities Inow suffer from the English. I do not wish to put the whole countryin trouble for your sake. You are not strong enough to defendyourselves; you must give way. You ought to remember that when I hadneed of your assistance you always refused it. You ought not toexpect assistance from me now."It must be confessed that, after all our behaviour tohim, I had not much to reply. I noticed, however, that theNawab kept his eyes cast down, and that it was, as it were,against his will that he paid me this compliment. I toldhim I should be dishonoured if I accepted Mr. Watts's proposals,but that as he was absolutely determined to expel usfrom his country, I was ready to withdraw, and that as soonas I had the necessary passports I would go towards Patna.At this every one in concert, except the Nawab and CojaWajid, cried out that I could not take that road, that theNawab would not consent to it. I asked what road theywished me to take. They said I must go towards Midnapuror Cuttack. I answered that the English might at anymoment march in that direction and fall upon me. Theyreplied I must get out of the difficulty as best I could. TheNawab, meanwhile, kept his face bent down, listeningattentively, but saying nothing. Wishing to force him tospeak, I asked if it was his intention to cause me to fall intothe hands of my enemies? 'No, no,' replied the Nawab,'take what road you please, and may God conduct you.' Istood up and thanked him, received the betel,[95] and went out."
Gholam Husain Khan says that the Nawab was much affected at parting with Law, as he now believed in the truth of his warnings against the English and the English party,—
"but as he did not dare to keep him in his service for fearof offending the English, he told him that at present it wasfit that he should depart; but that if anything new shouldhappen he would send for him again. 'Send for me again?'answered Law. 'Rest assured, my Lord Nawab, that this isthe last time we shall see each other. Remember my words: weshall never meet again. It is nearly impossible."
Law hurried back to his Factory, and by the evening of the 15th of April he was ready to depart. The same day the Nawab wrote to Clive:—
"Mr. Law I have put out of the city, and have wroteexpressly to my Naib[96] at Patna to turn him and his attendantsout of the bounds of his Subaship, and that he shall notsuffer them to stay in any place within it."[97]
At the end of April the Nawab wrote to Abdulla Khan, the Afghan general at Delhi, that he had supplied Law with Rs.10,000. Clive was quickly informed of this.
On the morning of the 16th the French marched through Murshidabad with colours flying and drums beating, prepared against any surprise in the narrow streets of the city. Mr. Watts wrote to Clive:—
"They had 100 Europeans, 60 Tellingees, 30hackerys"(i.e. bullock-waggons) "and 4 elephants with them."[98]
Close on their track followed two spies, sent by Mr. Watts to try and seduce the French soldiers and sepoys. Law left a M. Bugros behind in charge of the French Factory.
Shortly after leaving Cossimbazar, Law was reinforced by a party of 45 men, mostly sailors of theSaint Contest, who had managed to escape from the English. On the 2nd of May the French arrived at Bhagulpur, the Nawab writing to them to move on whenever he heard they were halting, and not to go so fast when he heard they were on the march.
"To satisfy him we should have been always in motionand yet not advancing; this did not suit us. It was of theutmost importance to arrive at some place where I couldfind means for the equipment of my troop. We weredestitute of everything."
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.
In the mean time fate had avenged Law on one of his lesser enemies. This was that Ranjit Rai, who had insulted him during his interview with the Seths. The latter had pursued their old policy of inciting the English to make extravagant demands which they at the same time urged the Nawab to refuse. To justify one such demand, the English produced a letter in the handwriting of Ranjit Rai, purporting to be written at the dictation of the Seths under instructions from the Nawab. The latter denied the instructions, and the Seths promptly asserted that the whole letter was a forgery of their agent's.
"The notorious Ranjit Rai was driven in disgrace fromtheDurbar, banished, and assassinated on the road. It wassaid he had received 2 lakhs from the English to apply hismasters' seal unknown to them. I can hardly believe this.This agent was attached to the English only because he knewthe Seths were devoted to them."
This incident warned the Seths to be more cautious, but still the plot against the Nawab was well known in the country. Renault, who had been at this time a prisoner in Calcutta, says:—
"Never was a conspiracy conducted as publicly and withsuch indiscretion as this was, both by the Moors and theEnglish. Nothing else was talked about in all the Englishsettlements, and whilst every place echoed with the noise ofit, the Nawab, who had a number of spies, was ignorant ofeverything. Nothing can prove more clearly the generalhatred which was felt towards him."[99]
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.
"I complained of the delay in the strongest terms toRamnarain, who received the packets from the Nawab, but itwas quite useless. The Nawab was betrayed by those whomhe thought most attached to him. The Faujdar of Rajmehalused to stop all his messengers and detain them as long ashe thought fit."
This officer was a brother of Mir Jafar.[100] The Seths and the English had long found the chief difficulty in their way to be the choice of a man of sufficient distinction to replace Siraj-ud-daula on the throne. At this moment the Nawab himself gave them as a leader Mir Jafar Ali Khan, who had married the sister of Aliverdi Khan, and was therefore a relative of his. Mir Jafar wasBukshi, or Paymaster and Generalissimo of the Army, and his influence had greatly contributed to Siraj-ud-daula's peaceful accession. He was a man of good reputation, and a brave and skilful soldier. It was such a person as this that the Nawab, after a long course of petty insults, saw fit to abuse in the vilest terms in fullDurbarand to dismiss summarily from his post. He now listened to the proposals of the Seths, and towards the end of April terms were settled between him and the English.[101] The actual conclusion of the Treaty took place early in June, and on the 13th of that month Mr. Watts and the other English gentlemen at Cossimbazar escaped under the pretence of a hunting expedition and joined Clive in safety. As soon as he heard of this, the Nawab knew that war was inevitable, and it had come at a moment when he had disbanded half his army unpaid, and the other half was grumbling for arrears. Not only had he insulted Mir Jafar, but he had also managed to quarrel with Rai Durlabh. Instead of trying to postpone the conflict until he had crushed these two dangerous enemies, he begged them to be reconciled to him, and put himself in their hands. Letter after letter was sent to recall Law, but even the first, despatched on the 13th, did not reach Law till the 22nd, owing to the treachery of the Faujdar of Rajmehal. Law's letter entreating the Nawab to await his arrival certainly never reached him, and though Law had started at the first rumour of danger, before getting the Nawab's letter, he did not reach Rajmehal till the 1st of July. The Nawab had been captured in the neighbourhood a few hours before the arrival of his advance-guard. Gholam Husain Khan says that Law would have been in time had the Nawab's last remittance been a bill of exchange and not an order on the Treasury, for—
"as slowness of motion seems to be of etiquette with thepeople of Hindustan, the disbursing of the money took upso much time that when M. Law was come down as farRajmehal, he found that all was over."
Law, who was nothing if not philosophical, remarked on this disappointment:—
"In saving Siraj-ud-daula we should have scored a greatsuccess, but possibly he would have been saved for a shorttime only. He would have found enemies and traitorswherever he might have presented himself in the countriessupposed to be subject to him. No one would have acknowledgedhim. Forced by Mir Jafar and the English to flee toa foreign country, he would have been a burden to us ratherthan an assistance."In India no one knows what it is to stand by anunfortunate man. The first idea which suggests itself is toplunder him of the little[102] which remains to him. Besides,a character like that of Siraj-ud-daula could nowhere find areal friend."
Siraj-ud-daula, defeated by Clive at Plassey on the 23rd of June, was, says Scrafton,—
"himself one of the first that carried the news of his defeatto the capital, which he reached that night."
His wisest councillors urged him to surrender to Clive, but he thought this advice treacherous, and determined to flee towards Rajmehal. When nearly there he was recognized by a Fakir,[103] whose ears he had, some time before, ordered to be cut off. The Fakir informed the Faujdar, who seized him and sent him to Murshidabad, where Miran, Mir Jafar's son, put him to death on the 4th of July.
It was necessary for Law to withdraw as quickly as possible if he was to preserve his liberty. Clive and Mir Jafar wrote urgent letters to Ramnarain at Patna to stop him, but Ramnarain was no lover of Mir Jafar, and he was not yet acquainted with Clive, so he allowed him to pass. Law says:—
"On the 16th of July we arrived at Dinapur, eight milesabove Patna, where I soon saw we had no time to lose.The Raja of Patna himself would not have troubled us much.By means of our boats we could have avoided him as wepleased, for though our fleet was in a very bad condition,still it could have held its own against the naval forcesof Bengal, i.e. the Indian forces, but the English were advancing,commanded by Major Coote. As the English callthemselves the masters of the aquatic element, it became usthe less to wait for them, when we knew they had strongerand more numerous boats than we had. Possibly we couldhave outsailed them, but we did not wish to give them thepleasure of seeing us flee. On the 18th instant an orderfrom the Raja instructed me in the name of Mir Jafar tohalt—no doubt to wait for the English—whilst another on hisown part advised me to hurry off. Some small detachmentsof horsemen appeared along the bank, apparently to hinderus from getting provisions or to lay violent hands on theboatmen. On this we set sail, resolved to quit all thedependencies of Bengal. In spite of ourselves we had tohalt at Chupra, twenty-two miles higher up, because ourrowers refused to go further: prayers and threats all seemeduseless. I thought the English had found some means togain them over. The boats did not belong to us, but weshould have had little scruple in seizing them had ourEuropeans known how to manage them. Unfortunately,they knew nothing about it. The boats in Bengal have nokeel, and consequently do not carry sail well. So we losttwo days in discussion with the boatmen, but at last, bydoubling their pay, terms were made, and five days after, onthe 25th of July, we arrived at Ghazipur, the first place ofimportance in the provinces of Suja-ud-daula, Viceroy of theSubahs of Oudh, Lucknow, and Allahabad."
Before Law left Rajmehal on his return to Patna, the Faujdar tried to stop him on pretence that Mir Jafar wished to reconcile him to the English. Law thought this unlikely, yet knowing the native proclivity for underhand intrigue, he wrote him a letter, but the answer which he received at Chupra was merely an order to surrender. Law says:—
"I had an idea that he might write to me in a quitedifferent style,unknown to the English. I knew the newNawab, whom I met at the time I was soliciting reinforcementsto raise the siege of Chandernagore. He had not thentaken up the idea of making himself Nawab. He appearedto me a very intelligent man, and much inclined to do usservice, pitying us greatly for having to work with a man socowardly and undecided as Siraj-ud-daula."
Law thought his communication—
"was well calculated to excite in his mind sentimentsfavourable to us, but if it did, Mir Jafar let none of themappear. The Revolution was too recent and the influence ofthe English too great for him to risk the least correspondencewith us."
From Clive, on the other hand, he received a letter,—
"such as became a general who, though an enemy, interestedhimself in our fate out of humanity, knowing by his ownexperience into what perils and fatigues we were going tothrow ourselves when we left the European Settlements."
This letter, dated Murshidabad, July 9th, was as follows:—
"As the country people are now all become your enemies,and orders are gone everywhere to intercept your passage,and I myself have sent parties in quest of you, and ordersare gone to Ramnarain, the Naib of Patna, to seize you ifyou pursue that road, you must be sensible if you fall intotheir hands you cannot expect to find them a generousenemy. If, therefore, you have any regard for the menunder your command, I would recommend you to treat withus, from whom you may expect the most favourable terms inmy power to grant."[104]
Law does not say much about the hardships of his flight; but Eyre Coote, who commanded the detachment which followed him, had the utmost difficulty in persuading his men to advance, and wrote to Clive that he had never known soldiers exposed to greater hardships. At Patna Eyre Coote seized the French Factory, where the Chief, M. de la Bretesche, was lying ill. The military and other Company's servants had gone on with Law, leaving in charge a person variously called M. Innocent and Innocent Jesus. He was not a Frenchman, but nevertheless he was sent down to Calcutta. From Patna Eyre Coote got as far as Chupra, only to find Law safe beyond the frontier at Ghazipur, and nothing left for him to do but to return.
From now on to January, 1761, Law was out of the reach of the English, living precariously on supplies sent from Bussy in the south, from his wife at Chinsurah, and from a secret store which M. de la Bretesche had established at Patna unknown to the English, and upon loans raised from wealthy natives, such as the Raja of Bettiah. He believed all along that the French would soon make an effort to invade Bengal, where there was a large native party in their favour, and where he could assist them by creating a diversion in the north. I shall touch on his adventures very briefly.
His first halt was at Benares, which he reached on the 2nd of August, and where the Raja Bulwant Singh tried to wheedle and frighten him into surrendering his guns. He escaped out of his hands by sheer bluff, and went on to Chunargarh, where he received letters from Suja-ud-daula, Nawab of Oudh, a friend of Siraj-ud-daula's, whom he hoped to persuade into invading Bengal. On the 3rd of September he reached Allahabad, and here left his troop under the command of M. le Comte de Carryon, whilst he went on to Lucknow, the capital of Oudh.
It is only at this moment that Law bethinks him of describing his troop. It consisted of 175 Europeans and 100 sepoys drilled in European fashion. The officers were D'Hurvilliers, le Comte de Carryon (who had brought a detachment from Dacca before Law left Cossimbazar), Ensign Brayer (who had commanded the military at Patna), Ensign Jobard (who had escaped from Chandernagore), and Ensign Martin de la Case. He also entertained as officers MM. Debellême (Captain of a French East Indiaman), Boissemont, and La Ville Martère, Company's servants (these three had all escaped from Chandernagore), Dangereux and Dubois (Company's servants stationed at Cossimbazar), Beinges (a Company's servant stationed at Patna), and two private gentlemen, Kerdizien and Gourbin. Besides these, MM. Anquetil du Perron,[105] La Rue, Desjoux, Villequain, Desbrosses, and Calvé, served as volunteers. His chaplain was the Reverend Father Onofre, and he had two surgeons, Dubois and Le Page. The last two were probably the surgeons of Cossimbazar and Patna. He had also with him M. Lenoir, second of Patna, whose acquaintance with the language and the people was invaluable. Law seems to have been always able to recruit his sepoys, but he had no great opinion of them.
"In fact it may be said that the sepoy is a singularanimal, especially until he has had time to acquire aproper sense of discipline. As soon as he has received hisred jacket and his gun he thinks he is a different man. Helooks upon himself as a European, and having a very highestimation of this qualification, he thinks he has the right todespise all the country people, whom he treats as Kaffirsand wretched negroes, though he is often just as black as theyare. In every place I have been I have remarked that theinhabitants have less fear of the European soldier, who inhis disorderly behaviour sometimes shows an amount ofgenerosity which they would expect in vain from a sepoy."
Law has left the following description of Lucknow:—
"Lucknow, capital of the Subah[106] so called, is 160 milesnorth of Allahabad, on the other side of the Ganges, andabout 44 miles from that river. The country is beautifuland of great fertility, but what can one expect from the bestland without cultivation? It was particularly the fate ofthis province and of a large portion of Oudh to have beenexhausted by the wars of Mansur Ali Khan.[107] That princeat his death left the Treasury empty and a quantity ofdebts. Suja-ud-daula, his successor, thought he couldsatisfy his creditors, all of them officers of the army, bygiving them orders upon several of the large estates. Thismethod was too slow for these military gentlemen. In ashort time every officer had become the Farmer,[108] or rather theTyrant, of the villages abandoned to him. Forcible executionsquickly reimbursed him to an extent greater than his claim,but the country suffered. The ill-used inhabitants left it,and the land remained uncultivated. This might havebeen repaired. The good order established by Suja-ud-daulacommenced to bring the inhabitants back when anevil, against which human prudence was powerless, achievedtheir total destruction. For two whole years clouds oflocusts traversed the country regularly with the Monsoon,[109]and reduced the hopes of the cultivator to nothing. Whentwo days from Lucknow, we ourselves saw the ravages committedby this insect. It was perfect weather; suddenly wesaw the sky overcast; a darkness like that of a total eclipsespread itself abroad and lasted a good hour. In less than notime we saw the trees under which we were camped strippedof their leaves. The next day as we journeyed we saw thatthe same devastation had been produced for a distance of tenmiles. The grass on the roads and every green thing in thefields were eaten away down to the roots. This recurrentplague had driven away the inhabitants, even those who hadsurvived the exactions of the military. Towns and villageswere abandoned; the small number of people who remained—Iam speaking without exaggeration—only served toaugment the horror of this solitude. We saw nothing butspectres."The state of the people of Lucknow city, the residenceof the Nawab, was hardly better. The evil was perhaps lessevident owing to the variety of objects, but from what onecould see from time to time nature did not suffer less. Theenvirons of the palace were covered with poor sick peoplelying in the middle of the roads, so that it was impossiblefor the Nawab to go out without causing his elephant totread on the bodies of several of them, except when he hadthe patience to wait and have them cleared out of the way—anact which would not accord with Oriental ideas ofgrandeur. In spite of this there were few accidents. Theanimal used to guide its footsteps so as to show it wasmore friendly to human beings than men themselveswere."
At Lucknow Suja-ud-daula greeted him with a sympathetic interest, which Law quaintly likens to that shown by Dido for Aeneas, but money was not forthcoming, and Law soon found that Suja-ud-daula was not on sufficiently good terms with the Mogul's[110] Vizir[111] at Delhi to risk an attack on Bengal. On the 18th of October he returned to Allahabad, with the intention of going to Delhi to see what he could do with the Vizir, but as it might have been dangerous to disclose his object, he pretended he was going to march south to Bussy in the Deccan, and obtained a passport from the Maratha general, Holkar. This took some time, and it was not till March, 1758, that he started for Delhi. He reached Farukhabad without difficulty, and on the 21st entered the country of the Jats. On the evening of the 23rd a barber, who came into their camp, warned the French they would be attacked. The next day the Jats, to the number of 20,000, attacked them on the march. The fight lasted the whole day, and the French fired 6000 musket shots and 800 cannon. The cannon-balls were made of clay moulded round a pebble, and were found sufficiently effective in the level country.
Soon after they arrived at Delhi, only to find the Marathas masters of the situation and in actual possession of the person of the Shahzada, or Crown Prince.[112] The Prince was friendly, gave Law money, and eagerly welcomed the idea of attacking Bengal, but he was himself practically a prisoner. The Vizir, too, could do nothing, and would give no money. The Marathas amused him with promises, and tried to trap him into fighting their battles. No one seemed to know anything about what had happened in Bengal. He spoke to several of the chief men about the English.
"I felt sure that, after the Revolution in Bengal, theywould be the only subject of conversation in the capital. TheRevolution had made much noise, but it was ascribed entirelyto the Seths and to Rai Durlabh Ram. Clive's name waswell known. He was, they said, a great captain whom theSeths had brought from very far at a great expense, todeliver Bengal from the tyranny of Siraj-ud-daula, as SalabatJang had engaged M. Bussy to keep the Marathas inorder. Many of the principal persons even asked me whatcountry he came from. Others, mixing up all Europeanstogether, thought that I was a deputy from Clive. It wasuseless for me to say we were enemies, that it was theEnglish who had done everything in Bengal, that it wasthey who governed and not Jafar Ali Khan, who was onlyNawab in name. No one would believe me. In fact, howcould one persuade people who had never seen a race ofmen different from their own, that a body of two or threethousand Europeans at the most was able to dictate the lawin a country as large as Bengal?"
Law could do nothing at Delhi, and it was only by bribing the Maratha general that he obtained an escort through the Jat country to Agra. Most of his soldiers were glad to be off, but about 60 Europeans deserted with their arms to Delhi, where the Vizir offered them pay as high as 50 rupees a month. M. Jobard was nearly killed by some of them when he tried to persuade them to return to duty, but, a few months after, more than half rejoined Law.
From Agra, Law went to Chatrapur in Bundelkand, where apparently, though he does not say so, he was in the service of the Raja Indrapat. His stay lasted from the 10th of June, 1758, to February, 1759. In order to keep on good terms with the inhabitants, who were almost all Hindus, Law forbade his men to kill cattle or any of the sacred birds, or to borrow anything without his permission, and at the same time severely punished all disorderly behaviour. The people having never heard of Christians, thought the French must be a kind of Muhammadans, but they could not make out from what country they came. Seeing them drink a red wine of which they had a few bottles, they thought they were drinking blood, and were horrified, but the good behaviour of the men soon put them on friendly terms.