Clive told him in reply that his father was a
usurper and that his army was a rabble, and that he would do well to
think twice before he sent such poltroons into a breach defended by
English soldiers.
22. "Rajah Sahib determined to storm the fort. The day was well suited
to a bold military enterprise. It was the great Mohammedan festival
which is sacred to the memory of Hosein the son of Ali. The history of
Islam contains nothing more touching than the event which gave rise to
that solemnity. The mournful legend relates how the chief of the
Fatimites, when all his brave followers had perished round him, drank
his last draught of water and uttered his latest prayer; how the
assassins carried his head in triumph, smote the lifeless lips with
his staff, and how a few old men recollected with tears that they had
seen those lips pressed to the lips of the prophet of God.
23. "After the lapse of near twelve centuries, the recurrence of this
solemn season excites the fiercest and saddest emotions in the bosoms
of the devout Moslems of India. They work themselves up to such
agonies of rage and lamentation that some, it is said, have given up
the ghost from the mere effect of mental excitement. They believe that
whoever, during this festival, falls in arms against the infidels,
atones by his death for all the sins of life, and passes at once to
the Garden of the Houris.
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