The minister afterwards declared that a strong
detachment of troops had been placed outside the gate through which
the Begum ultimately forced her way, as well as at the other passages
leading to the palace and baraduree; and Captain Shakespear, on his
way to the new Sovereign, ascertained that guards had actually been
posted outside all the other gates leading to the palace and
baraduree. From this, the supineness and seeming apathy of many of
the palace guards and servants, and the perversion of the orders sent
by him before and during the tumult, the minister concluded that
there must have been many about him interested in promoting the
enterprise of the Begum; and that the approach to the gate through
which she forced her way must have been purposely left unguarded.
There is now little doubt, that from the time that it became known,
that the contest was between Moonna Jan and Nuseer-od Dowlah, a
person but little known except as a prudent and parsimonious old man,
a large portion not only of the civil and military establishments,
but of the population of the city, felt anxious for the success of
the Begum's enterprise; for both had, under the harsh treatment of
the last two sovereigns, become objects of sympathy.
A good many of the members of the royal family, who were brought up
from childhood with the deceased King, Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, and near
his person to the last, declare that Moonna Jan was his son; but that
the King was ashamed and afraid to acknowledge him after he had so
frequently and so formally declared to the British Government that he
was not his son, and that he had ceased to cohabit with the boy's
mother for two years before his birth.
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