A second scheme had revolved around supporting Siraj’s cousin, Shaukat Jung of Purnea, ‘a subahdar to the taste of Jagat Seth and the chief Moors and Rajas’, but the latter had proved even less dependable than Siraj.56 He went into battle against his psychotic cousin in such a cloud of opium that he was ‘incapable of holding up his head’ or to do more ‘than listen to the songs of his women … so alighted from his elephant … and was totally out of his senses when a musquet-ball, lodging into his forehead, made him return his soul to its maker’.
