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HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY. 77

of Bombay. In the meantime, two commissioners, sent by
the late President to the Mogul at Viziapoor, had succeeded
in negotiating a peace, and, on the 4th of April, 1690, Mr.
Vaux received the Imperial firman, by which Mr. Harris was
released, the island of Bombay evacuated by the Seedee's
army on the 8th of June, on payment of a fine of .£15,000,
and a reconciliation effected between the Company and
Aurungzebe. By the terms of this firman, which may be
perused in Bruce's Annals, the Company were admitted to their
former trading privileges, though under conditions which can
only be described as humiliating. President Harris afterwards
said, writes Bruce in his " Annals," that " the real cause
why the Emperor granted peace, was that he might continue
to avail himself of the protection afforded to his pilgrim ships
by the Bombay Marine."
Seedee Yakoob left behind him at Bombay, says Hamilton, a
pestilence " which in four months destroyed more men than the
war had done." According to this author, " of seven or eight
hundred Europeans not above sixty were left by the sword and
plague." To add to the embarrassments of the Presidency,
intelligence was received of six piratical vessels, of considerable
force, under English colours, having made their appearance in
the Indian Seas. These vessels, which had been fitted out in
the West Indies, took shelter in the ports of Aden, Muscat, and
Madagascar, and one, carrying twenty-two guns, captured a
valuable trading ship belonging to Madras. This seriously
compromised the Company with the Mogul Government, who
held them answerable for all depredations committed by their
countrymen.
In 1689 war was declared between this country and France,
and, in the following February, a French fleet of six sail left for
the Indian Seas. On the outward passage it fell in, at Johanna,
with the Company's ship ' Herbert,' which, after a most brave
defence, blew up, when the majority of the crew ])erished. It
showed no ordinary gallantry, bordering on temerity, for a single
ship, armed though the Company's vessels were, to engage a
powerful squadron of regular ships of war ; such conduct must
ever command the admiration of Englishmen, and the Naval
history of the Company affords many other instances of a
like disregard of odds where the honour of the flag was
concerned.
Two years after the capture of the ' Herbert,' on the 11th of
October, 1692, another of the Company's ships, the 'Elizabeth,'
when within fifty leagues of Bombay, made a gaUant and
protracted, though unhappily unsuccessful, resistance against
a French squadron, consisting of one ship of sixty-six guns,
one of sixty, one of forty, and one of twenty gims ; the Company
were also so unfortunate as to lose a third ship, the 'Berkley