 Siraj ud-Daulah caught the Company unprepared and won a decisive victory.A trading post had been established in the area of Calcutta at the end of the seventeenth century by the East India Company, who purchased the three small villages that would later form the base of the city, and began construction of Fort William to house a garrison.In 1717 they had been granted immunity from taxation throughout Bengal by the Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar.