He made a wound in one of his calves and concealed the 426-carat diamond in it covered with a

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He made a wound in one of his calves and concealed the 426-carat diamond in it, covered with a bandage - no easy task, considering that the stone was bigger than a walnut. Having successfully made away with it, he reached the coast, where he foolishly offered a share in his prize to one of the seemingly ubiquitous English sea captains who inhabited every Indian port, waiting to be offered illicit diamonds. The slave wanted the captain to give him passage out of the country, which he duly did - and then promptly threw him overboard.The diamond later came to the attention of Thomas Pitt, then governor of Madras, who purchased it for about £20,000, confidently expecting to make a profit of £430,000 on his return to England But it was not to be. The diamond was so expensive that Pitt could find no one in Europe willing to buy it, even after it had been cut down from 426 carats to 140. To make matters worse for Pitt, his wife had not only begun to exhibit spendthrift tendencies but had also developed a scandalous association with a notorious roué.It was eight years before Pitt finally found a buyer - Louis XIV, for a price of £135,000 - and even then he received only £40,000 up front.

Pitt was forced to spend the last nine years of his life trying to retrieve the balance while trying to stop his family squandering the rest. "What hellish planet is it that influences you all?" he wrote to his son. "Did ever mother, brother and sisters study one another's ruin and destruction more than my unfortunate and cursed family have done?"Today, of course, it is not so much individual diamonds but the diamond industry that curses the lives of millions. The illicit trade in diamonds funds the long-running war in Angola, where Jonas Savimbi's Unita guerrillas are said to have traded around £2bn-worth of stones to pay for supplies in the last decade. Diamonds are also at the heart of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, is alleged to have committed 11,000 troops in exchange for lucrative mining concessions.And in Sierra Leone, there is no doubt what lies at the root of the ongoing bloody conflict - that is to say, control of the extensive diamond-producing areas in the east of the country. A recent UN report blamed the diamond trade in Sierra Leone for "destabilising the country for the better part of three decades, stealing its patrimony and robbing an entire generation of children".Brutality and greed So the story continues....

Ethiopia's forces advanced deep into south-western Eritrea yesterday, targeting the strategic town of Barentu on the supply route between the western front and the capital Asmara. Ethiopia's forces advanced deep into south-western Eritrea yesterday, targeting the strategic town of Barentu on the supply route between the western front and the capital Asmara. Western journalists saw evidence of the attack when they visited a deserted town strewn with corpses and a camp holding almost 500 prisoners of war.The journalists flew over lines of empty Eritrean trenches, which had been overrun within 24 hours of the surprise offensive launched by Ethiopia early last Friday morning. The fighting restarted two days after peace talks collapsed.Britain and the US have led international condemnation of the war, which is bringing the spectre of starvation to 9 million people on the border, and have called for an arms embargo on both sides. A divided UN Security Council went into urgent session in New York last night to consider a blanket arms embargo. A vote on the plan was expected overnight or this morning, but strong opposition is being raised by Russia.Yesterday the Ethiopian military showed a group of journalists 470 Eritrean PoWs held in a dusty makeshift camp.