Now we must hark back in order to understand the meaning of the struggle which we have just witnessed. The East India Company, in whose service Clive had enlisted, was established as far back as the days of Queen Elizabeth. It was founded for trade, and it attended closely to business. When Clive arrived in India its territory consisted of a few square miles of land, for which rent was paid to native rajas. Its troops were scarcely sufficient to man the ill-constructed forts which had been erected at Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, and a few other places to protect the warehouses. Most of the soldiers in the service of the Company were natives, and were neither furnished with European weapons nor disciplined according to European methods. The white servants of the Company were simply traders, whose business it was to make advances to manufacturers, ship cargoes, and in other ways push the business interests of their employers. Most of the younger clerks, of whom Clive was one, were miserably paid, while the older ones enriched themselves by trading on their own account.
A French East India Company had also been founded, but at the outset it met with much less success than the English Company. At the close of the seventeenth century it possessed little more than the small town of Pondicherry, which still remains in French hands. At this time the Moguls, the descendants of the Mohammedan conquerors of Northern India, dominated the land; but a few years later their power fell to pieces, and India was splintered into little independent kingdoms. The land was given over to civil war; every nawab, or governor, quarrelled and fought with his neighbours. The feebleness of the native rulers and the disturbed state of the country positively invited the European traders, both English and French, to conquest. Hitherto they had been merely competitors for commerce; soon they were to become rivals for dominion.
Such was the condition of affairs when Clive sailed for India. He was very homesick and depressed during the long voyage round the Cape, and when he arrived he had spent all his money and contracted some debts. He was stationed at Fort George, Madras, where he was wretchedly lodged and badly paid, and engaged in duties ill-suited to his daring, ardent nature. On more than one occasion he got into scrapes and received reprimands. Twice he attempted suicide, and twice the pistol which he snapped at his own head failed to go off. “It appears I am destined for something,” he said, and, as you already know, his prophecy proved true. In the year of his arrival in India (1744) war was declared by Britain against France, and the struggle in Europe led to the long fight for supremacy in India.
Dupleix, the French Governor of Pondicherry, was a man of great ambition, and he now conceived the idea of founding a great French empire in India. Himself an able soldier, he made two most important discoveries. First, he observed that the native armies could not stand against men disciplined in the European fashion; and, secondly, he perceived that the natives could be brought under European discipline by European officers. Forthwith he began to enlist Sepoys, or native soldiers, and to arm and discipline them after the French manner. With these Sepoys he intended to intervene in the disputes of the native rulers, and by taking first this side, and then that, gradually win India for France.
A French expedition appeared before Madras, captured Fort George, and seized the contents of the warehouses as prize of war. Some of the servants of the Company, including Clive, were paraded through the streets of Pondicherry in triumphal procession, and treated with great indignity. Clive, in the disguise of a Mohammedan, managed to escape from the town by night and make his way to Fort St. David, a small British settlement one hundred miles south of Madras. Here he begged an ensign’s commission in the service of the Company, and at twenty-one entered upon his military career.
He took part in Admiral Boscawen’s unsuccessful siege of Pondicherry, where he distinguished himself, and in his twenty-fifth year was promoted to be a captain. Shortly after the failure at Pondicherry peace was proclaimed. Nevertheless, there was but a short cessation of hostilities in India; for though British and French were supposed to have sheathed the sword, a great struggle for power was about to begin both in India and in America. Before long there was open war, which at first went greatly in favour of France.
Dupleix, continuing his rapid and brilliant career, had intervened in the affairs of the two great native states of Hyderabad and the Carnatic, and had managed to get his own candidates placed on the thrones of both these states. Thus he was practically master of South India. Civil war, however, continued in the Carnatic, where the French nominee was besieging Trichinopoly, the last stronghold of his rival. Trichinopoly was about to fall, and its fall would mean the complete supremacy of the French in India. At the critical moment Clive persuaded the Governor of Madras to entrust him with a small force to attack Arcot, the capital of the nawab whom Dupleix was supporting. By doing so, he hoped to draw off the nawab’s forces from the siege of Trichinopoly. You already know how splendidly he defended Arcot, and how he forced the enemy to raise the siege. By 1753 he had completely undone the work of Dupleix.
Worn out by anxiety and fatigue, he now returned to England. He had gone out ten years before, a friendless, wayward boy; he now returned, at the age of twenty-eight, to find himself greeted as one of Britain’s most famous soldiers. Naturally, his father and mother and the other members of his family were overjoyed to learn that naughty, idle Bobby had developed into a famous man, the theme of all tongues, honoured and praised by the greatest in the land. The East India Company thanked him for his services in the warmest terms, and offered him a sword set with diamonds. This he refused to accept unless a similar one was given to his friend and commander Lawrence. With his prize-money Clive helped to pay off some of his father’s debts, and to redeem the family estate.
In 1755 Clive returned to India. He had only just arrived when terrible news reached him. Suraj-ud-Dowlah, the Nawab of Bengal, a fiend in human shape, whose amusement as a child was to torture beasts and birds, and his pastime as a man to watch the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, had attacked the British settlement at Calcutta, and had seized one hundred and forty-six Europeans. These he thrust into a chamber known as the “Black Hole.” It was eighteen feet by fourteen, and its cubical content was twenty feet square. When ordered to enter the cell the prisoners imagined that the soldiers were joking, and as the nawab had promised them their lives they laughed aloud at the absurdity of the idea that they could possibly exist during the stifling heat of a Bengal June night in such a confined space. They discovered their error when they were driven in at the point of the sword. The windows were small and barred, and soon the air was poisonous. The horrors that followed are almost too terrible to recount. The poor creatures cried for mercy, they strove to break in the door, they offered large bribes to their jailers; but all to no purpose. Nothing could be done without the nawab’s orders, and he was asleep and could not be awaked. Many went mad; they trampled each other down, and fought like wild beasts for places at the windows. The murderers outside mocked at their agonies, holding lights to the bars, and shouting with laughter as they beheld the struggles of their victims. When day broke and the doors were opened only twenty-three ghastly figures staggered out into the sunlight. A hundred and twenty-three corpses were flung promiscuously into a pit dug for the purpose.
The rage and anger of the British in India can well be imagined. Clive hastened to Bengal to avenge the awful outrage. He had nine hundred Europeans and fifteen hundred Sepoys with which to oppose Suraj-ud-Dowlah’s huge army. After a short, sharp fight the enemy fled in confusion, leaving baggage, guns, and cattle in the hands of the victors. This battle of Plassey, fought on June 23, 1757, secured for the British the province of Bengal, the richest and most populous province of India.