Whether true or not true, the lad of whom such a story could even have been told must have been something out of the common.
He was rather a tall English lad, silent, with a long nose and a pleasant smile. He was barely one-and-twenty when Dupleix took Madras, and for the first time he found himself a soldier. He returned to his writership, however, for a time, but such a profession was manifestly impossible to his temperament--a temperament admirably illustrated by the following story. He accused an officer of cheating at cards. A duel ensued, in which Clive, with first shot, missed; whereupon his adversary, holding his pistol to Clive's head, bade him beg his life. This he did instantly with perfect coolness, but when asked also to retract his accusation, replied as calmly: "Fire, and be damned to you! I said you cheated, and you did. I'll never pay you."
The adversary, struck dumb by his--no doubt--righteous stubbornness, thereupon lowered his weapon.
Such was the young man who at six-and-twenty, in the absence on leave of Major Lawrence, set off as a captain to the relief of Trichinopoly with six hundred men. He was completely outclassed both in numbers and pecuniary resources, and feeling himself to be so, he returned to Fort St David and boldly proposed a complete volte face. The French were thoroughly engaged aiding their ally at Trichinopoly. If he and his small force made a detour to Arcot, the capital, they might find it unprepared. They did; Clive marched in, took possession of the fort before the very eyes of one hundred thousand astonished spectators, and finding over £50,000 worth of goods in the treasury, gave them back to their owners, and issued orders that not a thing in the town was to be touched; the result of such unusual consideration being that, when he finally had to defend his capture, not a soul in the town raised a hand against the strange young sahib who seemed to have no fear, and certainly had no greed.
But young Clive had a Herculean task before him. With a mere handful of men--three hundred and twenty in all--he had to defend a ruinous, ill-constructed fort one mile in circumference--ditch choked, parapets too narrow for artillery--from the determined onslaught of ten thousand men. And he did so defend it. Despite failures due to inexperience, rebuffs due to rashness, despite hair's-breadth personal escapes, due to reckless, almost criminal courage, he won through to the end. There is something impish and boyish about the record of these six weeks' siege. How, more out of sheer bravado than anything else, the garrison crowned a ruined tower on the ramparts with earth, hoisted thereto an enormous old seventy-two-pounder cannon which had belonged to Aurungzebe! How they turned it on the palace which rose high above the intervening houses, and letting drive with thirty-two pounds of their best powder, sent the ball right through the palace, greatly to the alarm of the enemy's staff, which was quartered there! How once a day they fired off the old cannon, until on the fourth day it burst and nearly killed the gunners!
All this, and the thrilling story of the mason who--luckily for the garrison--knew of the secret aqueduct constructed so as to drain the fort of water, and stopped it up ere it could be used, would make a fine chapter for a boy's book of adventure. Here it is enough to record that on the 14th November, after a desperate and futile assault, the enemy--French allies and all--withdrew, and Clive found himself free to follow on their heels to Vellore, where he succeeded in giving those of them who were sufficiently brave to stand, a most satisfactory beating; in consequence of which numbers of the beaten sepoys, with the quick Oriental eye for vitality, deserted their colours. Clive enlisted six hundred of the best armed, and returned to Madras, where he was received with acclaim, for victory was then a new sensation to the Anglo-Indian. A month or two afterwards, however, he was out again on the war-path, giving the French-supported army of Chanda-Sâhib a good drubbing at Cauvery-pak. Whilst out, he received an urgent summons to go back to the Presidency town. Major Lawrence was returning from leave, and would resume command.
Despite the urgency, he found time, nevertheless, on his way back to go round by a certain town which Dupleix, in the first pride of victory, had founded under the name of Dupleix-Fattehabad, to commemorate--what surely had been better forgotten--his terrible act of treachery towards Nâsir-Jung in the matter of the ratified but delayed treaty which cost the latter his life. And here, with the same reckless hardihood which had characterised the whole campaign, he paused--though in the midst of an enemy's country--to batter to pieces the pretentious flamboyant column on which Dupleix had recorded his conquest in French, Persian, Mahratti, Hindi.
One can picture the scene, and one's heart warms to the English boy who watched with glee the hacking and hewing, while the natives stood by, their sympathy going forth inevitably to the strong young arm.
Three days afterwards Clive gave up his command, and here his first campaign ends. It was very straightforward, very clear; but what followed was complicated--very!
Trichinopoly was still besieged: the French backing Chanda-Sâhib, who claimed it as Nawâb of the Carnatic; the English backing Mahomed-Ali, who held it as Nawâb of Arcot. To the support of the latter Major Lawrence led his mercenaries, and for a time the siege was raised. By this time, however, the Directors in London were becoming restive over hostilities which interfered with the commerce of the Company. In order to bring the struggle for supremacy to a head, Clive proposed a division of forces, south and north. Whether he was actuated in making this bold proposal by any hope of getting a command over the heads of his seniors or not, certain it is that after agreeing to the proposal, Major Lawrence found it impossible to keep to seniority. The natives flatly refused to go north unless Clive led them.