From this, Clive sailed to take up command at Madras, where he was met by disastrous news from Calcutta.
Surâj-ud-daula, Nawâb of Bengal, had seized on it, suffocated a hundred and twenty-three of its inhabitants--many of them men in the best positions--in the Black Hole, and had returned to Murshidabad, whence he had issued orders for the destruction and confiscation of all English property in his dominions. Such was the ineptitude of England at that time in India, that two whole months elapsed ere Clive, in a fever of impatience, was allowed to start for retaliation.
While we can imagine him fretting and fuming, we shall have time for a glance back to see who Surâj-ud-daula was, and what was the cause of his action.
Ali-Verdi-Khân, who, it will be remembered, had ceded Orissa to the Mahrattas, had also snatched the Nawâbship from his master's son; a graceless youth, it must be admitted, while Ali-Verdi-Khân himself was, despite many horrid acts, a fairly just ruler. During his lifetime the English had no complaint; but at his death he committed a gross injustice on every soul in his dominions by appointing as his heir his grandson Surâj-ud-daula, a perfectly infamous young man. No one, apparently, had a good word to say for him, except those amongst whom he spent a vicious, depraved life.
His aunt, Ghasîta Begum, at any rate, nourished no illusions concerning him, and being an ambitious woman, anxious to preserve her great fortune for future occasions of conspiracy, took immediate precautions while Ali-Verdi lay dying against any confiscation of her treasures. She employed one Kishen-dâs, a pretended pilgrim to Juggernath, to carry them off in boats down the Ganges. Once on the river, Kishen steered, not for the sea, but for Calcutta. It is difficult to say whether the Governor and Council knew what they were harbouring, but the fact remains that the treasures sought and found British protection, one Omichand, a Hindu merchant, giving Kishen-dâs hospitality.
Surâj-ud-daula took the business very badly. He made a scene at his grandfather's death-bed, and accused the English of siding with the faction that was against his succession. Yet, when that succession was an accomplished fact, and the English agent appeared at his audience to apologise in set terms for a so-called mistake in turning away, as an impostor, from Calcutta, a spy who asserted he bore a letter from Surâj-ud-daula, the latter kept a calm countenance and said negligently that he had forgotten the incident. And yet it was no slight one; for there is little doubt that the Council were not quite satisfied with its own action.
The Nawâb, however, was biding his time, and he soon found it. War was on the point of breaking out once more in Europe between France and England, and orders were, in consequence, sent out by the Directors of the Company to overhaul fortifications. Repairs were at once commenced. This was Surâj-ud-daula's opportunity. He first sent a haughty enquiry as to why, without leave, the English were building a new wall, and, pretending that the reply given was inadequate, followed up his first communication by marching to Kossimbazaar with his army, sending for Mr Watts the Governor, and with threats forcing him to sign an engagement to destroy, within fifteen days, all new works which had been begun at Calcutta, deliver up all the Nawâb's subjects he might call for, and refund any sums the Nawâb might have lost by passports of trade having been illegally granted.
Now, in dealing with these Indian disputes it is notoriously difficult to read through the written lines of the formulated plaint and counter-plaint, and reach the palimpsest below; that palimpsest of fine, complicated motive which invariably underlies the simplest plea, which makes even a petty debt case in India like an English A. B. C. scrawled over a Babylonian brick, covered closely with fly-foot stipplings. But here the stipulation regarding the Nawâb's subjects gives a clear clue. Whether Surâj-ud-daula had any just cause of complaint or not, his real grievance was the loss of his aunt's treasure.
This abject yielding of the English was fatal. Had any one of the type of Clive or John Nicholson been on the spot, events might have been very different; as it was, disaster and destruction followed. Surâj-ud-daula marched on Calcutta, receiving by the way the gift of two hundred barrels of gunpowder from our treaty-bound friends the French at Chandanagore! Reading the record of these few fateful days in June 1756 one knows not whether to laugh or to cry, to let pity or righteous wrath prevail, as the history of silly delay and still sillier activities unfolds itself. The feverish digging of absolutely untenable trenches, the three weeks' delay without any preparation whatever while letters were passing to and fro, the neglect to apply for reinforcements to other presidencies, the imprisonment of Omichand, the miserable fracas in his house, in which a Brahmin peon, mad with rage and professing fear lest high-caste women should be violated, rushed into his master's harem, killed a round dozen of innocent ladies, and then stabbed himself, reminds one of nothing but the fateful days of May a hundred years after, when Englishmen stood by and watched the Mutiny grow from a chance by-blow to a giant unrestrained. Calcutta was taken. Mr Drake, the governor, and Captain Minchin, the commandant, ran away. The ships weighed anchor and sailed out of gunshot, leaving one hundred and ninety deserted men in the fort. But if cowardice showed unabashed, courage was not lacking, and among those who showed it Mr Holwell deserves honourable mention. A civilian himself, he locked the gates of the fort to prevent further desertion, and final resistance being hopeless, did his best by diplomacy to avert absolute destruction. A hard task, for he lost twenty-five of his miserable garrison in one assault, and he lost the aid of more by drunkenness: for the soldiers got at the arrack store.
Still, he might have succeeded but for the fact that the Nawâb lost his temper on finding that the treasury only contained £5,000! And he had imagined the English rich beyond dreams. He jumped to the conclusion that there must be treasure concealed, and when none was forthcoming, seems to have cared nothing for the personal safety he had guaranteed to Mr Holwell and his following of a hundred and forty men, women, and children.