Rulers of India: Lord Clive

by G. B. Malleson

Clive, meanwhile, had been marching on Vendalúr. He had made some way thither when scouts reached him with the news that the birds had flown, and in different directions. To gain further information he continued his march and reached Vendalúr. After staying there five hours certain information reached him that he would find the enemy at Kanchípuram. Thither he proceeded, and there he arrived at four o'clock on the morning of the 23rd, having made a forced march, with a rest of five hours, of forty-five miles. It was then nine o'clock in the morning, and he resolved to rest for the day.

But, after his men had slept a few hours, the anxiety of Clive regarding Arcot impelled him to break their slumbers, and order them forward. They set out accordingly about one o'clock, and about sunset came in sight of Káveripák, but not of the French hidden in front of it. The French leader, in fact, had laid his plans with the greatest skill. A thick mango-grove, covered along two sides by a ditch and bank, forming almost a redoubt, roughly fortified along the faces by which the English must advance, covered the ground about 250 yards to the left of the road looking eastwards. There the French had placed, concealed from view, their battery of nine guns and a portion of their best men. About a hundred yards to the right of the road, also looking eastwards, was a dry watercourse, along the bed of which troops could march, sheltered, to a great extent, from hostile fire. In this were massed the rest of the infantry, native and European. The cavalry was in the rear, hidden by the grove, ready to be launched on the enemy when they should reach the ground between the watercourse and the grove. The men were on the alert, expecting Clive.

The space at my disposal will not permit me to give the details of the remarkable battle² which followed. It must suffice to say that no battle that was ever fought brought into greater prominence the character of its commander. In the fight before Káveripák we see Clive at his best. He had marched straight into the trap, and, humanly speaking, was lost. It was his cool courage, his calmness in danger, his clearness of mind in circumstances of extraordinary difficulty, his wonderful accuracy of vision, the power he possessed of taking in every point of a position, and of at once utilizing his knowledge, that saved him. He was, I repeat, lost. He had entered the trap, and its doors were fast closing upon him. Bravely did his men fight to extricate him from the danger. Their efforts were unavailing. Soon it came about that the necessity to retreat entered almost every mind but his own. Even the great historian of the period, Mr. Orme, wrote that 'prudence counselled retreat.' But to the word prudence Clive applied a different meaning. To him prudence was boldness. What was to become of the British prestige, of the British position in Southern India, if he, without cavalry, were to abandon the field to an enemy largely provided with that arm, and who would be urged to extraordinary energy by the fact that the unconquered hero of Arcot had fled before them?

² The reader who would care to read such a detailed account will find it in the writer's Decisive Battles of India, ch. ii.

No: he would think only of conquering; and he conquered. After four hours of fighting, all to his disadvantage, he resolved to act, in petto, on the principle he had put into action when he first seized Arcot. He would carry the war into the enemy's position. By a very daring experiment he discovered that the rear of the wooded redoubt occupied by the French had been left unguarded. With what men were available he stormed it; took the enemy by surprise, the darkness wonderfully helping him; and threw them into a panic. Of this panic he promptly took advantage; forced the Frenchmen to surrender; then occupied their strong position, and halted, waiting for the day. With the early morn he pushed on and occupied Káveripák. The enemy had disappeared. The corpses of fifty Frenchmen and the bodies of 300 wounded showed how fierce had been the fight. He had, too, many prisoners. His own losses were heavy: forty English and thirty sipáhís. But he had saved Southern India. He had completely baffled the cunningly devised scheme of Dupleix.

The consequences of the battle were immediately apparent. Northern Arcot having been freed from enemies, Clive returned to Fort St. David, reached that place the 11th of March, halted there for three days, and was about to march to strike a blow at the other extremity, Trichinopoli, when there arrived from England his old and venerated chief, Stringer Lawrence. The latter naturally took command, and two days later the force Clive had raised, and of which he was now second in command, started with a convoy for Trichinopoli. On the 26th it was met eighteen miles from that fortress by an officer sent thence to inform Lawrence that the French had despatched a force to intercept him at Koiládí, close to and commanding his line of advance. By great daring, Lawrence made his way until he had passed beyond the reach of the guns of the badly-commanded enemy and the fort, and before daybreak of the following morning was joined by a small detachment of the garrison: another, of greater force, met him a little later. He had, in fact, practically effected a junction with the beleaguered force at the outpost of Elmiseram when he learned that the French were marching against him. They contented themselves, however, with a fierce cannonade: for, as Clive advanced to cover the movement of the rest of the force, they drew back, and Lawrence, with his troops, and the convoy he was escorting, entered Trichinopoli. The French commander was so impressed by this feat of arms, which gave the defenders, now assisted by Morári Ráo and the Dalwai of Mysore, a strength quite equal to his own, that he fell back into the island of Seringham. There he was faced on one side by Lawrence. To cut off his communications with the country on the further side of the river Kolrun, Lawrence despatched Clive³ with 400 English and some 700 sipáhís, accompanied by some Maráthá and Tanjore cavalry, to occupy the village of Samiáveram, a village commanding with three others the exit from the island on the only practicable route. Clive set out on the 7th of April, occupied Samiáveram the same day, and, two days later, made his position stronger by storming and occupying the pagoda of Mansurpet, and the mud fort of Lalgudi. There still remained Paichanda. The occupation of this would complete the investment of the island on that side.

³ It is a striking testimony to the prestige Clive had already acquired with the native princes that when Muhammad Alí, the Dalwai, and Morári Ráo were consulted by Lawrence as to co-operating in the expedition, they consented only on the condition that Clive should command.

Meanwhile Dupleix, thoroughly disgusted with Law had despatched M. d'Auteuil with a small force to take command in his place. Whilst Clive was engaged in occupying the two places he had stormed, and was preparing to attack the third, d'Auteuil was approaching the town of Utátur, fifteen miles beyond Samiáveram, the headquarters of Clive. He arrived there on the 13th of April, and although his force—120 Frenchmen, 500 sipáhís, and four field-pieces—was far inferior to that of Clive, he resolved to make a flank-march to the river and open communications with Law. He sent messengers to warn that officer of his intention, and to beg him to despatch troops to meet him. But Clive captured one of these messengers, and resolved to foil his plans.

D'Auteuil had set out on the morning of the 14th, but had not proceeded far when he noticed the English force barring the way, and returned promptly to Utátur. Clive then fell back on Samiáveram.

There was a strongly fortified pagoda, named Paichanda, on the north bank of the Kolrun, forming the principal gateway into the island of Seringham, which Clive had intended to take, but which, owing to the movements of d'Auteuil, he had not yet attempted. On receiving the message from d'Auteuil of which I have spoken, Law had resolved to debouch by this gateway, and fall on Clive whilst he should be engaged with d'Auteuil. But, when the time for action came, unable to brace himself to an effort which might have succeeded, but which possessed some element of danger, he despatched only eighty Europeans, of whom one-half were English deserters, and 700 sipáhís, to march by the portal named, advance in the dark of the night to Samiáveram, and seize that place whilst Clive should be occupied elsewhere. The knowledge of English possessed by the deserters would, he thought, greatly facilitate the task.