Rulers of India: Lord Clive

by G. B. Malleson

¹⁰ For the nature of Mansab, and the functions of the holder of a Mansab (or Mansabdar) the reader is referred to Blochmann's Ain-í-Akbarí. By the original regulations of Akbar, who founded the order, the Mansabdars ranked from the Dahbashi, often Commander-in-Chief, to the Doh Hazári, Commander of 10,000 horse, to the Mansabdars of 6000 downwards. Vide Ain-í-Akbarí (Blochmann's), p. 237 and onwards.

Clive had returned to Calcutta, May 24, absolute master of the situation. He had probed to the bottom the character of the Súbahdár, and had realized that so long as he himself should remain in India, and Mír Jafar on the masnad, the English need fear no attack. But, in the East, one man's life, especially life of a usurper, is never secure. In those days the risks he incurred were infinitely greater than they are now. Clive had noted the ill-disguised impatience of several of the powerful nobles, more especially that of Míran, the son, and of Mír Kásim, the son-in-law, of the Súbahdár. He had left, then, the greater part of his English soldiers at Kásimbázár, close to the native capital, to watch events, whilst he returned to Calcutta to trace there the plan of a fortress which would secure the English against attack. The fort so traced, received the name of its predecessor, built by Job Charnock in the reign of King William III, and called after him, Fort William.

Nearly one month later, June 20, there arrived from England despatches, penned after learning the recapture of Calcutta, but before any knowledge of the events which had followed that recapture, ordering a new constitution for the administering of the Company's possessions in Bengal. The text of the constitution, ridiculous under any circumstances, was utterly unadapted to the turn events had taken. It nominated ten men, not one of whom was competent for the task, to administer the affairs of Bengal. The name of Clive was not included amongst the ten names. It was not even mentioned. Fortunately for the Company, the ten men nominated had a clearer idea of their own fitness than had their honourable masters. With one consent, they represented the true situation to the Court of Directors, and then, with the same unanimity, requested Clive to accept the office of President, and to exercise its functions, until the pleasure of the Court should be known. Clive could not but accede to their request.

For, indeed, it was no time for weak administration and divided counsels. Again had the French attempted to recover the position in Southern India which Clive had wrested from them. Count Lally, one of the brilliant victors of Fontenoy, had been sent to Pondicherry with a considerable force, and the news had just arrived that he was marching on Tanjore, having recalled Bussy and his troops from the court of the Súbahdár of the Deccan. With the news there had come also a request that the Government of Bengal would return to the sister Presidency the troops lent to her by the latter in the hour of the former's need to recover Calcutta.

Clive felt all the urgency of the request; the possible danger of refusing to comply with it; the full gravity of the situation at Madras. He also was one of those who had been lent. If the troops were to return, it was he who should lead them back. But he felt strongly that his place, and their place also, was in Bengal. Especially was it so in the presence of the rumours, already circulating, of great successes achieved by Lally, and by the French fleet. Such rumours, followed by his departure, would certainly incite the nobles of Bengal and Bihár, with or without Mír Jafar, to strike for the independence which they felt, one and all, he had wrested from them.

Matters, indeed, in the provinces of Bengal and Bihár had come to bear a very threatening aspect. The treasury of Mír Jafar was exhausted by his payments; his nobles were disaffected; the moneyed classes bitterly hostile. Threatened on his northern frontier by a rebellious son of the King of Delhi and by the Nawáb-Wazír of Oudh, Mír Jafar was in the state of mind which compels men of his stamp to have recourse to desperate remedies. For a moment he thought seriously of calling the Maráthás to his assistance. Then the conviction forced itself upon him that the remedy would be worse than the disease, and he renounced the idea. At last, when the army of the rebel prince had penetrated within Bihár, and was approaching Patná, he resigned himself to the inevitable, and besought abjectly the assistance of Clive.

Clive had resolved to help him when affairs in Southern India reached a point which required his immediate attention. A letter from the Rájá of Vizianagram reached him, informing him that the effect of the recall by Lally from Aurangábád of the troops under Bussy had been to leave the Northern Sirkárs¹¹ without sufficient protection; that he and other Rájás had risen in revolt, and urgently demanded the despatch thither of some English troops, by whose aid they could expel the few Frenchmen left there. It was characteristic of Clive to seize the points of a difficult situation. Few men who had to meet on their front a dangerous invasion, would have dared to despatch, to a distant point, the troops he had raised to repel that invasion, remaining himself to meet it from resources he would improvise. But, without a moment's hesitation or a solitary misgiving, Clive recognized that the opportunity had come to him to complete the work he had begun, six years before, in Southern India; that a chance presented itself to transfer the great influence exercised by Bussy at the court of the Súbahdár of the Deccan to his own nation. Leaving to himself then the care of Bengal and Bihár he directed a trusted officer, Colonel Forde, to proceed (October 12) with 500 Europeans, 2000 sipáhís, and some guns to Vizagapatam, to unite there with the Rájá's troops, to take command; and to expel the French from the Northern Sirkárs: then, if it were possible, to assume at the court of the Súbahdár the influence which the French had till then exercised. It is only necessary here to say that Forde, who was one of the great Indian soldiers of the century, carried both points with skill and discretion. He beat the French in detail, and compelled them to yield their fortresses; and, when the Súbahdár marched to their aid, he succeeded, with rare tact, in inducing him to cede to the English the whole of the territories he had conquered, and to transfer the paramount influence at his court to the English. The victories of Forde laid the foundation of a predominance which, placed some forty years later on a definite basis by the great Marquess Wellesley, exists to the present day. It is not too much to assert that this splendid result was due to the unerring sagacity, the daring under difficult circumstances, of Robert Clive.

¹¹ The districts of Ganjám, Vizagapatam, Godávari, and Krishna.

Meanwhile the solicitations of Mír Jafar increased in importunity. Even the Great Mughal called upon Clive, as a Mansabdar, to assist him to repress the rebellion of his son. Clive did not refuse. As soon as his preparation had been completed, he set out, February, 1759, for Murshidábád with 450 Europeans and 2500 sipáhís, leaving the care of Calcutta to a few sick and invalids. He reached Murshidábád the 8th of March, and, accompanied by the Mír Jafar's army, entered Patná on the 8th of April. But the rumour of his march had been sufficient. Four days before the date mentioned the rebellious prince evacuated his positions before the city, and, eventually, sought refuge in Bundelkhand. Clive entered Patná in triumph; put down with a strong hand the disturbances in its vicinity; and then returned to Calcutta, in time enough to hear of the victorious course of Forde, although not of its more solid result.

Before he had quitted Patná, Mír Jafar had conferred upon him, as a personal jágír,¹² the Zamíndárí of the entire districts south of Calcutta then rented by the East India Company.