The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan

by H. G. Keene

Having made these arrangements he proceeded to collect revenue and establish himself in Bihar. He was at this time a tall, portly man, forty years old, or thereabout, with the constitutional character of his race, and some peculiarities of his own. Like his ancestors, he was brave, patient, dignified, and merciful; but all contemporary accounts support the view suggested by his whole history, and debit him with defects which more than balanced these great virtues. His courage was rather of the nature of fortitude than of that enterprising boldness which was absolutely necessary in his situation. His clemency did great harm when it led him to forgive and ignore all that was done to him, and to lend his ear and his hand to any person of stronger will who was nearest to him at the moment. His patience was of a kind which ere long degenerated into a simple compromise with fortune, in which he surrendered lofty hopes for the future in exchange for immediate gratifications of sense. In a word, writers unacquainted with English history have combined to produce a picture which bears a strong likeness, both in features and position, to that of Charles the Second of Britain, after the death of his father.

The Eastern Subahs were at this time held by Clive's nominee, Mir Jafar Khan, known in English histories as Meer Jaffier, and the Deputy in Bihar was a Hindu man of business, named Raja Ramnarayan. This official, having sent to Murshidabad and Calcutta for assistance, attempted to resist the proceedings of his sovereign; but the Imperial army defeated him with considerable loss, and the Hindu official, wounded in body and alarmed in mind, retired into the shelter of Patna, which the Moghuls did not, at that time, think fit to attack.

Meantime, the army of the Nawab having been joined by a small British contingent, marched to meet the Emperor, who was worsted in an engagement that occurred on the 15th of February, 1760. On this the Emperor adopted the bold plan of a flank march, by which he should cut between the Bengal troops and their capital, Murshidabad, and possess himself of that town in the absence of its defenders. But before he could reach Murshidabad, he was again overtaken and repulsed by the activity of the English (7th April), and, being by this time joined by a small body of French under a distinguished officer, he resolved to remain in Bihar and set about the siege of Patna.

These French were a party of about one hundred officers and men who had refused to join in the capitulation of Chandarnagar three years before, and had since been wandering about the country persecuted by their relentless victor Clive. Their leader was the Chevalier Law, a relation of the celebrated speculator of the Regency; and he now hastened to lay at the feet of the Royal adventurer the skill and enterprise of his followers and himself. His ambition was high and bold, perhaps more so than his previous display of abilities might well warrant. But he soon saw enough of the weakness of the Emperor, of the treachery and low motives of the Moghul nobles, to contract the hopes his self-confidence had fostered. To the historian Gholam Hossain Khan he said:

"As far as I can see, there is nothing that you could call government between Patna and Dehli. If men in the position of Shujaa-ud-daulah would loyally join me, I could not only beat off the English, but would undertake the administration of the Empire."

The very first step in this ambitious programme was never to be taken. Whilst the Emperor with his new adherents (and a hundred Frenchmen under even such a leader as Law were as strong as a reinforcement of many thousand native troops under a faithless Moghul)whilst these strangely matched associates were beleaguering Patna, Captain Knox, at the head of a small body of infantry, of which only 200 men were European, ran across the 300 miles between Murshidabad and Patna in the space of thirteen days, and fell upon the Imperial army, whom he utterly routed and drove southward upon Gaya. The Imperial army was now commanded by Kamgar Khan; for Mohammad Kuli had returned to Allahabad, and been murdered by his unscrupulous cousin Shujaa, who seized upon the province and fort. The Emperor, as is evident from his retreating southward, still hoped to raise the country in his favour, and his hopes were so far justified that he was joined by another Moghul officer, named Khadim Hossain. Thus reinforced, he again advanced on Patna opposed by Knox, who in his turn had been joined by a Hindu Raja named Shatab Rai. Another defeat was the result, and the baffled sovereign at length evacuated the country, and fled northward, pursued by the whole united forces of the British and the Bengal Nawab. The son of the latter, however, being killed in a thunderstorm in July, the allied armies retired to cantonments at Patna, and the pertinacious Imperialists once more posted themselves between that place and the capital, at their old station of Gaya.

1761. Early next year, therefore, the Anglo-Bengali troops once more took the field, and encountering the Imperialists at Suan, near the city of Bihar, gave them a fresh overthrow, in which Law was taken prisoner, fighting to the last, and refusing to surrender his sword, which he was accordingly permitted to retain.

Next morning the British commander paid his respects to the Emperor, who was now quite weary of the hopeless struggle he had been maintaining for nearly two years, and who willingly departed towards Hindustan. He had by this time heard of the battle of Panipat, and of the plans formed by the Abdali for the restoration of the empire; and there is reason to believe that, but for the jealousy of Mir Kasim, whom a late revolution (brought about by the English) had placed in the room of Mir Jafar, the Emperor would have been at once reinstated at Dehli under British protection. Before he went he created Mir Kasim Subahdar; and the fiscal administration also vested in him, the English having so determined. The Emperor was to have an annual tribute of £240,000.

1762. As affairs turned out there was much to be done and suffered by the British before they had another opportunity of interfering in the affairs of Hindustan; and a strange series of vicissitudes impended upon the Emperor before he was to meet them in the palace of his fathers. On his way to the northwest he fell into the hands of the ambitious Nawab Vazir of Audh, who had received the Abdali's orders to render the Emperor all assistance, and who carried out the letter of these instructions by retaining him for some two years in an honourable confinement, surrounded by the empty signs of sovereignty, sometimes at Benares, sometimes at Allahabad, and sometimes at Lucknow.

1763. In the meanwhile the unscrupulous heroes who were founding the British Government of India had thought proper to quarrel with their new instrument Mir Kasim, whom they had so lately raised to the Masnad of Bengal. This change in their councils had been caused by an insubordinate letter addressed to the Court of Directors by Clive's party, which had led to their dismissal from employ. The opposition then raised to power consisted of all the more corrupt members of the service; and the immediate cause of their rupture with Mir Kasim was about the monopoly they desired to have of the local trade for their own private advantage. They were represented at that Nawab's Court by Mr. Ellis, the most violent of their body; and the consequence of his proceedings was, in no long time, seen in the murder of the Resident and all his followers, in October, 1763. The scene of this atrocity (which remained without a parallel for nearly a century) was at Patna, which was then threatened and soon after stormed by the British; and the actual instrument was a Franco-German, Walter Reinhardt by name, of whom, as we are to hear much more hereafter, it is as well here to take note.