There was a time, a long time too, during which the worthy Mr. Richard Clive persisted in regarding the birth of this eldest son as little less than a curse. He could very well have said of Robert what the Queen-mother says of Richard of Gloster, tetchy and wayward was his infancy. Seldom was there born into the world a more stubborn-minded, high-spirited boy. He may remind us a little of the young Mirabeau in his strenuous impassioned youth; in the estimate which those nearest to him, and most ignorant of him, formed of the young lion cub in the domestic litter; in the strange promise which the great career fulfilled. There was a kind of madness in the impish pranks which the boy Clive played in Market-Drayton, scaring the timid and scandalizing the respectable. He climbed to the top of the lofty steeple of that church, which dated from the days of Stephen, and perched himself upon a stone spout near the dizzy summit with a cool courage which Stephen himself might have envied. He got round him from among the idle lads of the town "a list of lawless resolutes," and, like David, made himself a captain over them for the purpose of levying a kind of guerilla warfare upon the shopkeepers of the little town, and making them pay tribute for the sanctity of their windows. In fact, he behaved as wildly as the wildest school-boy could behave—drifting from school to school, to learn nothing from each new master, and only to leave behind at each the record of an incorrigible reprobate. Nobody seems to have discovered that there was anything of the man of genius in the composition of the incorrigible reprobate, and so it came about that the town of {256} Market-Drayton in general, and the respectable family of the Clives in particular, breathed more freely when it was known that young Robert was "bound to John Company"—that he had accepted a writership in the East India Service, and had actually sailed for Madras.
The career to which the young Clive was thus devoted did not, on the face of it, appear to be especially brilliant. The voyage in itself, to begin with, was a terrible business; a six months' voyage was then regarded as an astonishingly quick passage, and in Clive's case the voyage was longer even than usual. It was more than a year after he left England before he arrived at Madras, as his ship had stayed for some months at the Brazils. Clive arrived at Madras with no money, with many debts, and with some facility in speaking Portuguese, acquired during the delay in the Brazils. He had absolutely no friends in India, and made no friends for many months after his arrival. It would be hard to think of a more desolate position for a proud, shy, high-spirited lad with a strong strain of melancholy in his composition. We find him sighing for Manchester with all the profound and pathetic longing which inspires the noble old English ballad of "Farewell, Manchester." It is not easy for us of to-day, who associate the name of Manchester with one of the greatest manufacturing towns in the world, to appreciate to the full either the spirit of the old ballad or the longing aspiration which Clive had to see again Manchester, "the centre of all my wishes." But if he was homesick, if he was lonely, if he was poor in pocket and weak in health, shadowed by melancholy and saddened by exile, he never for a moment suffered his pride to abate or his courage to sink. He treated his masters of the East India Company with the same scornful spirit which he had of old shown to the shopkeepers of Market-Drayton and the school-masters of Shropshire.
In the wretched mood of mind and body that Clive owned during his early days at Madras the constitutional melancholy asserted itself with conquering force, and he {257} twice attempted his life. On each occasion the pistol which he turned upon his desperate and disordered brain missed fire. Yet Clive had meant most thoroughly and consistently to kill himself. He did not, like Byron, discover, after the attempt was made, that the weapon he had aimed at his life was not loaded. Each time the pistol was properly charged and primed, and each time it was the accident of the old flint-lock merely causing a flash in the pan which saved his life. In a nature that is melancholy a tinge of superstition is appropriate, and it is hardly surprising if Clive saw in the successive chance a proof that he was not meant as yet to perish by self-slaughter. "I must be destined for great things," he thought, and he was right. Between that attempt at suicide and the next lay long years of unexampled glory, lay the pomp of Oriental courts and the glitter of Oriental warfare, lay the foundation and establishment of that empire of India which is to-day one of the greatest glories of the British Crown—an empire mightier, wealthier, statelier than any which Aurungzebe swayed, and whose might and wealth and state were mainly due to the courage and the genius of the lonely, melancholy lad, the humble writer in the service of John Company, who had endeavored in his solitude and his despair to end his young life at the muzzle of his pistol.
[Sidenote: 1707—The fall of the House of Baber]
What was the condition of India at the time when Clive was making unavailing efforts to cut short his career? The country itself was given over to the wildest confusion. With the death of Aurungzebe, in 1707, the majestic empire of the House of Baber came to an end. The empire of Alexander did not crumble more disastrously to pieces after the death of the Macedonian prince than did the empire of the Moguls fall to pieces after the death of Aurungzebe. The pitiable and despicable successors of a great prince, worse than Sardanapalus, worse than the degraded Caesars of the basest days of Byzantium, squandered their unprofitable hours in shameful pleasure while the great empire fell to pieces, trampled by the {258} conquering feet of Persian princes, of Afghan invaders, of wild Mahratta chiefs. Between the fierce invaders from the northern hills who ravaged, and levied tribute, and established dominion of their own, and such still powerful viceroys as held their own, and offered a nominal allegiance to the Mogul line, the glory of the race of Tamerlane was dimmed indeed. It occurred to one man, watching all the welter of the Indian world, where Mussulman and Hindoo struggled for supremacy—it occurred to Dupleix that in this struggle lay the opportunity for some European power—for his European power—for France—to gain for herself, and for the daring adventurer who should shape her Oriental policy, an influence hitherto undreamed of by the statesmen of the West. It was not given to Dupleix to guess that what he dreamed of and nearly accomplished was to be carried out at last by Robert Clive.
[Sidenote: 1746—La Bourdonnais]
The history of French empire in India contains two specially illustrious names—the name of La Bourdonnais and the name of Dupleix. The first had practically called into existence the two colonies of the Ile de France and of Bourbon; the second had founded the town of Chandernagor, in the bay of Bengal, and, as governor-general of the French East India Company, had established himself at Pondicherry with all the luxury and more than all the luxury of a veritable Oriental prince. It may be that if these two men had been better able to agree together the fortunes of the French nation in the Indies might have been very different. But a blind and uncompromising jealousy divided them. Whatever Dupleix did was wrong in the eyes of La Bourdonnais; whatever La Bourdonnais did was wrong in the eyes of Dupleix; and Dupleix was the stronger man of the two, and he finally triumphed for a time. In the war that was raging La Bourdonnais saw his opportunity. He determined to anticipate Dupleix in beginning hostilities against the English in India. He set sail from the island of Bourbon with a fleet of nine vessels which he had equipped, at his proper cost, and an {259} army of some three thousand men, which included a large proportion of negroes. After a successful engagement with the ships of war under the command of Admiral Burnett, outside Madras, La Bourdonnais disembarked, besieged Madras, and compelled the town to capitulate. So far the star of La Bourdonnais was in the ascendent; but the terms which he exacted from the conquered town were, by their very moderation, the means of his undoing. With the keys of the conquered town in his hand, with the French colors floating bravely from Fort St. George, with all the stored wealth of the company as spoils of war, La Bourdonnais thought that he might be not unlenient in the terms he accorded to his enemies. He allowed the English inhabitants of Madras to remain prisoners of war on parole, and stipulated that the town should remain in his hands until the payment of a ransom of some nine millions of francs.
The triumph of La Bourdonnais aroused, however, not the admiration but the jealousy of Dupleix. Out of La Bourdonnais's very victory the cunning of Dupleix discovered a means to humiliate his rival. The vague schemes which he had formed for the authority of France, and for his influence in India, did not at all jump with the restoration of Madras, once conquered, to the English. He declared that La Bourdonnais had gone beyond his powers; that terms to the vanquished on Indian soil could be made by the Governor of Pondicherry and the Governor of Pondicherry alone. He refused to ratify La Bourdonnais's convention, and, instead, declared that the capitulation was at an end, marched upon Madras, insisted upon the pillage and destruction of a great portion of the town, arrested a large number of the leading Englishmen, including the Governor of Fort St. George, and conveyed them with all circumstances of public ignominy to Pondicherry. As for La Bourdonnais, who had taken so gallant a step to secure French supremacy in India, he was placed under arrest and sent to France, where the Bastille awaited him; he had fallen before his vindictive rival.
The inhabitants of Madras, smarting under what may {260} fairly be called the treachery of Dupleix, considered rightly that they were no longer bound by the convention with the luckless La Bourdonnais. One at least of the inhabitants was a man not likely to be bound by the mere letter of a convention which had already been broken in the spirit. Clive disguised himself as a Mussulman—we may be permitted to wonder how a man who to the end of his days remained eccentrically ignorant of all Eastern languages accomplished this successfully—and, escaping from Madras, made his way to Fort St. David. At Fort St. David his military career began. The desperate courage which had carried him to the top of the tower of Stephen's church, and which had enabled him to overawe the "military bully who was the terror of Fort St. David," now found its best vent in "welcoming the French," like the hero of Burns's ballad, "at the sound of the drum." The peace which was concluded between England and France sent Clive for a season, however, back to the counting-house, and gave back Madras again to the English company.
[Sidenote: 1748—The dream of Dupleix]