The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13

by Unknown

For over a century the company had competed with its Dutch rival in India, and Clive went to his post at a time when French rivalry with the English was becoming formidable. In 1744 war broke out between the English and French, and Clive saw his first military service. In the second war with the French (1751-1754), he bore the leading part, capturing Arcot (1751), and successfully defending it against a vastly superior force of natives, who were aided by the French. By these successes he won a brilliant reputation. His later career proved him to be as efficient in civil as in military affairs, and he stands in English history distinguished among great administrators, although he has been no less the object of censure than of praise by his country's historians. A parliamentary inquiry into his official conduct resulted (1773) in his practical vindication. Whatever the truth in the case may be, Clive must ever hold his place among the "builders of Greater Britain."

In 1753 Clive returned to England, and two years later went back to India as governor of Fort St. David, in the Madras presidency. Of his proceedings in this government and his further successful military enterprises, which went so far to win India for England, Arbuthnot, late member of the Council of India, gives an authoritative account, based on the fullest information available at the close of the nineteenth century.

Clive returned to the Madras Presidency at a critical moment. War with France was imminent, and broke out in the course of a few months. The very day that Clive assumed the government of Fort St. David, Calcutta was captured by the Nawab[40] of Bengal, and the tragedy of the Black Hole took place. The acquisition of Calcutta by the East India Company was somewhat later than that of Madras. It dates from 1686, when the representatives of the company, driven by the Mogul authorities from Hugli, where they had established a factory, moved under the leadership of Job Charnock some twenty-six miles down the river to Satanati, now one of the northern suburbs of Calcutta. Ten years afterward they built the original Fort William, and in 1700 they purchased the villages of Satanti, Kalikata, and Govindpur from the son of the Emperor.

In 1707 the East India Company declared Calcutta a separate presidency. Here, surrounded by the richest districts in India, amid a teeming population, on the banks of a river which was the chief highway of Eastern commerce, the servants of the company drove a thriving trade, threatened only, but never actually assailed, by the raids of the Mahrattas, the memory of which is still kept alive by the famous Mahratta ditch. They were in the same relation to the Nawab of Bengal as the servants of the company at Madras were to the Nawab of the Carnatic. In April, 1756, Aliverdi Khan, who was a just and strong ruler, died, and was succeeded by his grandson, Suraj ud Daulah, a youth under twenty years of age, whose training had been of the worst description. One of the whims of this youth was hatred toward the English, and he had not been two months on the throne when he found a pretext for indulging this sentiment in the fact that the English, in anticipation of difficulties with the French, were strengthening the fortifications of Fort William. On June 4th he seized the English factory at Kasimbazar, and on the 15th attacked Calcutta. The women and children in the fort were removed on board ship on the 18th, and on the same day the Governor, Mr. Drake, and the military commandant, Captain Minchin, deserted their posts, and to their lasting disgrace betook themselves to the ships. Mr. Holwell, a member of the council, assumed command in the fort, but on the 25th the place was taken.

All the Englishmen in the fort, one hundred forty-six persons, were thrust at the point of a sword into a small room, the prison of the garrison, commonly known as the Black Hole, only twenty feet square. The Nawab had promised to spare their lives, but had gone to sleep after a debauch. No expostulations on the part of the prisoners, not even bribes, would induce the guards to awake the Nawab and obtain his leave to liberate the prisoners, until the morning, when, having slept off his debauch, he allowed the door to be opened. By that time, out of one hundred forty-six prisoners, one hundred twenty-three had miserably perished. The survivors, among whom was the acting Governor, Holwell, were brought before the tyrant, insulted and reproached by him, and detained in custody in wretched sheds and fed upon grain and water. An Englishwoman who was one of the survivors, was placed in the Nawab's harem. The details of this terrible tragedy and of the sufferings which the survivors subsequently underwent, are given in a letter from Mr. Holwell, from which it appears that his eventual release was brought about by the intercession of Aliverdi Khan's widow, who had in vain endeavored to dissuade the Nawab from attacking Calcutta, and had predicted that his doing so would be his ruin.

Intelligence of the outrage did not reach Madras until August 16th, when it was at once decided to send a force under Clive to Calcutta to avenge it. Clive was appointed commander-in-chief, with full military and political control. He took with him 900 English soldiers and 1200 Sepoys and some artillery. Owing, however, to the obstinacy of Admiral Watson, and to jealousy of Clive on the part of Colonel Aldercron, who had recently arrived at Madras in command of the Thirty-ninth foot, a delay of two months took place before the expedition sailed. Watson declined to undertake it at all unless the government of the Bengal settlement, which the Madras council proposed to assume pending orders from home, was intrusted to the survivors of the Bengal Council, the leaders of which had so shamefully deserted their posts; while Aldercron, on being informed that Clive was to exercise the military command, actually went so far as to disembark the greater part of his regiment, together with guns and stores which had already been put on board ship, allowing only two hundred fifty men to remain, who were to serve as marines under Watson.

The delay was unfortunate; for before the squadron sailed the northeast monsoon had set in, and in consequence none of the ships reached the Hugli until the middle of December, and even then two of the largest ships were missing; the Marlborough, with most of the artillery, and the Cumberland, with Admiral Pocock and two hundred fifty English soldiers, having failed to make their way against the monsoon. Clive's orders were to recapture Calcutta, to attack the Nawab at his capital, Murshidabad, and, in the event of war between England and France being declared, to capture the French settlement of Chandernagor (Chandranagar). When the expedition reached the Hugli, Clive wished the men under his command to be taken on in the ships as far as Budge Budge (Bajbaj)—a fortified place about ten miles from Calcutta, which it was necessary to capture; but Watson, with his habitual perversity, insisted upon the troops being landed at Mayapur, some miles farther down, thus obliging them to make a most fatiguing night march through a swampy country covered with jungle. The result was that they reached Budge Budge in an exhausted condition, and being surprised by the Nawab's troops shortly after their arrival, had a very narrow escape from destruction, which was averted only by Clive's presence of mind and readiness of resource.

Clive says, in a letter to Pigot, reporting this affair a few days afterward: "You must know our march from Mayapur to the northward of Budge Budge was much against my inclinations. I applied to the admiral for boats to land us at the place we arrived at after sixteen hours' march by land. The men suffered hardships not easily to be described; it was four in the afternoon when we decamped from Mayapur, and we did not arrive off Budge Budge until past eight the next morning. At nine the Grenadier company and all the Sepoys were despatched to the fort, where I heard Captain Coote was landed with the King's troops. At ten, Manickchand, the Governor of Calcutta, attacked us with between two and three thousand horse and foot, and was worsted. Manickchand himself received a shot in his turban. Our two field pieces were of little or no service to us, having neither tubes nor port-fires, and heavy carriages were sent with them from Fort St. David. Indeed, we still labor under every disadvantage in the world for want of the Marlborough. It seems the enemy were encamped within two miles of us, and we ignorant of the matter. So much for the intelligence of the country."

There can be no doubt that Clive sustained a surprise that might have been prevented had the ordinary precautions been used; but in the circumstances there is much allowance to be made. Clive himself was ill, and had suffered much from the fatiguing march which he and his men had gone through, owing to Watson's wrong-headed obstinacy. But notwithstanding illness and fatigue, and the unexpected appearance of a hostile force, Clive on this, as on other occasions, never for a moment lost his nerve. He at once rallied his men, who, awakened out of their sleep by being fired upon, were at first thrown into confusion, and then with scarcely a pause made dispositions which retrieved the situation, although not without heavy loss to the English.

When Watson and Clive entered the river, they found at Falta some of the fugitives from Calcutta, and the scanty remains of a small force which, on the receipt of intelligence of the seizure of Kasimbazar, but before the news of the Black Hole tragedy had arrived, the Madras authorities had sent to Bengal under Major Kilpatrick. Clive, after beating off Manickchand's army, was met by Major Kilpatrick, who had been sent to his aid with reënforcements. In the mean time Watson had bombarded Budge from his ships, and had effected a breach in the ramparts of the fort. Clive had arranged to assault the fort the next day, when a drunken sailor, discovering the breach, entered it alone, and firing his pistol among a small group of the defenders who were sitting near, shouted out, "The fort is mine," accompanying the exclamation by three loud cheers. He was at once attacked, but defended himself valiantly, and, some of the English soldiers and Sepoys coming up, the garrison abandoned the fort, which was taken possession of by Captain Eyre Coote, who had come up from Madras with a detachment of the Thirty-ninth foot. The squadron, with the troops, then moved on to Calcutta, which surrendered on January 2d, Manickchand having evacuated the place and returned with his army to the head-quarters of the Nawab at Murshidabad. Then occurred another of Watson's arbitrary and ill-judged proceedings. Notwithstanding the orders of the Madras government, investing Clive with military and political control in Bengal, Watson appointed Coote, whose rank was that of captain, to be governor of Fort William. Clive declined to permit this arrangement, claiming the command as the senior officer, and threatened to place Coote under arrest if he disobeyed his orders. Thereupon Watson threatened to fire upon the fort unless Clive gave it up. The matter ended in a compromise, Clive surrendering the fort to Watson on condition that it was afterward handed over to the representatives of the company. In this, and in other disputes with Watson, Clive appears to have kept his temper, while acting with firmness. Writing to Mr. Pigot, Clive describes this affair in the following words: