The Anarchy

by William Dalrymple

  He received no reply.

  The next day, he wrote again, this time to Mir Jafar: ‘I am arrived at Tantesaul near Pattlee. I am in expectation of your news, and shall enter into any measures you desire. Let me hear from you twice a day. I shall not stir from Pattlee till I have news from you.’66 Again there was no reply. Clive was now becoming suspicious: ‘I am arrived at Pattlee with all my forces,’ he wrote on the 17th, ‘and am very much surprised at not hearing from you. I expect that on the receipt of this you will acquaint me fully with your intentions.’67

  Despite the silence, he sent a platoon north on the 18th, with orders to take the fort of Katwa, which was seized without opposition. It was here that Mir Jafar was supposed to join the Company forces, but there was no sign of their supposed ally. That afternoon, Clive had a rare crisis of confidence: ‘I am really at a loss how to act at the present situation of our affairs,’ he wrote back to the Select Committee in Calcutta,

  especially should I receive confirmation by letter of Mir Jafar’s resolution to stand neuter [i.e. not engage in the forthcoming battle]. The Nabob’s forces at present are said not to exceed 8,000 but a compliance with their demands may easily increase them. If we attack them it must be entrenched and ourselves without any assistance. In this place a repulse must be fateful; on the contrary success may give the greatest advantage … I beg you will let me have your sentiments how I ought to act at this critical juncture.68

  Late that night Clive received from Mir Jafar a short and rather ambiguous note: ‘On the news of your coming the Nabob was much intimidated and requested at such a juncture that I would stand his friend. On my part, agreeable to the circumstances of the times, I thought it advisable to acquiesce with his request, but what we have agreed on must be done. I have fixed the first day of the moon for my march. God willing I shall arrive.’69 Clive was initially so relieved to hear anything from Mir Jafar that he replied, more fulsomely than the letter merited: ‘I have received your letter which has given me the utmost satisfaction after the great pain I have suffered by your silence.’

  I have sent a party to possess themselves of Katwa town and fort, and shall move with my whole army there tomorrow. I believe I shall march from thence the next day, and hope to be at Moncurra in 2 days, but my motions will in a great measure depend on the advice I receive from you. Write me what you intend to do, and what is proper for me to do. On mutual intelligence depends the success of our affairs, so write me daily and fully. If I meet the Nabob’s army what part will you act and how am I to act. This you may be assured of: that I will attack the Nabob within 24 hours after I come in sight of his army. Of all things take care of yourself that you be not arrested by treachery before my arrival.70

  But the following morning, having reread Mir Jafar’s letter, Clive again grew increasingly convinced he was walking into a trap, and wrote angrily to his self-professed ally: ‘It gives me great concern that in an affair of so much consequence, to yourself in particular, that you do not exert yourself more.’

  So long as I have been on my march you have not given me the least information what measures it is necessary for me to take, nor do I know what is going forward at Murshidabad. Surely it is in your power to send me news daily. It must be more difficult for me to procure trusty messengers than you. However the bearer of this is a sensible, intelligent man, and in whom I have great confidence. Let me know your sentiments freely by him; I shall wait here till I have proper encouragement to proceed. I think it absolutely necessary you should join my army as soon as possible. Consider the Nabob will increase in strength dayly. Come over to me at Plassey or any other place you judge proper with what force you have – even a thousand horse will be sufficient, and I’ll engage to march immediately with you to Murshidabad. I prefer conquering by open force.71

  On 21 June, Clive called a Council of War to decide whether to continue with the campaign. They were now just one day’s march from the mango plantations of Plassey where Siraj ud-Daula’s army, swollen to 50,000, had safely entrenched themselves. When Clive presented all his intelligence to his military council, his colleagues voted strongly against continuing the campaign. Clive spent the night racked with indecision, but on waking decided to press on regardless. Shortly after this, a short message arrived from Mir Jafar, apparently saying that he was committing himself to action: ‘When you come near, I shall be able to join you.’

  To this Clive replied tersely, ‘I am determined to risque everything on your account, though you will not exert yourself.’

  I shall be on the other side of the river this evening. If you will join me at Plassey, I will march half way to meet you, then the whole Nabob’s army will know I fight for you. Give me leave to call to your mind how much your own glory and safety depends upon it, be assured if you do this, you will be Subah [Governor] of these provinces, but, if you cannot go even this length to assist us, I call God to witness the fault is not mine, and I must desire your consent for concluding a peace with the Nabob.72

  At six o’clock that evening, having received another brief and ambiguous letter, he wrote again: ‘Upon receiving your letter I am come to a resolution to proceed immediately to Plassey. I am impatient for an answer to my letter.’73

  Clive then ordered his forces forward. The sepoys marched into the increasingly liquid waterscape where islands of land appeared to float amid network of streams and rivers and fish-filled, lily-littered pukhur ponds. Towards evening, rising from these ripples, the troops spied several raised mounds encircled with windbreaks of palm, clumps of bamboo and tall flowering grasses. On one stood a small wattle village, with its bullock carts and haystacks, and several spreading banyan trees. To the other side, enclosed within a meandering oxbow of the Hughli River, rose the small brick hunting lodge belonging to the Nawab of Murshidabad, named after the distinctively orange-flowered grove of palash trees which overlooked it. It was here, at Plassey, in the dark, about 1 a.m., that Clive took shelter from a pre-monsoon downpour. His damp troops were less lucky and camped under the shelter of the thickly planted mango orchards behind his house.

  Night passed and morning broke with no further word from Mir Jafar. At 7 a.m., an anxious Clive wrote threateningly to the general saying that he would make up with Siraj ud-Daula if Mir Jafar continued to do nothing and remain silent: ‘Whatever could be done by me I have done,’ he wrote. ‘I can do no more. If you will come to Dandpore, I’ll march from Plassey to meet you. But if you won’t comply with this, pardon me, I shall make it up with the Nabob.’74 Such an eventuality was, however, becoming less and less plausible by the minute, as the Nawab’s forces, in all their magnificent tens of thousands, emerged from their entrenchment, and began to encircle the small Company army with a force that outnumbered them by at least twenty to one.

  The storm the night before had cleared the air, and the morning of 22 June dawned bright, clear and sunny. Clive decided to climb onto the flat roof of the hunting lodge to get a better impression of what he had taken on. What he saw took him aback: ‘What with the number of elephants, all covered in scarlet embroidery; their horses with their drawn swords glittering in the sun; their heavy cannon drawn by vast trains of oxen; and their standards flying, they made a pompous and fabulous sight.’

  In all, Clive estimated that the Nawab had gathered 35,000 infantry, 15,000 cavalry and fifty-three pieces of heavy artillery which was superintended by a team of French experts. With its back to the bends of the Hughli, there was by 8 a.m. no exit for Clive’s troops. Whether Mir Jafar lived up to his promises or not, there was now no realistic option but to fight.

  At eight a cannonade began and after losing thirty sepoys Clive withdrew his men to shelter under the muddy riverbank bounding the mango grove. There was now a real danger of encirclement. One officer recorded Clive as saying, ‘We must make the best fight we can during the day, and at night sling our muskets over our shoulders and march back to Calcutta. Most of the officers were as doubtful of success as himself.’75 ‘They
approached at pace,’ wrote Clive in his official report, ‘and by eight began the attack with a number of heavy cannon, supported by their whole army.’

  They continued to play on us very briskly for Several Hours, during which our situation was of the utmost service to us, being lodg’d in a large Grove, surrounded by good mud Banks. To succeed in an attempt [at seizing] their cannon was next to impossible, as they were planted in a manner round us, and at a considerable distance from each other, we therefore remained quiet in our post, in expectation at best of a successful attack upon their camp during the night.76

  Then, towards noon, the skies began to darken, thunder boomed and a torrential monsoon storm broke over the battlefield, soaking the men and turning the ground instantly into a muddy swamp. The Company troops made sure to keep their powder and fuses dry under tarpaulins; but the Mughals did not. Within ten minutes of the commencement of the downpour, and by the time Clive had reappeared on the roof of the hunting lodge having changed into a dry uniform, all Siraj’s guns had fallen completely silent.

  Imagining that the Company’s guns would also be disabled, the Nawab’s cavalry commander, Mir Madan, gave the order to advance, and 5,000 of his elite Afghan horse charged forward to the Company’s right: ‘the fire of battle and slaughter, that had hitherto been kept alive under a heap of embers, now blazed out into flames,’ wrote Ghulam Hussain Khan.

  But as the nation of Hat-wearers have no equals in the art of firing their artillery and musquetry, with both order and rapidity, there commenced such an incessant rain of balls and bullets, and such a hot-endless firing, that the spectators themselves were amazed and confounded; and those in the battle had their hearing deafened by the continual thunder, and their eyesight dimmed by the endless flashing of the execution.77

  Among those killed was Mir Madan himself, ‘who made great efforts to push to the front, but was hit by a cannon ball in his stomach and died’.78 ‘At the sight of this, the aspect of Siraj ud-Daula’s army changed and the artillerymen with the corpse of Mir Madan moved into the tents. It was midday when the people in the tents fled, and gradually the soldiers also began to take to their heels.’79 At this point, Clive’s deputy, Major Kilpatrick, seeing several Mughal batteries being abandoned, in defiance of orders and without permission, advanced to hold the abandoned positions. Clive sent angry messages forward, threatening to arrest Kilpatrick for insubordination; but the act of disobedience won the battle. This was the point, according to Edward Maskelyne, that the tide began to turn: ‘Perceiving that many of the enemy were returning to their camp, we thought it a proper opportunity to seize one of the eminences from which the enemy guns had much annoyed us in the morning.’

  Accordingly, the Grenadiers of the first battalion with 2 field pieces and a body of sepoys supported by 4 platoons and 2 field pieces from the 2nd Battalion were order’d to take possession of it, which accordingly they did. Their success encouraged us to take possession of another advanc’d post, within 300 yards of the entrance to the enemy’s camp …80

  A huge contingent of Mughal cavalry on the left then began to move away down to the banks of the Hughli and left the fighting. This, it turned out, was Mir Jafar, withdrawing just as he had promised. Following his lead, all the Murshidabad forces were now beginning to fall back. What started as an orderly retreat soon turned into a stampede. Large bodies of Mughal infantry now began to flee: ‘On this, a general rout ensued,’ wrote Clive in his initial report, which still survives in the National Archives of India, ‘and we pursued the enemy six miles, passing upwards 40 pieces of cannon they had abandoned, with an infinite number of hackeries and carriages filled with baggage of all kind.’

  Siraj ud-Daula escaped on a camel, and reaching Murshidabad early the next morning, despatched away what jewels and treasure he conveniently could, and he himself followed at midnight, with only two or three attendants. It is computed there were kill’d of the enemy about 500. Our loss amounted to just 22 killed, and fifty wounded.81

  The following morning, 24 June, Clive scribbled a strikingly insincere note to Mir Jafar: ‘I congratulate you on the victory which is yours not mine,’ he wrote. ‘I should be glad you would join me with the utmost expedition. We propose marching for now to complete conquest that God has blessed us with, and I hope to have the honor of proclaiming you Nabob.’82

  Later that morning, a nervous and tired-looking Mir Jafar presented himself at the English camp, and when the guard turned out in his honour he started back in fear. He was only reassured when he was escorted to Clive’s tent and was embraced by the colonel, who saluted him as the new Governor of Bengal. Clive was not planning any treachery: ever the pragmatist, his need to install and use Mir Jafar as his puppet overruled the anger he had felt over the past week. He then advised Mir Jafar to hasten to Murshidabad and secure the capital, accompanied by Watts, who was told to keep an eye on the treasury. Clive followed at a distance with the main army, taking three days to cover the fifty miles to Murshidabad, passing along roads filled with abandoned cannon, broken carriages and the bloated corpses of men and horses.

  Clive had been due to enter the city on the 27th, but was warned by the Jagat Seths that an assassination plot was being planned. So it was only on 29 June that Clive was finally escorted into Murshidabad by Mir Jafar. Preceded by music, drums and colours, and escorted by a guard of 500 soldiers, they entered together as conquerors. Mir Jafar was handed by Clive onto the masnad, the throne platform, and saluted by him as Governor. He then stated publicly, and possibly sincerely, that the Company would not interfere with his government, but ‘attend solely to commerce’.83 The elderly general ‘took quiet possession of the Palace and Treasures and was immediately acknowledged Nabob’.

  The pair then went straight to pay their respects to the man who had put both where they were now: Mahtab Rai Jagat Seth. ‘I had a great deal of conversation’ with the great banker, Clive recorded, ‘As he is a person of the greatest property and influence in the three subas [provinces – Bengal, Orissa and Bihar] and of no inconsiderable weight at the Mughal court, it was natural to determine on him as the properest person to settle the affairs of that government. Accordingly, when the new Nawab returned my visit this morning, I recommended him to consult Jagat Seth on all occasions, which he readily assented to.’84

  As it turned out, the Jagat Seth’s goodwill was immediately necessary. There was only about Rs1.5 crore in the treasury – much less than expected, and if Clive and the Company were to be paid their full commission it would have to be through a loan brokered by the great bankers. Clive’s personal share of the prize money was valued at £234,000, as well as a jagir, a landed estate worth an annual payment of £27,000.* At thirty-three, Clive was suddenly about to become one of the wealthiest men in Europe – but only if the money was actually paid. There followed several tense days. Clive was clearly anxious that Mir Jafar would default on his promises and that again he was in danger of being double-crossed by the old general. Like two gangsters after a heist, Mir Jafar and Clive watched each other uneasily, while the Jagat Seth searched for money: ‘Whenever I write to your excellency by the way of complaint, it gives me infinite concern,’ wrote Clive to Mir Jafar a week later,

  and more especially so when it is upon a subject in which I think the English interest suffers. This I am certain of: that anything wrong is foreign to your principles, and the natural goodness of your heart, and if anything be amiss, it must be owing to your ministers. But it is now several days that Mr Watts and Walsh have attended at the treasury to see what was agreed upon between your excellency and the English in presence of Jagat Seth and by his mediation put in execution. But their attendance has been to no manner of purpose, and without your excellency coming to some resolution as to what is to be paid in plate, what in cloth and what in jewels, and give absolute orders to your servants to begin, nothing will be done.

  I am very anxious to see the money matters finished, for while they remain otherwise your enemies and mine
will always from self-interested principles be endeavouring to create disputes and differences between us, which can only afford pleasure and hope to our enemies. But the English interest and yours is but one, and we must rise or fall together.

  Clive characteristically concluded the letter with what could be read as a veiled threat: ‘If any accident should happen to you, which God forbid, there will be an end of the English Company. I chose to send your Excellency my thoughts in writing, the subject were of too tender a nature for me to discourse only by word of mouth.’85

  While Clive waited anxiously for his payment, ‘on the insistence of Jagat Seth’ Mir Jafar’s son, Miran, was scouring Bengal for the fugitive Siraj ud-Daula who had fled the capital, heading upstream ‘dressed in mean dress … attended only by his favourite concubine and eunuch’. Ghulam Hussain Khan wrote how, after Plassey, Siraj ‘finding himself alone in the palace for a whole day, without a single friend to unbosom his mind with, and without a single companion to speak to, took a desperate resolution.’

  In the dead of night he put Lutf un-Nissa, his consort, and a number of favourites into covered carriages and covered chairs, loaded them with as much gold and as many jewels as they could contain, and taking with him a number of elephants with his best baggage and furniture, he quitted his palace at three in the morning, and fled … He went to Bagvangolah, where he immediately embarked on several boats, which are at all times kept ready in that station …

  [Two days later] this unfortunate Prince, already overtaken by the claws of destiny, was arrived at the shore opposite Rajmahal, where he landed for about one hour, with intention only to dress up some khichri [kedgeree – rice and lentils] for himself and his daughter and women, not one of whom had tasted food for three days and nights. It happened that a fakir resided in that neighbourhood. This man, whom he had disobliged and oppressed during his days in power, rejoiced at this fair opportunity of glutting his resentment, and of enjoying revenge. He expressed a pleasure at his arrival; and taking a busy part in preparing some victuals for him, he meanwhile sent an express over the water, to give information to the prince’s enemies, who were rummaging heaven and earth to find him out.