These were to utterly destroy the Timurid royal house, once he had all the Timurid Princes in his power – the only one still at liberty being Shah Alam himself. Durrani’s plan was to conquer Hindustan, and a Mughal Prince could only be an irritant and a nuisance to that ambition: it was therefore of capital importance, both for the Emperor himself and for Hindustan, that he should not hand himself over to his enemy. Shah Alam appreciated Shuja ud-Daula’s good counsel, and politely declined Durrani’s invitation to Delhi.83
Meanwhile, Bengal was left under the increasingly uneasy joint rule of Mir Qasim and the Company.
Over the next two years, 1761–2, relations between the two rival governments of Bengal became openly hostile. The cause of the steady deterioration was the violent and rapacious way private Company traders increasingly abused their privileges to penetrate the Bengali economy and undermine Mir Qasim’s rule.
These private traders regularly arrested and ill-treated the Nawab’s officers, making it almost impossible for him to rule. The Nawab, in turn, became increasingly paranoid that William Ellis, the Chief Factor of the English factory in Patna, was actively fomenting a rebellion against him. Ellis had lost a leg at the siege of Calcutta in 1756 and his subsequent hatred for all things Indian made him take a perverse, almost sadistic, pleasure in disregarding Mir Qasim’s sovereignty and doing all he could to overrule his nominal independence.
Henry Vansittart believed that Mir Qasim was a man much more sinned against than sinning, and in this he was seconded by his closest ally on the Council, Warren Hastings. Hastings had been fast-promoted to be Vansittart’s deputy after making a success of his time as Resident in Murshidabad; he was now being talked about as a possible future Governor. Anxious to make joint Mughal–Company rule a success in Bengal, Hastings had been the first to spot Mir Qasim’s capacity for business and now was quick to defend his protégé. ‘I never met a man with more candour or moderation than the Nabob,’ he wrote. ‘Was there but half the disposition shown on our side which he bears to peace, no subject of difference could ever rise between us … He has been exposed to daily affronts such as a spirit superior to a worm when trodden on could not have brooked … The world sees the Nabob’s authority publicly insulted, his officers imprisoned, and sepoys sent against his forts.’84 He added: ‘If our people instead of erecting themselves into lords and oppressors of the country, confine themselves to an honest and fair trade, they will everywhere be courted and respected.’85
Then, in early February 1762, Ellis took it upon himself to arrest and imprison in the English factory a senior Armenian official of Mir Qasim’s, Khoja Antoon. Mir Qasim wrote to Ellis complaining that ‘my servants are subjected to such insults, my writing can be of no use. How much my authority is weakened by such proceedings I cannot describe.’ After this Mir Qasim vowed not to correspond any further with Ellis.86
Thereafter, week after week, in long and increasingly desperate Persian letters, Mir Qasim poured out his heart to Vansittart in Calcutta, but the young Governor was no Clive, and seemed unable to enforce his will on his colleagues, particularly those under Ellis in the Patna factory. Ellis and his men, wrote Mir Qasim in May 1762, ‘have decided to disrupt my rule. They insult and humiliate my people, and from the frontiers of Hindustan up to Calcutta, they denigrate and insult me.’
And this is the way your gentlemen behave: they make a disturbance all over my country, plunder the people, injure and disgrace my servants with a resolution to expose my government to contempt and making it their business to expose me to scorn. Setting up their colours, and showing Company passes, they use their utmost endeavours to oppress the peasant farmers,* merchants and other people of the country. They forcibly take away the goods and commodities of the merchants for a fourth part of their value; and by way of violence and oppression they oblige the farmers to give five rupees for goods that are worth but one.
The passes† for searching the boats, which you formerly favoured me with, and which I sent to every chokey [check post], the Englishmen by no means regard, I cannot recount how many tortures they inflict upon my subjects and especially the poor people … And every one of these Company agents has such power, that he imprisons the local collector [the Nawab’s principal officer] and deprives him of all authority, whenever he pleases.
Near four or five hundred new [private English] factories have been established in my dominions. My officers in every district have desisted from the exercise of their functions; so that by means of these oppressions, and my being deprived of my [customs] duties, I suffer a yearly loss of nearly twenty-five lakh rupees.* In that case how can I keep clear of debts? How can I provide for the payment of my army and my household? In this case, how can I perform my duties and how can I send the Emperor his due from Bengal?87
In April, Vansittart sent Hastings upriver to Monghyr and Patna in an attempt to defuse the growing crisis and restore harmony. On the way, Hastings wrote a series of letters, at once waxing lyrical about the beauty of Bengal, and expressing his horror at the way the Company was responsible for raping and looting it. On arrival in Monghyr, where ducks clustered on the marshes amid ‘beautiful prospects’, he wrote with eloquence and feeling of ‘the oppression carried out under the sanction of the English name’ which he had observed in his travels. ‘This evil I am well assured is not confined to our dependants alone, but is practised all over the country by people assuming the habit of our sepoys or calling themselves our managers …’
A party of sepoys who were on the march before us, afforded sufficient proof of the rapacious and insolent spirit of those people when they are left to their own discretion. Many complaints against them were made to me on the road; and most of the petty towns and serais were deserted at our approach, and the shops shut up, from apprehensions of the same treatment from us … Every man who wears a hat, as soon as he gets free from Calcutta becomes a sovereign prince … Were I to suppose myself the Nabob I should be at a loss in what manner to protect my own subjects or servants from insult.88
In particular, Hastings was critical of Ellis, whose behaviour, he believed, had been ‘so imprudent, and his disaffection to the Nabob so manifestly inveterate, that a proper representation of it could not fail to draw upon him the severest resentment of the Company’.89
In October, Hastings went again to visit Mir Qasim at Monghyr, this time taking Governor Vansittart with him so that he could see what was happening with his own eyes. Both were appalled by what they witnessed and returned to Calcutta determined to end the abuses. But on arrival, the two young men failed to carry their fellow Council members with them. Instead, the majority decided to send one of their most aggressive members, Ellis’s friend James Amyatt, to make his own report, to put Mir Qasim in his place and to demand that all Company servants and managers should be entirely exempted from control by the Nawab’s government.
Hastings vigorously objected: ‘It is now proposed absolving every person in our service from the jurisdiction of the [Nawab’s] Government,’ he wrote. ‘It gives them a full licence of oppressing others … Such a system of government cannot fail to create in the minds of the wretched inhabitants an abhorrence of the English name and authority, and how would it be possible for the Nawab, whilst he hears the cries of his people, which he cannot redress, not to wish to free himself from an alliance which subjects himself to such indignities?’90
As the urbane Gentil rightly noted, ‘The English would have avoided great misfortunes when they broke with the Nawab, had they but followed the wise counsel of Mr Hastings – but a few bankrupt and dissipated English councillors, who had got themselves into debt and were determined to rebuild their personal fortunes at whatever public cost, pursued their ambitions and caused a war.’91
In December 1762, just as Amyatt was about to leave Calcutta, Mir Qasim made a deft political move. After putting up with Ellis’s violence and aggression for two years, the Nawab finally concluded it was time to fight back and resist the encroachments of
the Company. He decided to make a stand.
Realising his officials were only rarely successful in forcing armed Company outposts to pay the due taxes and customs duties, he abolished such duties altogether, across his realm, ‘declaring that so long as he failed to levy duties from the rich, he would hold back his hand from doing so in the case of the poor’.92 In this way he deprived the English of their unfair advantage over local traders, even if it meant enormous losses for him personally, and for the solvency of his government.
Shortly afterwards, on 11 March 1763, armed clashes began to break out between Mir Qasim’s men and those of the Company. There were scuffles in Dhaka and Jafarganj, where Mir Qasim’s representatives, backed now by his new army, began resisting the depredations of the Company managers, frequently facing off against their sepoy escorts; one of Mir Qasim’s officials went as far as issuing an order to execute anyone who claimed EIC protection. Two notorious Company managers were raided in their houses; both escaped through the back door, over the wall. At the same time, Mir Qasim’s men began stopping British boats across Bengal, blocking the passage of the goods of private Company traders and seizing their saltpetre, opium and betel nut. On one occasion, when some sepoys went to snatch back impounded boats, a scuffle escalated into volleys of shots, leaving several dead. There began to be talk of war.93
Then on 23 May, just as Amyatt arrived in Monghyr, intending to force Mir Qasim to revoke his free trade order, a boat that had come with him was seized by Mir Qasim’s police as it landed at the ghats: ‘She proved to be laden with a quantity of goods,’ wrote Ghulam Hussain Khan, ‘under which were found [hidden] five hundred fire-locks, destined for the Patna factory. These Gurgin Khan [the Wolf, Mir Qasim’s Armenian commander] wished to impound, whilst Mr Amyatt insisted on the boat being dismissed without being stopped or even being searched.’94
The standoff continued for some time, and Mir Qasim considered seizing Amyatt. He told him that he had considered himself in a state of war with the Company, and that he saw Amyatt’s mission merely as a blind to cover other hostile moves. But ‘after a great deal of parley’ he ‘consented to allow the envoy to leave … Mr Amyatt, finding it useless to make any further stay, resolved to return [to Calcutta], and took his leave.’95
This was the moment that Ellis decided to hatch a plan to seize Patna by force. He had long regarded Hastings and Vansittart as weak and supine in the face of what he called Mir Qasim’s ‘pretensions’. Now he decided to take matters into his own hands. But Mir Qasim’s intelligence service had managed to place spies with the Patna factory, and the Nawab soon came to hear some details of what Ellis was planning. His response was to write a last letter to his former patrons, Hastings and Vansittart: ‘Mr Ellis has proceeded to such lengths as to prepare ladders and platforms in order to take the fort at Patna; now you may take whatever measures you think best for the interest of the Company and your own.’96 Then he sent the Wolf to mobilise his troops.
By this stage, Ellis had at his command 300 Europeans and 2,500 sepoys. On 23 June, the anniversary of Plassey, Surgeon Anderson of the Patna factory wrote in his diary, ‘The gentlemen of the factory learned that a strong detachment of [the Wolf’s] horse and sepoys were on the march to Patna, so that a war seemed inevitable. They thought it best to strike the first stroke, by possessing themselves of the city of Patna.’ The place where they planned their insurrection against Mughal rule was exactly the spot where they had offered their fealty to Shah Alam only eighteen months earlier.
All day on the 24th, frantic preparations were made: bamboo scaling ladders were roped together, arms were stacked and cleaned, powder and shot prepared. The cannon were attached to harness and the horses were made ready. Just after midnight, the sepoys and the Company’s own traders took their muskets and paraded, outside the main factory building, under arms.97
At one o’clock on the morning of the 25th, the factory gates swung open and Ellis marched his sepoys out of the compound and began his assault on the sleeping city of Patna. The Company and the Mughals were once again at war.
* The modern equivalences of these sums are: £1,200,000 = £126 million; £200,000 = £21 million.
** £25,000 = £2,625,000; £43,000 = £4,515,000; £2,500 = £262,500.
* Though the fact that Gibbon was five years younger, born 1737 while Hastings was born 1732, sadly makes this story probably apocryphal.
* The modern equivalences of these sums are: £50,000 = over £5 million; £150,000 = almost £16 million.
* Almost £20 million today.
** £390 million today.
* The modern equivalences of these sums are: £325,000 = £34 million; Rs1,800 = £23,400.
* Ryot in the original text. I have substituted ‘farmer’ throughout.
† The word in the original text is dastak. I have substituted ‘pass’ throughout.
* £32.5 million today.
5
Bloodshed and Confusion
The Company sepoys formed into two bodies and fanned out across the town. One group made for the city walls. There they raised their scaling ladders and shinned silently up onto the wall-walks. Quickly and noiselessly they took all the bastions, bayoneting the small parties of sleeping guards that lay draped over their weapons in each chhatri-covered turret.
The second party, under Ellis, headed with the artillery down the main street of the Patna bazaar. After a mile or so they began encountering musket fire, intermittent at first, then heavier, from the rooftops and gatehouses of the havelis. But they pressed swiftly on, and just before sunrise blew the fort gates and stormed into the old Mughal fort: ‘As they entered the fortress, they fell on the soldiers, half of them asleep, some awake in their improvised sniper-holes,’ wrote the historian Mohammad Ali Khan Ansari. ‘They killed many, though a few crawled to safety in corners.’
The sepoys then opened the west gate of the citadel and let in the remainder of their forces who were waiting outside. Again they divided into two columns and advanced along the road to the Diwan quarter and its market. The city governor was in the citadel, and as soon as he realised the disaster that was unfolding, rushed with his troops to confront the English, and met them near the bazaar. Here there were heavy casualties on both sides.
In the first moments, one of the Governor’s commanders bravely pressed forward and was wounded by a fierce volley of grape shot. The rest of the troops, seeing this, stampeded and fled. The Governor had no choice but to escape by the Eastern Gate, hoping to reach Mir Qasim in Monghyr and bring him news of the coup. His wounded commander meanwhile managed to reach the [Mughal] Chihil Sutun palace [within the fort] and bar the gate behind him, to sit it out and wait for another day on which to fight.
The English now had the city in their hands. Their army scum – dark, low-caste sepoys from Telengana – set about plundering goods from shops, dispersing across the city, pillaging the homes of innocent citizens.1
Finding all opposition at an end except from the citadel, which was now entirely surrounded, Ellis gave his men leave to sack the city thoroughly, ‘which turned their courage into avarice, and every one of them thought of nothing but skulking off with whatever they could get’.2 The Company factors meanwhile headed back to the factory for breakfast. ‘Everybody was quite fatigued,’ commented Surgeon Anderson, ‘having marched through thick blood.’3
Unknown to the Company factors, however, just three miles beyond Patna, the fleeing Governor ran into a large body of reinforcements, consisting of four platoons of Mir Qasim’s New Army. These the Nawab had sent from Monghyr by forced marches under General Markar, one of his senior Armenian commanders, as soon he was alerted by his spies to the preparations for the imminent coup. ‘They marched as fast as they could,’ wrote Ghulam Hussain Khan, ‘and taking their route by the waterside they reached the city’s Eastern gate, which they prepared to assault directly.’
The English, without being dismayed, opened the gate. They placed two cannon upon the bridge that cro
ssed the fosse, and ranging themselves in a line, prepared to receive the enemy. But one of Markar’s men, who had out-marched his commander, put himself at the head of his men and attacked the English with a discharge of rockets and a volley of musketry. He instantly broke the Company line. The English fell back towards their factory, disheartened by their loss. The Governor, animated by this success, exhorted his commanders to pursue them hotly. On hearing of the disaster, the other Company troops who were yet stationed on the towers and ramparts, were confounded, lost their usual courage, and fled on all sides. Victory was declared for Mir Qasim, and the ramparts and towers were cleared and recovered.4
The Company troops were soon heavily outnumbered, their discipline broken and their factory surrounded and besieged. As the factory was overlooked by the city walls, it was quickly found to be indefensible. Ellis soon abandoned the position and led his men out through the water gate and ‘so managed to embark in a series of barges with around three platoons of their troops, and sailed westward towards the border with Avadh’, hoping to escape into neutral territory.
But they did not get far. When they reached Chhapra, their boats were attacked by the faujdar of Saran. Shortly afterwards, [Mir Qasim’s German commander] Sumru [Walter Reinhardt] also caught up with them, having arrived by forced marches from his encampment at Buxar, along with a few thousand of his sepoys. Surrounded and outnumbered, they had no option but to throw down their arms. All were taken prisoner. Sumru brought the shackled English prisoners to the prison within Monghyr Fort. Mir Qasim then wrote to all his officials and military personnel that every Englishman, wherever found, must be arrested at once.5
The Anarchy Page 23