Carnac had faced a wave of mutinies among his exhausted sepoys; but as they closed in on Patna, the cracks within the Mughal forces became apparent, too. Fights broke out between the naked Naga sadhus and the Pathans, with entire platoons coming close to bloodshed. Meanwhile, rumours began to spread among the commanders that Shah Alam was in secret communication with the Company: ‘His Majesty was utterly opposed to fighting the English,’ wrote Ansari, ‘so throughout these campaigns he took no part in deliberations or planning, and during the battles stood by to observe his warring vassals from a distance.’44
‘There was so little order and discipline amongst these troops,’ wrote Ghulam Hussain Khan, ‘and so little were the men accustomed to command, that in the very middle of the camp, they fought, killed and murdered each other, and went out a-plundering and a-marauding without the least scruple or the least control. No one would inquire into these matters; and those ungovernable men scrupled not to strip and kill the people of their own army if they chanced to lag behind their main, or to be found in some lonely spot. They behaved exactly like a troupe of highwaymen … carrying away every head of cattle they could discover.’45 ‘The plundering troops were so destructive that within a radius of ten miles they left no trace of prosperity, habitation or cultivation,’ added Ansari. ‘The common people were reduced to desperation.’46
The combined Mughal army finally arrived in front of the walls of Patna on 3 May 1764. At Shuja’s insistence, they went straight into battle. His most experienced advisers ‘begged the Nawab Vizier to oversee the battle from a distance, near His Majesty the Emperor, seated on his tall elephant from where he could be seen, like the beneficent, magnificent sun. Seeing him brave and calm overseeing the battle would encourage his troops to stay steady and not to lose heart.’
But Shuja, characteristically, would have none of it.
‘I am by far the most experienced in war,’ he said. ‘I cannot be kept standing still in one place, I must have the fleetest horse to reach, immediately, anywhere I am needed by my faithful troops!’ So he stationed himself and his crack troops at the front and centre, lining up his men in order. Then with his bravest troops he emerged from behind the cover of outlying buildings and slowly moved towards the English lines. A roar came up from the troops, and the dust from the charging horses’ hooves covered both earth and sky. The English lines appeared from a distance like a cloud of red and black, and bullets rained down on the Nawab Vizier’s troops like autumn leaves. They fell writhing and bloody in the dust, time after time, in great numbers.47
It was the Naga sadhus, ‘naked before and behind’, who bore the brunt of the fire. They were mown down in their hundreds, but high on their bhang (hash-ish), wave after wave kept running on towards the English entrenchments, regardless of the danger. Meanwhile, Mir Qasim and his troops kept their place to the rear, ‘standing far off behind the lines of Shuja’s troops, and merely observed the military action from a distance’.
The Nawab Vizier sent a message to Mir Qasim, saying: ‘I and your colleagues are in the heat of battle – at every moment, before my very eyes, my servants are offering up their lives like moths rushing to a candle-flame, while you do nothing but watch from a distance! Come and join the fight against the English, or if you’re incapable of doing that, at least send Sumru with his modern artillery!’ But his Bengali Highness appeared rooted to the spot and neither moved himself, nor sent Sumru to assist his ally.
As the day declined, the Gossains and Nagas continued their attack. Then it was the turn of the Rohillas who came to help them at the command of the Nawab Vizier. The battle was fierce, and English artillery fire blinding and terrifying. Skulls split and necks snapped, scattered over the blood-soaked battlefield, like a sward of wild red poppies and tulips. On every side there was deafening gunfire and flashing sword-blades, as if the hand of Fate were slapping the face of Time. But Major Carnac did not lose his nerve, and, like a Curse of Heaven, attacked those stony-hearted troops and left them writhing on the battlefield or despatched them to the Valley of Non-Existence.
The Nawab Vizier was wounded twice by bullets during this action, but paid no attention to his wounds. In the heat of the action, he sent another message, reviling His Bengali Highness, who replied: ‘Day has ended, it is time to go home to our tents! We can always resume tomorrow!’
Stranger even than this reply, was the wind: having blown all day westerly from behind Shuja’s troops, driving dust and straw into the eyes of the English force, it now suddenly veered and started blowing from the east, blinding the Nawab Vizier’s troops with thorns and rubbish, smoke and gunpowder from the battlefield. So it was that Shuja finally had the drums beaten and retired to have his wounds treated, and thought no more of fighting.48
The siege of Patna continued for another three weeks, through the intense heat of May. Surprised at the scale of the bloodshed and the savagery of the fighting they had just witnessed, both sides initially kept to their lines. If the battle had been inconclusive, so now was the siege.
Nevertheless, Shuja pressed the Company sepoys closely and put himself continually in danger, so much so that on one occasion, scouting a forward position with just two guards, he was recognised, chased and nearly captured by a Company patrol: ‘the Nawab Vizier could see himself falling prisoner into the clutches of his enemies, but, keeping his presence of mind, and tightly controlling the reins of his horse, he retreated at speed, till he had escaped this death-trap’.49 But for all Shuja’s bravery, Carnac’s men had had time to build elaborate and well-defended entrenchments, ‘that looked very much like a wall vomiting fire and flames’.50 All Shuja’s efforts achieved was to add to his sense of irritation and disgust at the lack of effort being made by his partners, especially Mir Qasim. This was not, he realised, the moment to take action against his guest; but he made note to do so when the occasion arose.
Of all Shuja’s allies, only the French adventurer René Madec really exerted himself: ‘I now found myself in a position to fight the English,’ wrote the Breton, ‘and to take revenge for all the wrongs they had done to me and to my fellow countrymen.’
We attacked their entrenchments with an energy they little expected, but they were so well fortified we were unable to storm them during the twenty days that our attacks lasted. The Nawab often exhorted me not to expose myself to such risks, but I followed only my zeal to destroy this nation which had destroyed mine. I strained every nerve to encompass their utter destruction, but was not supported by the others, so not everything on this campaign went according to my plans. At length, the approaching rains forced us to put off our operations till the next season’s campaign, and to look for winter quarters.51
On 14 June 1764, after three weeks of steady losses and no discernible gains, just as, unknown to Shuja’s Mughals, supplies were beginning to run out in the city and the battered and dispirited Carnac was actively considering surrender, Shuja suddenly tired of the siege and beat the kettledrums announcing withdrawal. He marched his troops westwards, through the first of the monsoon downpours, and settled on the banks of the Ganges at the fort of Buxar, close to the border with Avadh. Here he dug in, erected barracks and determined to continue with his invasion of Bengal when the campaign season began again in the autumn, after the festival of Dusshera. The exhausted Company defenders, aware of how narrowly they had been saved from an abject, starving surrender, declined to pursue Shuja’s forces.
But, rather than drilling his troops and actively preparing for the coming campaign, Shuja instead ‘sank again into a circle of entertainments, pleasures, and amusements, without once bestowing a thought on the necessary quantity of [cannon] balls, or their quality, or that of the powder; and without consulting anyone about the methods of fighting the enemy. He even declined listening to the requests of one of the officers of the artillery who wanted necessaries for their office. Upon all those subjects he was quite careless and inattentive, spending his time instead in playing at dice, in observing the fligh
t of his pigeons, looking at performances of his dance women, and amusing himself with pastimes of all sorts.’52
Only in one way did he take decisive action – and that was not against his Company enemies, but instead against his ally Mir Qasim, on whose inactivity he now publicly blamed the failure of the assault on Patna. He called in Mir Qasim’s commander, Sumru, and, with promises of wealth and estates, won over the German assassin. He then ordered him to strip the assets of Mir Qasim: ‘Sumru and all his troops surrounded His Highness’s tent and forcibly removed his treasure-chests. Sumru’s soldiers then set up camp with the troops of the Nawab Vizier.’
These incidents prompted Mir Qasim to give utterance, rather foolishly during his public audience, to some very unflattering remarks about the Nawab Vizier, which were duly reported back by spies. The Nawab Vizier at once ordered his troops to go and arrest His Highness in his camp and bring him back under armed escort.
In the morning the Nawab Vizier’s army went to surround His Bengali Highness’s tents, loading up whatever they could find in the women’s quarters or store-houses. Mir Qasim now despaired, and turned fakir, seeking refuge in a pretended fit of madness. He put on a vermilion red shirt and a hat, left his throne and went to squat on a mat in the middle distance, surrounded by some of his friends, whose wits had also altogether left them, and who also wore bright parti-coloured fools’ costumes, dervish-style. The soldiers of the camp pointed at them and hooted in derision. Before long the officer led Mir Qasim out to mount the elephant that had been brought for him, while he himself sat at the back of the howdah. Jeering crowds accompanied them to the Nawab Vizier’s encampment, where His Bengali Highness was locked away in the prison appointed for him.53
In the space of a few months, Mir Qasim had transformed from being one of the richest and most powerful rulers in India to become Shuja’s shackled and penniless prisoner.
Four months later, on 22 October, to the beat of regimental drums, the red coats of the first battalions of Company sepoys could be seen marching along the banks of the Ganges, through a succession of mango groves, closing in on Buxar. Reinforcements of Company sepoys and a single King’s regiment had arrived fresh from Calcutta, commanded by one of the most effective British officers in India, a dashing, cool-headed but utterly ruthless 38-year-old Scottish Highlander named Major Hector Munro.
Jean-Baptiste Gentil, who was now in charge of Shuja’s infantry, rode straight over to the Nawab and urged immediate action: ‘I am well-acquainted with the English and their methods of warfare,’ he said. ‘You should not under-estimate them. Rather, wake up now, stop indulging in intoxicating pleasures, and get your troops ready!’
Now that the English have not yet lined up in battle-order, now that the barges have not yet drawn up along the river to unload their weapons and military equipment, now that they are all busy putting up their tents – now is the moment to attack! God Almighty may allow us to defeat and disperse them now. If we wait till they’ve settled in, it will be difficult to get the upper hand!’ But the Nawab Vizier merely laughed and boasted, ‘You’d better leave the tactics and strategy of dealing with this lot to me, and to my judgement!’54
That night, Shuja sent his women and treasure back to his capital of Faizabad under guard, while his troops slept under arms, alert for the sort of night attack for which the Company was now feared. But no such attack materialised. Shuja’s original plan seems to have been to fight a defensive battle from behind the cover of his entrenchments, just as the Company had done before Patna. But during the course of that morning, seeing how far he outnumbered the Company troops, he changed his mind and decided to fight an offensive battle. ‘Munro had drawn up his troops in battle order at dawn,’ wrote Ansari, ‘and started firing his artillery, inflicting much damage on his enemies. This persuaded the Nawab Vizier to change his battle plan, counting it better to come out from behind the earthworks, and fight with his cavalry in the open.’55
So it was that Shuja ordered an advance out of his strong defensive position, to the surprise of Munro, who initially did not believe his runners’ reports: he could not understand why Shuja would throw away such an immense defensive advantage. Shortly afterwards, Madec’s heavy artillery opened up, and was answered by the lighter, more mobile and faster firing cannon of the Company: ‘The English and the French, like tigers or leopards, keenly started the struggle,’ noted Ansari, ‘with flashing swords and blazing guns.’56
By nine o’clock, the two armies were lined up facing each other, with a marsh between them, and the wide, flat expanse of the Ganges flanking the Mughal left wing. Shuja’s Naga and Afghan cavalry, who had been placed on the right of the Mughal line, opened the battle by swinging around the marsh, wheeling to Munro’s rear and attacking the back of the Company’s formation, where the Grenadiers were stationed.
Before long, the Company flank had broken and Shuja’s cavalry were through the Grenadiers and in among the reserves, slashing left and right: as Lieutenant Gabriel Harper wrote later: ‘I fancy had but one or two thousand of the enemy’s cavalry behaved as well as those that attacked the Grenadiers, we should have lost the day … The chance was more than once against us, and I am of the opinion the sepoys would not have been able to stand the cannonade five minutes longer than they did.’57 But once the Mughal cavalry had broken through, they carried on into the Company camp, where they put to flight the irregular cavalry guarding the baggage, the treasure and the ammunition. Then they promptly dismounted and began to loot. Thereafter they were lost to Shuja’s control and played no further part in the battle.
In the end it was, as ever, the superior discipline of the Company’s troops that won them the day. Munro liked to remind his troops that ‘regular discipline and strict obedience to orders is the only superiority that Europeans possess in this country’, and the events that day proved him right.58 Despite the loss of their baggage and ammunition, Munro’s sepoys grimly held their squares, even while suffering unprecedented casualties from the concentrated artillery fire aimed at them from Madec and Sumru’s heavy guns.
The first English prisoners now began to be brought bound before Shuja, who assumed he had already won the day. He ordered fanfares of victory to be sounded, whereupon several commanders left their posts to present their compliments. It was Gentil, who was with Shuja in the centre of the Mughal line, who saw with a sinking heart what happened next: ‘It seemed as if the English were completely beaten,’ he wrote. ‘They had lost their ammunition and food stores, as well as all their baggage and their treasury for military expenses.’
Munro, having recognised his own defeat, sent orders for the supply barges to approach the battlefield as soon as possible, as the English army had no option of retreat other than by river. But there was a long delay in carrying out these orders, and meanwhile the Mughal cavalry was busy pillaging the English camp, instead of harrying their enemy and giving the English no respite. Seeing this, Munro, having lost everything, made a desperate charge against the troops on our left wing.59
Realising his moment had come, Munro galloped down his line, braving the volleys of shot aimed at him by the Mughal guns, waving his hat and ordering a general advance. ‘By this bravura act of desperation,’ wrote Gentil, ‘Munro became master of the same battlefield which he believed he had been forced to abandon only a few moments earlier.’60 The Company sepoys ‘had already started to retreat,’ wrote Madec, ‘thinking they were lost. They would all have fled, had they had the means. But it was just because they did not have the means to escape that they plucked up their courage, and, seeing our left wing towards the Ganges under-staffed and unsupported, charged it with a reckless bravery that has few parallels.’61
Shuja, unable to believe the sudden change of fortune, held his ground, determined to rally his troops. ‘He imagined himself already holding the lovely figure of Victory in his embrace, and suddenly he saw himself, as if in a mirror, choking in the arms of that incubus, Defeat. He remained rooted to the spot
, staring disbelievingly at this horrid and sudden transformation.’ As the Mughal lines dissolved around him, it was the Naga chieftain Anupgiri, though himself badly wounded in the thigh, who persuaded Shuja ud-Daula to escape: ‘This is not the moment for an unprofitable death!’ he said. ‘We will easily win and take revenge another day.’62 Resolving to live, Shuja cantered to the bridge of boats he had thrown across the river, while the naked Nagas fought a fierce rearguard action behind him. As soon as Shuja, Sumru and he had all crossed it, the Naga leader ordered it to be destroyed behind him.
This stopped the Company’s advance, but also doomed those of his troops who had failed to make it across – notably the brave Naga rearguard. They tried to wade across the mudflats, where they were picked off by the Company sepoys now lining the riverbanks. ‘Vast numbers were endeavouring to cross the deep, muddy river that flowed behind the camp,’ wrote Ghulam Hussain Khan, ‘but they stuck in the mire and lost their lives to the artillery and succession of volleys which the Telingas [sepoys] were endlessly pouring on the flying enemy …’63
Now it was the turn of the Company troops to enrich themselves: ‘Everything belonging to the Vizier or his officers, such as tents, furniture, and other property fell prey to the victors,’ wrote Ghulam Hussain Khan. ‘Numerous shops of bankers, full of silver and gold coin, and tents of merchants, replete with precious stuffs were rifled in an instant. Two hundred pieces of artillery were taken possession of, so that the English troops made an immense booty … God only knows the wealth which must have existed in that army! There were immense riches in that camp, such as might have vied with the very capital of Hindustan.’64
Buxar was a short and confused battle, but a bloody one: Company forces lost 850 killed, wounded or missing, of the 7,000 men they brought to the field – more than an eighth of their total; Mughal losses were many times higher, perhaps as many as 5,000 dead. For a long time the day’s outcome was uncertain. But for all this, it was still, ultimately, one of the most decisive battles in Indian history, even more so than the more famous Battle of Plassey seven years earlier.
The Anarchy Page 26