Clive

by Robert Harvey

  But while Muzaffar Jang was away in the Carnatic, another contender for the throne of the Deccan – the much bigger prize – had seized power in its capital, Hyderabad, a hundred miles inland: this was Nasir Jang. Dupleix spurred his Indian allies to attack him; but they were fearful; instead, in May 1750, Nasir Jang attacked them with a colossal army of 200,000–300,000 fighting men, and some 800,000 camp followers. The perimeter of his camp was 20 miles long.

  As spectators, the British watched powerlessly and with alarm as this desperate battle for territory was fought out. The fleet had long since left, and the garrisons at Fort St George and Fort St David were, as usual, under strength. Once again, Dupleix bestrode the land. Feebly, Stringer Lawrence was despatched with a small force to support Nasir Jang, and a few soldiers were sent to assist Muhammad Ali at Trichinopoly. Nasir Jang inflicted a major defeat on his French-sponsored rivals, taking Muzaffar Jang prisoner, while Chanda Sahib was forced to take refuge at the French settlement at Pondicherry. Dupleix, it seemed, had suffered a serious setback and his intrigues had come to nothing.

  However, during the autumn Dupleix, through Madame’s friends, established contact with dissidents in Nasir Jang’s camp; and in December the new ruler was assassinated. Muzaffar Jang was proclaimed the new Nawab of the Deccan. He rode to embrace his French friends at Pondicherry amidst great festivities, showering them with money and diamonds. Dupleix was appointed Muzaffar Jang’s deputy in the south, and the new Indian ruler of southern India rode to Hyderabad to take up his inheritance.

  Remnants of forces loyal to the murdered Nasir Jang ambushed Muzaffar Jang’s cavalcade, however, and he was killed. The commander of the French force accompanying him, Charles, Marquis de Bussy, realised the situation was desperate again, and set aside the claims of the slain prince’s young sons in favour of his uncle, Salabat Jang, a French protégé. De Bussy personally stayed on at his court to ensure his loyalty. In effect the French now controlled all of southern India under a puppet ruler, and the British settlements along the Coromandel coast were desperately at risk again.

  * * *

  It is hard to defend the extraordinary shortsightedness of the men who ran the British enclaves up to that point. Committed only to commercial gain, incapable of doing more politically than to curl up in a ball and pretend that nothing was happening outside their settlements, parsimonious in cutting their defences to the bone, they had already managed to lose one settlement (only regained through a peace treaty with France in Europe), barely hung on to their other fort, failed to dislodge the French at Pondicherry with superior numbers, and were now, having learnt nothing, wholly unprepared to resist what was virtually a French occupation of all of southern India.

  Inside Fort St David, life carried on in a strange spirit of panic and cheerful unreality. Governor Floyer, a portly, genial man addicted to cards, was thrown into confusion by the French encirclement, about which he could do nothing, having fewer than 1,000 troops, half Europeans, half sepoys. Fortunately Floyer was replaced by a much tougher governor, Thomas Saunders, in September 1750. Ironically, this occurred because the Reverend Fordyce, who had so incensed Clive, had, out of revenge, informed the East India Company of Floyer’s addiction to gambling.

  Taciturn, aloof and authoritarian, Saunders was to show coolness and good judgement – but not enough to ignore an edict from the East India Company in London (as usual a year behind developments in southern India) substantially cutting Stringer Lawrence’s salary. The short-fused major stormed off in a huff, catching the next boat out and leaving the English garrison virtually devoid of good commanders. Lawrence’s misfortune was to give Clive his opportunity.

  Saunders from the first understood the threat posed by Dupleix. Most of the rest of the English community preferred to bury their heads in the sand: the endless round of balls, picnics, flirtation, scandal and affairs continued in the little settlement, as though it were possible to ignore the wars raging outside.

  The few enclaves that were holding out against the French and their allies were in an increasingly desperate plight. They were concentrated around Muhammad Ali at Trichinopoly. Saunders appointed Captain Rudolph de Guingens, a Swiss mercenary, to command a force of British soldiers to go to the Indian prince’s help before a huge army assembled by the French-sponsored Chanda Sahib attempted to crush this last holdout. Trichinopoly was the last bastion of opposition to the new French empire.

  Robert Clive, now a civilian, was appointed Commissary, with the job of organising supplies to the forces. As Steward, he was a natural choice for the job, and showed in what high regard he was held for his commercial ability and organisational qualities. Far from being just the martial man sneered at by his enemies, he would probably have succeeded as well in business as in war.

  His responsibility was to find provisions for a moving army. The job involved constant exhortation, negotiation with merchants, and, one suspects, an immense amount of bullying, both of his own subordinates and of Indian traders. Although Clive was to show humanity and moderation in later life, he had to be tough and hardnosed in such an office, and his violent temper and impulsive decisiveness stood him in good stead, as did his energy.

  Yet for a man of his martial inclinations, the job was hugely frustrating, as he could take no part in military decisions. De Guingens from the first proved to be sublimely incompetent. According to Dalton, he was ‘a man of unfortunately jealous temper which made him mistrust the goodwill of any who affected to give him advice’.

  Two months later, after a hard and arduous march, still 38 miles from Trichinopoly, the British first spied a huge French-led force outside the fort of Valikondapuram. De Guingens’s small army was immediately joined by a detachment sent by Muhammad Ali, but he was still heavily outnumbered. For two weeks the rival armies glowered at each other, trying to persuade the fort’s commander to take sides.

  At length de Guingens’s patience wore out, and he started to cannonade the old walls, to little effect. The following day, the French could be seen slowly advancing. Instead of moving forward, de Guingens held a council of war. The officers present recoiled at the prospect of taking on a much superior enemy, and many of the men refused to fight. A few officers, including Clive, urged de Guingens to fight, while Muhammad Ali ridiculed the British for cowardice.

  The order to retreat was given, and British supplies were abandoned in a headlong retreat into the comparative safety of Trichinopoly. The British had faced the enemy, and run away. The message this sent was unequivocal: the British were not a force to be reckoned with in India. The French could frighten them away just by their approach. Any wavering Indian princes should make their peace with the superior power at once.

  Clive watched the disorganised, humiliating rout from his horse. With a group of others, he sought permission to return to Fort St David, where his talents could be better employed. At the hotheaded age of 25 he was seething at this further humiliation for British arms; the military record of the past five years had been one of complete failure. He and his small party galloped for days back along the dusty roads that they had marched down so wearily weeks before.

  In a state of high fury, dust-caked, sweating and sun-cooked, he went straight to the governor and offered to join the army, without pay, if he was given the rank of captain. For a rising star in the commercial world of Fort St David, this was an unprecedented sacrifice. Clive wanted a rank in which he would have a real command, and was ready to sacrifice his enormous commercial prospects. He understood something the bloated, partying burghers of the Company did not: that under the present military leadership, the British cause in India would be lost, and there would be no profits at all for anyone but the French.

  Saunders had had a low opinion of Clive’s mentor, Lawrence: the cold, calculating governor was the polar opposite of the strutting, self-important but highly competent military commander. He had distrusted Clive as Lawrence’s protégé. But he was struck by Clive’s extraordinary offer, and was so
short of officer material that he agreed.

  Clive was now ordered to accompany a small convoy of supplies to Trichinopoly, headed by George Pigot, a tough but friendly companion of Clive’s. Some 40 miles out, the expedition came to the relief of a force being besieged by Chanda Sahib’s forces. With this modest success of British arms accomplished, Clive and Pigot were ordered to return to Fort St David. After a few miles, their tiny force of twenty-six was attacked by a large body of horsemen. While their escorts fought bravely, Clive and Pigot, on fast horses, outran their pursuers.

  Clive was promptly given new orders: to lead reinforcements that had arrived from England to swell the garrison at Trichinopoly. Once again, he embarked upon the long road, surviving a minor skirmish with French troops. He arrived to see the town clustered around its famous rock in an extensive plain littered with the vast spread of Chanda Sahib’s besieging army.

  It proved easy enough to find an undefended way through to reach the garrison. There the situation was serious, though not yet desperate. Muhammad Ali had some 60 English and 2,000 Indian troops. Chanda Sahib had some 800 French and 20,000 Indian troops. De Guingens combined prickliness with appalling leadership. The British were quarrelling among themselves. The treasury was nearly depleted and supplies were low.

  CHAPTER 6

  Arcot

  Clive now for the first time properly met the young Indian prince he had glimpsed on an elephant at Fort St George five years before. Pale, somewhat mannered and dandified, yet possessed of considerable intelligence and bravery, Muhammad Ali impressed Clive more than his fellow European officers. The young prince took the Englishman apart to suggest a desperate ruse to draw off his besiegers: an attack at the enemy’s heart, the Carnatic’s capital, Arcot, where Chanda Sahib had left very few forces. Muhammad Ali was obsessed with the idea. De Guingens had already refused to do this.

  Clive, repelled by de Guingens and his strutting, quarrelling, idle officers holed up in the fort poormouthing Muhammad Ali and his officers, stayed only a few days before once again spurring his horse back along the two weeks’ hard ride to Fort St David. He was entirely persuaded by the boldness of the plan and by the subtlety and intelligence of the prince.

  It was the only hope the English had of escaping a desperate situation; for if Trichinopoly fell, Dupleix would next devour their coastal settlements. These had far too few troops to relieve Trichinopoly, or defend themselves. Only a fantastic propaganda coup or confidence trick, like the seizure of Arcot, the poorly defended enemy capital, could break the spell of Chanda Sahib and the French.

  Clive sought an immediate audience with Saunders and the council. It was a plan that was irresponsible in the extreme, to reduce Fort St David of half its garrison on a wild adventure into the heartland of India. But the governor agreed, and appointed Clive to lead the expedition: he was very junior, but there were no other volunteers.

  Saunders stripped his garrison to just 100 men, giving Clive command of 130 Europeans and around 100 sepoys. The little army was shipped to Madras, where it was reinforced by 80 men and 400 sepoys, leaving just 50 to guard Fort St George. The British settlements had been effectively denuded of their forces, and the tiny army set out on what must have seemed a hopeless, quixotic attempt to strike at the very heartland of the enemy while their overwhelming forces were away strangling the last redoubt of opposition at Trichinopoly.

  There were to be few greater expeditions in the history of British arms. The 600 who rode down the Valley of Death in the Crimea a hundred years later went down in posterity as an example of bravery – and bungling. Clive’s 700 – reduced to 300 in the actual defence of Arcot – are much less popularly celebrated, but their feat was achieved against far greater odds. It was an example of staggering boldness, resolution and, above all, endurance. Perhaps it was only their success that was to diminish their achievement in the eyes of their fellow countrymen. The British – like the Japanese – respect the nobility of failure.

  Clive had just eight officers, all of them civilian volunteers from the Company, including his old friend John Pybus, as well as Bulkley, who like Clive had seen action, and a surgeon, Dr Wilson. Clive later described his own Englishmen as ‘the scum and refuse of England’, many of them ex-convicts or pressed into service; the Indian sepoys had received only the most rudimentary training. They had just three field-pieces between them.

  The British soldiers wore colourful red uniforms, which must have been suffocating in the heat of southern India, while the Indians were more sensibly clad in shirts and shorts. Mark Bence-Jones has a fine description of their progress:

  They must have been a strange mixture of East and West, the European soldiers in red, the sepoys in ordinary Indian shirts with bare legs and marching to the beat of tom-toms. They marched through the dust of the Choultry Plain, a vast expanse of orange-coloured sand dotted with scrub and tall cactus, with distant grey hillocks to the left. Every now and then there was a village of straw huts, smelling of smoke, surrounded by scattered palm trees and inhabited not only by humans and cattle but also by grey monkeys with pink faces.

  Peter Holt tells a delightful story about Clive’s training methods: ‘Clive was having difficulty teaching his Indian sepoys their left and their right. So he tied pieces of cloth to their left legs and palm leaves to their right legs. The Tamil for cloth is seelay and for palm leaves is wallay. Leg in Tamil is kal. Then Clive marched his soldiers up and down and they all shouted “Seelay kal, wallay kal, seelay kal, wallay kal.”’

  After a while the ground became paler and more like desert. They had 64 miles to go and the heat was intense. But they marched quickly. By the third day they had travelled 40 miles and were in sight of the great pagoda of Conjeveeram, which rose out of the plain, flanked by two smaller pagodas.

  Clive himself looked at his most impressive. Just twenty-six, ruddied by the Indian sun, his face leathered by numerous hard cross-country rides, his features were set in a mixture of determination and strength, the jutting chin, sensitive yet resolute mouth and piercing eyes emanating purpose. Although he had put on a little weight, his frame was tall and strong, his bearing erect, that of a leader of men.

  He was a man of few words (unless relaxing with friends), instant appreciation of a situation, and rapid decision-making. Completely unbending in enforcing discipline and in pushing his men to the limits of their endurance – as on this march, when he forced them along at a cracking pace (although the decision to move at night was less harsh than it seemed; it was better to rest in the intense heat of midday) – he was not unpopular with his men. He was not unapproachable or excessively severe. He was fair-minded, although he could be hot-tempered. When they rested, he would relax convivially with his friends, although never to the point of drunkenness or loss of self-control.

  Merely to have such a man in charge was a remarkable change after the dismal litany of past commanders in India. He modelled himself on that other popular and able, but much vainer, commander, Stringer Lawrence. Impatient, tough and bold, Clive cannot have been overconfident, for he had never led a large body of men into action, and the enterprise before him – to carry the battle right into the heart of a vastly larger enemy camp – was extremely hazardous.

  But he could do no worse than men like de Guingens; and, like Saunders, he understood that the very future of British India depended on the success of the expedition. He did not consider it a rash undertaking, because there was no alternative.

  Clive now put on a dazzling display of his abilities. He had learnt how to supply an army when he accompanied the force to Trichinopoly. He used the same organisational skill to chivvy, bully, cajole and encourage his men to move at astonishing speed through the summer heat. Using remarkably rapid horse couriers, Clive kept in constant touch both with Saunders at Fort St David and his deputy, Richard Prince, at Madras. The latter employed his own intelligence and organisational skills to keep Clive’s forces supplied.

  When Clive learnt that the garris
on at Arcot was stronger than expected, he was undaunted: he requested that Prince send him two eighteen-pound guns. Clive’s breakneck speed was essential for surprise; any delay, and reinforcements could be brought up to the garrison, which had undoubtedly heard of Clive’s progress from its own scouts. Without waiting for the guns, he spurred his small army forward.

  On 31 August, the searing tropical heat, which had turned from dust-dry to humid and menacing, suddenly ignited into a violent electrical storm. The rain poured all day, but to Clive it was a godsend: the garrison would not be expecting him to march on and, if he pushed through regardless, he would surprise Chanda Sahib’s men.

  He spurred his men on with unflinching resolve. As thunder and lightning raged about them, they trudged through dust turned to mud, soaked to the skin. By nightfall, when they made camp, they were already in the hills near Arcot and could see the peaks of the distant mountains of the interior. With only ten miles to go, they approached Arcot warily, sending forward an advance guard. There were no soldiers to intercept them.

  Arcot was a walled city set in a spectacular location, a cluster of mud-brick dwellings, narrow streets and alleys huddled around the sprawling inner fort, with a backdrop of pleasant brown hills. They rode into it with great caution, expecting an attack at any moment. None came. The fort was overlooked by many houses, from which an ambush might occur. But the small party on horse – preparing for rapid retreat if necessary – reached the main gate unmolested, while the townspeople shouted a welcome.

  Showing great courage, they entered – and found the citadel empty. The 1,000-strong garrison had fled during the night. Its commanders had heard of the march through the monsoon – unheard of in India, as it defied the very gods themselves – and concluded that the British must have supernatural powers. Clive was unopposed.