Clive had organised his tiny force to fire, and then hand back their muskets to loaders who would promptly pass on another gun, so as to make use of both his active and inactive soldiers. This concentrated fire at last caused the attackers to waver. Meanwhile grenades were being hurled from the ramparts at the second line of enemy troops.
At the north-west breach, the leader of the assailing forces, Abdul Kodah Khan, led his troops forward across the moat and to the first trench, waving his flag – before being struck by a bullet and knocked into the water below. Beside the other breach, the moat was still deep, and the attackers had launched a raft with some 70 men on it. This came under intense fire from two small English guns. Clive himself grabbed one of them and raked the vessel with the most accurate shots, causing the men on board to panic and capsize the raft. The moat was soon full of struggling figures under fire.
The French, meanwhile, were nowhere to be seen. The French commander, Goupil, had disapproved of Raza Sahib’s decision to storm the fort, and had kept aloof. By now wave after wave of brave if undisciplined attacks had been driven off, and Raza Sahib decided to withdraw. His men tried to return to retrieve the bodies of the dead, a custom traditionally allowed by the enemy in India. But the British fired as they advanced, driving them back, either mistaking them for a new assault or as part of a deliberate tactic by Clive to terrify the enemy.
It was just before dawn, and the fierce fight, which had seemed interminable, had only lasted an hour. Robert Orme, Clive’s first biographer, described how the British were ‘left to gaze at each other in the first garish brilliance of the suddenly uplifted sun’.
The scene must have been eerie. The screams, battle chants and trumpets, the yells and groans of conflict had been replaced by the moans of the dying. Around 300 of the enemy lay strewn outside the wall; just four British soldiers had been killed and two Indians wounded. It had been a testament to the incredible difficulty of storming a well-defended fort, as well as to Clive’s leadership.
Even so, the young captain, while triumphant and exhausted, could hardly afford to rest on his laurels. The enemy was almost certainly regrouping for another attack; they had a manpower reserve of some 15,000 fighters. The next attack could not be long in coming. If they kept up the pressure, Clive’s exhausted men could hardly keep up the resistance indefinitely.
Two hours later a relentless barrage of musket and cannon fire began. This was presumably the softening up needed to deter his men from manning the ramparts again. Clive embarked on his rounds again, cheering up his men and cajoling them, checking on the defences. After more than four hours the relentless bombardment, which had set all of them on edge, ceased, and a small party arrived under a white flag requesting permission to carry off the dead, who were decomposing under the intense midday sun. The request was granted.
Two hours later the pounding began again. The exhausted garrison rested as best it could. The relentless bombardment continued for a full twelve hours; Clive imagined the enemy were seeking to exhaust the garrison mentally in preparation for the next assault. When it ceased at last at two in the morning, the jangled nerves of Clive and his men were tensed for the attack. All night they watched and waited for the next pre-dawn assault.
When the sun rose a second time, there was no sign of the enemy, although their guns and baggage were strewn before the fort. They had left the city, and the bombardment had been a cover to allow them to retire in good order, in case the formidable enemy within the fort sallied out to attack them.
They knew, too, what Clive did not: that Kilpatrick was on his way; he arrived the same afternoon. The Marathas, too, were nearby. ‘You would never believe that four or five hundred beggarly Marathas would make M. Goupil decide to raise the siege,’ railed Dupleix afterwards. But it was indeed all over. Clive’s dusty, jaded, feverish, nerve-shattered forces were able to collapse in relief.
As one of them wrote, they experienced ‘unbounded joy when we heard Captain Kilpatrick was within a few hours’ march … Thus did providence disappoint our fears and relieve us from the dread necessity of starving or submitting to the terms of merciless barbarians. And Captain Kilpatrick’s command joined us in the afternoon. We fully and unmolested enjoyed the fruits of the earth so long denied us … and solaced ourselves with the pleasing reflection of having maintained the character of Britons in a clime so remote from our own.’
CHAPTER 7
The Chase
Some 75 days after entering Arcot, more than 50 days of intensive siege were over. It had been one of the most astonishing feats of British arms and leadership ever undertaken: a 26-year-old with just 200 men defending a sprawling fortress with crumbling defences and two great breaches in the walls had prevailed against an army of 15,000 men. It was the first great triumph of British arms in the history of India, after a succession of lacklustre efforts seemed to have relegated Britain to the status of a second-class, even non-existent, power.
The repercussions in India of Arcot were far more significant than appeared at first. Both Clive and Kilpatrick, although blessing their good fortune in battle, realised that they still faced a far more numerous enemy, which had departed the city almost intact. Yet for Chanda Sahib, viceroy of the Carnatic, to have not just lost his capital by fluke, but then been unable to retake it, was a massive blow to his prestige among his fellow Indian princes.
Up to Arcot, the British in India had appeared to be the poor relations of the French, outshone by them in courage, fighting ability, commercial skill and magnificence. The British had staged one successful defence of Fort St David – or they would have been driven out of southern India – and suffered a string of disasters: the loss of Madras and Fort St George; the humiliating failure to capture Pondicherry with vastly superior forces; and their failure to break the siege of Trichinopoly.
Clive’s victory at Arcot for the first time impressed upon the Indian princes that the British might be a match for the French after all. None had believed that he could possibly hold out against far superior forces backed by French troops and artillery.
It was a remarkable feat in itself, and doubly remarkable for a young man at the beginning of his military career.
The nature of Clive’s ability as a commander was also revealed for the first time. He had shown remarkable proof of generalship. Constantly chivvying his men, inspiring them, determined and skilful in the deployment of his limited resources, keeping up their morale through prodding the enemy and reassuring his troops that help was on the way, he had demonstrated formidable ability.
* * *
He was now exhausted, physically and mentally; he had been drained by his responsibility. But he knew that he could not rest yet, he must consolidate his position. He had won only the first battle, not the war. After spending a fortnight recovering at Arcot, now plentifully supplied with food and drink, he marched to liaise with the Marathas.
One minor fort after another surrendered to his forces before he met up with 1,000 or so Maratha cavalry under the command of Morari Rao’s brother, Buzangara, a swashbuckling rogue, the nearest equivalent to a pirate on land, even by the standards of his people. Buzangara’s horse had split into small groups and were plundering and terrorising the countryside in the absence of central authority. However, Raza Sahib caught Buzangara himself in an ambush, and forced him to abandon his booty.
In fury, and also in the hope of further plunder, Buzangara joined up with Clive at last. Clive’s objective was now to attack Raza Sahib’s army while it was still demoralised, and before French reinforcements could be hurried up. The enemy army had retired to the large and imposingly sinister fortress of Vellore. Clive’s chances of launching an attack with any prospect of success seemed hopeless. A prostitute employed as a spy by Clive was murdered in the temple of this forbidding grey buttress.
However, as Clive rode at the head of his force of 200 British soldiers, 300 sepoys and some 600 Marathas – the rest having gone off on a plundering expedition, the lat
ter naked save for turbans and loincloths, and riding horses drugged with opium – he learnt that Raza Sahib had left Vellore to meet up with French reinforcements.
He urged his men forward to intercept the enemy now that they were beyond the security of the fortress; the Indian commander had made an appalling blunder in thus exposing his men. The British marched the whole night, and the two forces came into contact on 3 December near the town of Arni, some 20 miles south of Arcot. This time it was the enemy, stronger in numbers and self-confident under French generalship, that turned to give battle.
Clive drew his men up in a skilfully defensive position of his own choosing – on a small hill just behind flooded rice fields with only a narrow causeway for access. On the right he deployed his sepoys in the shelter of a small village, and on the left the Maratha cavalry in a palm grove.
The French and Indian forces advanced at midday. There were some 300 French troops, 2,500 Indian infantry and 2,000 cavalry. The enemy moved forward under cover from several cannon blasting at the British position: Clive’s artillery fire, straight down the slope, proved more effective. The advance guard of the French had no option but to move along the causeway with their artillery. There they were easy targets for Clive’s guns.
As the enemy approached the village they came under intense musket fire from the sepoys, and the infantry soon abandoned the causeway to take shelter in the lower rice fields, where they became bogged down, still under fire. Panic set in and they floundered about in disarray and retreated.
To the left, however, things were not going so well. A large contingent of Raza Sahib’s troops had advanced towards the Maratha position. As the soldiers moved forward, the Marathas bravely launched one cavalry charge after another, being beaten back by the well-disciplined French-led troops five times.
Clive ordered Bulkley forward with two cannon to support them; in the rush, the ammunition was forgotten, and Clive had to order Bulkley and his men to retreat to fetch it – but to do so slowly, as though changing position, so as not to give the impression that the British were retreating. Puzzled by the manoeuvre, the French commanders assumed that Clive had ordered reinforcements to capture their guns which were now exposed on the causeway and undefended by artillery. Raza Sahib ordered part of his force away from the left flank to secure the guns.
This gave the Marathas the breakthrough they sought and, with Bulkley’s help, they launched a successful attack on the French and Indian cavalry, driving them back. The sepoys now launched an attack upon the French reinforcements sent to protect the guns, who were already trapped in a hail of musket fire from the protected positions in the village. Clive ordered the remainder of his forces on the hill forward and battled the enemy down the causeway on which, because of the restricted width, their superiority in numbers was of no use. The French and Indians fought back furiously, trying to make a stand three times, but were relentlessly pushed back.
The Marathas meanwhile forced the enemy back on the left flank, and succeeded in capturing Raza Sahib’s war chest of 100,000 rupees; the Maratha attacks continued during the night, when Clive’s forces broke off the assault.
* * *
When the sun rose the enemy was gone, their baggage and their dead and wounded strewn about the battlefield. Clive had won a major field battle against superior forces, both French and Indian, through good judgement, flexibility, and the careful placing and repositioning of his troops. Arcot had been a triumph of endurance, courage to the point of recklessness and leadership. Arni was a classical military victory accomplished through good tactics, discipline and resourcefulness. Clive had shown himself to be an excellent and steady field commander.
Clive’s military reputation was now rippling out among the Indians. Some 1,000 Indians sought to join his army, but he could only accept those that had weapons – around 600. Muhammad Ali labelled Clive Sabit Jang – ‘Steady in War’ – a great honour for a heathen. Some 200 British soldiers, 700 sepoys and 600 Maratha cavalry had put to flight 300 Frenchmen, 2,500 sepoys and 2,000 cavalry. No British or Marathas were killed; and there were just a dozen or so sepoy casualties. Around 200 of the enemy, 50 of them French, had been killed or seriously injured. In this battle both sides had been European-led and trained; this was no walkover against a cumbersome Indian army.
The enemy were now for the first time thrown on the defensive. Although still vastly superior numerically, they had twice been defeated by smaller though more effective British forces. It seemed likely that local Indian rulers would increasingly rally around Muhammad Ali and his British allies, still holding on to Trichinopoly. The French at Pondicherry arrogantly continued to assert that these setbacks were temporary, due to the failure of Raza Sahib’s generalship; only Dupleix was uneasy.
Clive now considered that the greatest danger lay to Madras, which he feared that Raza Sahib’s army would attack, knowing its garrison to be depleted; but Saunders told him not to be too hasty and instead ordered an assault on the enemy garrison at Conjeveeram. Clive seems to have been right in his view: Saunders at Fort St David had much less appreciation than Clive of the danger that Madras faced. But the governor feared Arcot would be exposed and isolated if the enemy controlled Conjeveeram along the main road to the coast.
Moreover, a party of British wounded who were being transferred to Madras had been attacked on the orders of the commander at Conjeveeram, a brutal, hunchbacked Portuguese mercenary called La Volonté. Most had been butchered. Two British officers had been captured, one being Lieutenant Glass, who had been injured falling from a rope during the attempt to silence the enemy guns at Arcot. They were threatened with death. This was probably the deciding factor with Saunders, and Clive agreed to go to their rescue.
The fate of the two officers, Glass and Revell, hung by a thread. The governor of Conjeveeram, Moden Sahib, had been corresponding secretly with Clive and had assured him he would seek to protect the Englishmen. La Volonté, meanwhile, strutted about the fort, threatening to hang the officers if Clive attacked. On 16 December Clive’s batteries opened fire. It was a one-sided affair. The enemy had only muskets. But Clive, exposing himself fearlessly to the fire, suffered the tragedy of having his brave and capable friend John Bulkley, veteran of Arcot and Arni, cut down beside him: the carefree days of drinking and whoring at Fort St David had become altogether more serious.
After two days of bombardment, La Volonté had Revell brought on to the battlements to discourage English fire. But Moden Sahib appears to have convinced him to bring the hostage down again. La Volonté forced Revell to write to Clive to say that he and Glass would be hanged if the bombardment did not cease; but Moden Sahib intercepted the letter.
The same night La Volonté and his force fled, leaving behind the two English officers. Clive set about destroying the fortifications to the great temple, and then abandoned the town as strategically useless. The French soon returned, but also found it indefensible and valueless. Clive cannot but have been bitter about the episode: the two officers had been saved – if their lives were ever really endangered – but Bulkley had been killed. The place had been of no strategic value whatsoever.
Clive’s forces were now depleted again: Buzangara and the Marathas wanted to return to Trichinopoly in an effort to secure further spoils for Muhammad Ali, and demanded an elephant as the prize for staying with Clive – something he could not deliver (although later he was to be overburdened with elephants). He sent half his force to Arcot and returned to Madras and Fort St David, where he was treated as a conquering hero. Clive delighted in his reception, but he was keen to move on to Trichinopoly, not to rest on his laurels.
* * *
Raza Sahib’s scattered forces now began to pull themselves together. Fearing a British relief of Trichinopoly, he decided that the best form of defence was attack. In a move of astonishing boldness – which Clive had half feared, knowing Raza Sahib to be by no means beaten – he took a leaf out of Clive’s book and marched to Madras to attack the British.<
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It was a daring gambit for a commander recently so badly mauled, and attested to his resilience. He had only thirty Frenchmen under his command, some 1,300 sepoys and 1,400 cavalry. This force appeared suddenly in the prosperous settlements to the west of the town, plundering the luxurious garden houses on the outskirts.
For the second time in six years, Madras seemed on the verge of enemy occupation and destruction. Its garrison was small and its defences as poor as ever. The British had miscalculated badly. Clive was promptly despatched from Fort St David to the rescue. He quickly put together an army of some 500 sepoys. Forces were despatched by Kilpatrick from Arcot; and, through luck, 100 British soldiers arrived from Bengal. By February 1752, Clive had around 400 Europeans and 1,300 sepoys under his command. Madras was saved. Raza Sahib did not dare attack. A major crisis had been defused whose cause had been the complacency of the British.
Saunders now ordered Clive to attack the Indian camp at Vendalore, some 25 miles away. This was well fortified, and Clive, although commanding a force almost equal in size, refused. He was showing the prudence of a great commander, although he was later criticised for lacking courage, a charge which rankled with him. Usually attacked for being reckless, he had made a fair assessment of the odds, and feared he would not win. Saunders was irked.
* * *
Finally Clive felt strong enough to stage an assault – only to find the camp abandoned – something Clive, with his excellent sources of Indian intelligence, may have already known. Raza Sahib had left for Arcot, to attack the poorly defended fort there.
What happened next is a matter of intense speculation and controversy. Raza Sahib has been so derided as a commander that it is often assumed that the near-disaster that befell the British happened almost by accident. But however poor his leadership in the past – and his detractors were chiefly the British, his enemies, and the French, accustomed to blaming their own mistakes on their Indian allies – his tactics and strategy on this occasion were equal to those of the British.
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