In the event his decision was almost certainly the wrong one: had he ordered a retreat, he would have saved the bulk of the French forces, which could have been evacuated to Pondicherry and waited for events in southern India once again to present an opportunity. With no possibility of flight, and with no confidence in his ability to win a pitched battle, Law may have been right in believing he had no option but to look for a defensible redoubt behind stone walls. Thus, in a dramatic reversal of fortunes, the besiegers were now about to become the besieged.
Such a refuge lay nearby: the ‘island’ of Srirangam, in fact a long tongue of land several miles long and only a couple of miles in extent at its widest, resembling a serpent with, at its head, two of India’s most important and beautiful pagodas towering over the great plain to the north of Trichinopoly. To the south side, opposite the city, it was defended by the Cauvery river; to the north, the Coleroon, both of which merged to the west.
Srirangam pagoda itself was protected by a defensive network of no fewer than seven walls, the outer ones some 25 feet high; to the east was another, smaller, equally well-defended pagoda. The fort of Muhammad Ali had held out for nearly a year. Law may have reckoned he could do the same until a relief force from Pondicherry, under the command of the venerable and aged General d’Auteuil, arrived.
When Dupleix heard of Law’s withdrawal to the pagoda complex, he was livid. ‘I am sure this decision will please your wife, who cannot wait for the opportunity to hold you in her arms again,’ he wrote witheringly. The British reaction was more immediate still: a day later Lawrence ordered Clive across both rivers to try and intercept Law’s lines of communication with Pondicherry and close the siege about the island.
Clive’s force consisted of around half the allied army: 400 British soldiers, 1,200 sepoys, 700 Marathas and most of the Tanjori army. Lawrence remained in command of around 500 British soldiers, 1,000 sepoys, the remainder of the Marathas and the huge, if clumsy and ineffectual, army of Mysore.
The strategy entailed considerable risk: once Law learnt that the British army had divided in two, he could concentrate all his forces against one side or other, leaving the other stranded across the rivers – reversing the odds. De Guingens and other senior commanders resented the young Clive’s being given charge of so large a body of men; but the Indian contingent refused to join unless he was at their head.
On the night of 4 April, Clive’s army forded the river and marched the short distance to the village of Samiaveram, where he found an ideal defensive position in two walled temples. Any supplies to Law from Pondicherry would have to pass his position, and Clive believed he could retreat across the river to Trichinopoly if Law staged an attack there.
Within days, news of the relief convoy led by d’Auteuil reached Clive. It was carrying substantial supplies and seven lakhs of rupees (700,000 rupees – a colossal amount) for buying food, part of it probably intended to buy over some of Muhammad Ali’s Indian allies.
About 15 miles from Clive’s position lay a narrow pass, Utatur, where Clive decided to ambush d’Auteuil’s forces. He asked for reinforcements from Lawrence to hold Samiaveram, leaving him free to march against the French. Lawrence refused, disagreeing with his subordinate’s high-risk tactic and fearing an attack by Law across the river against poorly defended Trichinopoly. (‘It would be as full of bad consequences for me to divide my force as you yours.’)
Clive took the hint about his own intention of leaving half his garrison behind – and decided on an even riskier strategy. He decided to move the whole garrison out by night to attack d’Auteuil, leaving Samiaveram virtually unguarded, in the hope that his men would be back by dawn, before Law noticed their departure.
* * *
What followed was a mixture of pure British Boys’ Own adventure and French farce. No sooner had the young captain’s forces departed the camp than Indian scouts reported the news back to Law. Hardly believing his luck, he sent 80 Frenchmen and 500 sepoys to seize the temples at Samiaveram. Meanwhile Clive force-marched his grumbling soldiers 14 miles up the Pondicherry road only to discover that d’Auteuil, instead of marching to relieve Law, had decided to seek refuge in the well-defended fort of Utatur. Clive promptly marched his men back down the road to arrive just four hours after they had left, at around eleven o’clock. It was the grand old Duke of York all over again.
Clive’s exhausted men bedded down, while their commander retired grumpily to his quarters in a nightshirt. The French force was meanwhile on its way in the dark when it captured an Indian scout from Samiaveram, who told the commander, Calquier, that Clive had already returned. The French commander refused to believe the man, branded him a spy, and told him to lead the force to Clive’s camp at the point of a pistol.
At Calquier’s side was an English deserter, a former sergeant now turned French officer named Kelsey who, on arriving at the gates of the British camp – which the French still did not believe was occupied by Clive’s returned army – told the sentry that he was commanding a relief force from Trichinopoly. Once inside, the sentry led the French column directly to Clive’s headquarters, a choultry just outside the pagoda where Clive’s bodyguard slept. The bulk of the British forces were sleeping inside the walls of the bigger pagoda.
The sentry at the entrance to Clive’s quarters challenged the soldiers, and Kelsey again replied that he had been sent by Lawrence. When he failed to give the password, the suspicious sentry realised something was amiss and fired his rifle into the air. Enemy muskets immediately blazed out in return.
The French, on being discovered, battled their way into the smaller pagoda, fighting hand-to-hand to force Clive’s astonished bodyguard out and gain possession. Clive himself was woken by a bullet which killed a servant sleeping on the ground beside his palanquin, and another that hit his small portable writing desk. Still in his nightshirt, he ran over to the main pagoda and assembled a force of 200 men.
Believing, wrongly, that the camp was under attack from outside, he rushed forward among the enemy sepoys in the smaller pagoda, thinking them to be his own men, firing randomly and in panic. He began furiously cuffing them and swearing at them in Indian, yelling at them to fire straight. A sepoy lashed out at him with a sword. Clive, at last realising he was in the middle of the enemy, grabbed the man, who cut him on his face and chest before being stabbed by a nearby English officer.
A moment later, Clive found himself surrounded by Frenchmen. If a single one had moved with speed and courage, the British empire in India might never have been. But Clive, showing extraordinary coolness, told them they were surrounded and would be ‘cut to pieces’ if they did not surrender immediately. Three did so, while three others escaped. Clive returned to the large pagoda, and started to regroup his forces to mount an attack on the French position.
As they subjected the small pagoda to intense fire, the French fought furiously, blasting back through the gate and tossing grenades over the wall. Dawn approached. Clive feared an attack by the main French force, and ordered his men to storm the pagoda. A young lieutenant led the charge, calling for volunteers, but was cut down by French bayonets at the entrance. Calquier tried to break out with his men, and was impaled on a blade, while his men were driven back.
Clive himself presented a wretched spectacle. Weak with loss of blood, his nightdress coloured crimson, he leaned on the shoulders of two sergeants as, under a white flag, he stumbled forward to negotiate. Kelsey, now in charge of the remaining defenders, knew that as a deserter he would be executed. He fired a shot which, as Clive was stooping, passed though the bodies of both upright sergeants, sparing him. Clive may have exaggerated the story a little, as was his wont; but he was not one to indulge in pure invention. Neither Lawrence nor Dalton chronicles the incident, but they were not present and had no reason further to puff Clive’s reputation. He had had another miraculous escape.
The standoff continued. After a couple more hours, the French surrendered; their Indian troops had slipped away in
the night, only to be hacked down to the last man by a troop of Marathas on horseback. Muhammad Ali’s envoy sought the execution of the English deserters. Clive refused, although he acceded to Lawrence’s order to hang Kelsey and the unfortunate Indian sepoy who had led the French into the camp.
Through an incredible piece of luck, and the foolhardiness of the French, a significant victory had been achieved – although Clive had twice nearly been killed. By a hair’s breadth, the British had avoided losing their camp and being trapped between two forces. Although Clive cannot be faulted for reacting swiftly and with enormous courage in adversity, showing exemplary leadership, he had only just reversed the situation with the help of extraordinary good fortune. Lawrence, who always seemed to turn a blind eye to Clive’s mistakes, was cock-a-hoop. ‘I rejoice at your success, your wounds are not dangerous, and if they spoil the beauty of your face they raise your fame,’ he wrote glowingly. From then on, Dalton jovially nicknamed Clive ‘beauty’.
Saunders was informed by Lawrence, with some exaggeration, that half the enemy had been beaten and the remainder ‘so cooped up they cannot escape’. Certainly the British intent was now not just to win a victory, but to trap the entire French army.
* * *
Clive, sobered by his narrow escape, knew that the bulk of Law’s forces were still intact, and discerned a new danger approaching: the waters of the wide, shallow rivers were rising, and he had heard reports that the armies of Law and Chanda Sahib were making rafts. It seemed likely that they were preparing to attack while Clive’s forces were stranded on the north side of the Coleroon without hope of reinforcement. Indeed, if d’Auteuil moved out of the fort at Utatur, they would catch Clive between two pincers.
Once again he asked for reinforcements, and once again Lawrence refused. Clive now decided to cross the swollen river on horseback personally to argue the case before his commander. The discussion was heated. Lawrence feared that if his men crossed, the French would be able to slip out of the trap and down to the settlement of Karikal on the coast, where they could make a stand or be lifted off by ships and taken to Pondicherry. Clive’s view was that at the very least he must not leave Samiaveram unprotected again, and he needed a strong force to deal with d’Auteuil, still cooped up at Utatur.
Lawrence at length gave way, sending Dalton across with a few hundred men to attack d’Auteuil. This he did with great difficulty; by the time he returned to Samiaveram, the river was unfordable, and so he joined Clive – something the latter had perhaps intended. Thus reinforced, Clive attacked Law’s last bastion on the north side of the Coleroon, Pitchanda. As they moved their guns up to the pagoda there, they decided to blast Chanda Sahib’s camp just across the water.
This they did early in the morning. The camp was less a military encampment than a large and colourful village, filled with servants, merchants (who provided the money to pay the soldiers), prostitutes, cooks, women, children, elephants, camels and oxen. As the shelling began, the civilians immediately panicked, removing their tents and baggage as fast as they could. Within two hours, and after just a few shots, all the tents had been removed. The refugees did not stop until they reached the second pagoda, where a new camp was set up out of range of the British guns.
Clive was later accused of deliberately targeting civilians, bombarding them from a position high above the river. In fact the river banks were flat and the waters at least half a mile wide, so he could have seen little of the camp itself. However, he would certainly have known that there was a large civilian presence, and of the terror likely to be caused by his bombardment.
As the soldiers dwelt among the civilians, he may have felt he had little choice. He had anyway indulged in the tactic of sowing terror in these huge camps before, notably during the night attack at Arcot. He is unlikely to have caused many casualties.
* * *
Clive’s guns were now turned on Pitchanda, while army riflemen sniped away at the gunners in the pagoda. After only a few hours, the white flag was raised by the French commander and a drummer started up – which some of Clive’s sepoys misinterpreted as a call to arms. They attacked through a breach in the wall, which caused a panic, and 15 Frenchmen trying to escape by water were drowned.
Clive disowned responsibility for the attack, saying he was not near the fort at the time, but three French officers insisted he had been and had personally violated the white flag of truce. It may be that Clive was getting his revenge for the French violation of the white flag at the pagoda in Samiaveram; or he may have been telling the truth. However, a shadow had been cast over his career for the second time – the first being the razing of Dupleixfatahabad.
Clive bombarded Chanda Sahib’s army on the peninsula once again, which was no longer out of range or shelter. With no sign of an easing of the trap, under intense and demoralising artillery fire, and with no sign of a response from Law, ordinary people began to leave the enemy camp, while increasingly large numbers of soldiers deserted to Clive or simply walked away.
Chanda Sahib, like some old-fashioned knight of chivalry, warmly embraced his deserting officers, and hoped that they would return when his fortunes improved. He gave them most of the stores and animals, and kept some 2,000 cavalry and 3,000 infantry loyal to him in the security of the larger pagoda. Law and his Frenchmen repaired to the smaller one. Around 1,500 of his army and most of his Indians had deserted to Clive. The endgame was in sight.
Lawrence landed the bulk of his forces across the river on Srirangam, while Clive went to mop up the remaining resistance at Utatur fort. There d’Auteuil’s half-starved forces surrendered, with only a fraction of the money they were supposed to be bearing – the rest presumably having been smuggled back to Pondicherry or looted by deserting soldiers. Clive returned with the prize of Raza Sahib’s magnificent elephant, which was given to Lawrence.
On 30 May Clive reached Srirangam Island and the following day Lawrence tried to batter Law’s force into submission with a massive cannonade. Law refused to surrender unless his troops were given safe passage to return to Pondicherry. The British replied by stating that Muhammad Ali wanted the garrison put to the sword. Law then agreed to meet Lawrence, Clive and Dalton.
The half-Frenchman, half-Scot, facing certain defeat, met the three victors in a tent outside the pagoda, and argued gamely that as France and Britain were not at war, he should be set free with his French troops. Equally bogusly, Lawrence insisted that he was merely a pawn of Muhammad Ali, and had to carry out his orders. Finally Law and his fellow officers were granted parole, while his men were marched off to prison. On 4 June the British entered the pagoda walls, and the French soldiers threw down their arms and were taken into custody.
CHAPTER 9
The Fall of Dupleix
Chanda Sahib, although Muhammad Ali’s sworn enemy and, as a defeated commander, qualifying for instant death, was under the protection of the French. Indeed, as pretender to the throne of the Carnatic, it was essential to their interests to keep him alive. The British had shown a good deal of humanity throughout the campaign, but it was certainly in their interests that Chanda Sahib should no longer pose a threat. On the other hand, they were usually prepared to pension off their opponents.
Nevertheless there is no evidence that any negotiations as to his fate were entered upon when the surrender terms were discussed with Law. Dupleix was later to argue that Lawrence had expressly ordered the Indian leader to meet his fate. This was transparently false.
Yet it is possible that a vigorous intervention by Lawrence and Clive, who had formidable bargaining cards, might have saved the deposed ruler. They left him to the wolves, as far as can be ascertained – just possibly because his removal would extinguish the main focus for French aspirations in India. The circumstances will always remain murky and discreditable.
Law attempted desperately to get Chanda Sahib spirited out of Srirangam. One possibility was to use the Marathas – but they would almost certainly use Chanda Sahib as a hostage an
d sell him to the highest bidder. The Regent of Mysore was intent on getting his part of the bargain for supporting Muhammad Ali: control of Trichinopoly itself. Already there were signs that Muhammad Ali was going to renege on the deal; Chanda Sahib would have provided a useful bargaining counter – and Law rightly decided against using the regent’s bad offices.
That left only the commander of the Tanjori army, who promised to spirit Chanda Sahib to the coast. However, Tanjori had been repeatedly attacked and captured by Chanda Sahib in the past. Law sought a hostage in exchange for a guarantee that Chanda Sahib would be treated properly and accompanied to the coast. The Tanjori general refused, saying that ‘if he had a mind to break his word, the hostage would signify nothing’. While this was probably true, it is a sign of Law’s weakness that he quietly acquiesced.
As soon as Chanda Sahib was handed over, he was put in chains. The Tanjori general, who may actually have intended to spare Chanda Sahib’s life, was now threatened with attack by both the Regent of Mysore and Muhammad Ali unless the old warrior was handed over.
Faced with these threats, the general coldly decided the fate of the former ruler of a third of India. A Pathan tribesman first strangled Chanda Sahib, then beheaded him. Thus ended the life of that formidable veteran and plunderer, broken in spirit but chivalrous to the end. He died in the place where he was supposed to have tried to rob the dowager Rani of Trichinopoly of her jewels; she had ground them into powder to forestall him.
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