Clive

by Robert Harvey

  Muhammad Ali was now undisputed ruler of the Carnatic. Thus ended the rule of France’s chief protégé in India, and although Dupleix did not yet know it, all his vainglorious dreams. Butchery was a standard end for an Indian potentate, although this one was accompanied by strong suspicions of connivance by the British.

  * * *

  Although Dupleix is said to have burst into tears at the news of the death of Chanda Sahib, and been unable to eat, he soon showed his usual remarkable resilience and talent for self-deception. On the day of Law’s surrender – which he presumably had authorised – he wrote ingratiatingly and with breathtaking cheek to Muhammad Ali saying that the ruler of the Deccan had authorised him to hand over Trichinopoly to its new ruler. It was an attempt both to woo the new ruler of the Carnatic and to treat the British with the contempt he felt they deserved.

  It is hard not to conclude that by this time he really had lost touch with reality. His constant belittling of his opponents reflected this. Clive, said Dupleix, was a ‘secondary figure reported dead or wounded times without number … a coward who had remained hidden behind a tree during one engagement … An arrogant fellow given to much boasting … indiscreet.’ Saunders was ‘a madman, an enragé. Lawrence was ‘violent and corrupt’. All that was now needed to turn the tables once more, in Dupleix’s opinion, was the arrival of reinforcements from France.

  Dupleix seemed to believe that the loss of half of his army was merely a setback and that he could still bounce back. In fact the French were far from defeated and still had pockets of strength, but the tide had turned overwhelmingly against them after Trichinopoly. ‘As Chanda Sahib is dead, I can see no reason why [peace] may not be easily accomplished,’ Saunders wrote mildly to Dupleix. The latter’s dreams of a French Indian empire were over for the time being, but they could be revived.

  He moved into his magnificent new residence in Pondicherry. With its marble statues, colonnades, silver leaf and green velvet, it was a fitting palace for a French emperor that never was. He and Madame held a last couple of months of glittering social display there before news of the fall of Trichinopoly reached Paris and he was recalled in disgrace.

  The first European who would be emperor of India had been knocked off his pedestal. Goliath had been slain by a David he would scarce acknowledge the existence of; hauteur and dreams by reality; the great schemer and armchair general – although he was not without courage, as his defence of Pondicherry showed – by the incompetence of such men as Law and d’Auteuil, and the ability in the field of men like Lawrence, Clive and Dalton.

  Beneath his arrogance, Dupleix had been a man of extraordinary vision, daring, imagination and intelligence, and had almost pulled off his conquest. In so doing he had blazed a trail for Clive and the British. He was to die in poverty, recrimination and obscurity. First Chanda Sahib, then his backer, Dupleix: the first two of Clive’s great opponents had been smitten down.

  After Law’s surrender, Lawrence was anxious to make for the coast, to protect the English settlements from any renewal of the French threat. However, Muhammad Ali’s quarrel with the Regent of Mysore, who demanded the handover of Trichinopoly as promised, was intensifying. The British were committed to Muhammad Ali, and after a fortnight of fruitless argument, Lawrence left behind a small garrison and travelled to a position where he could intimidate Dupleix near Pondicherry.

  Clive had already set out for Fort St David and then Madras to resume his position as Steward there. Lawrence felt he deserved a rest, and could always call upon his services if required. Shortly afterwards, a British force under an inexperienced commander was badly beaten off by the French at Gingee.

  Lawrence, who had opposed the expedition in the first place, in turn attacked the pursuing French force, almost wiping it out. Dupleix was still refusing to negotiate until the British had released the French prisoners from Trichinopoly – which would have sharply increased his strength. Lawrence understandably turned him down. The French were now in no state to stage large-scale military operations – although they did capture a small convoy of boats in which Clive was believed to be travelling – a tribute to what they really thought of their adversary, whom Dupleix publicly regarded as insignificant.

  Clive had been through a gruelling siege, a series of major battles which frequently hung in the balance, had narrowly escaped with his life on at least six occasions and had hardly enjoyed any rest for two years. He had experienced near-defeat twice and a succession of remarkable victories. In every crisis he had shown amazing calm and self-possession, although some vindictiveness.

  The relentless, prolonged and concerted effort had eventually taken its toll, as with so many who give more than seems possible for a human constitution. Clive was no mere commander strutting about on a horse and risking the occasional lucky enemy shot. He took a major and dangerous part in virtually all of these engagements. He has been described as Britain’s first guerrilla leader. Certainly rushing to and fro on horseback, rallying his troops under attack, improvising one plan after another, he had some claims to that title long before Wingate.

  * * *

  It was time for that highly strung, energetic and nervous frame to unwind. So he did, slightly. He had no compunction in enjoying the fruits of victory. His name was the toast of Madras society. He rented a large house in Charles Street, within Fort St George.

  His business as Steward and Commissary would not have kept him seriously occupied; indeed in his absence, his subordinates had been amassing profits in his name. The Steward supervised the supply of the garrison and the settlement with stores: commissions were paid to Clive on the sale of every sack of rice, fodder for the horses, load of firewood or consignment of swordfish coming into the settlement. With a victualling allowance for every soldier, Clive as Commissary could also profit hugely from supplying their provisions cheaply. Madeira and high-quality tea had to be purchased for the officers.

  One of Clive’s lieutenants reports that his chief obtained his supplies at a low price from Indian suppliers because he was ‘beloved’ by them. This may or may not be true: a victorious commander like Clive would have inspired fear in Indian traders, who would have had good grounds for supplying him cheaply. As his earlier foraging showed, Clive was a tough, shrewd and intimidating bargainer and businessman. There is no evidence, though, that he was extortionate.

  The money continued to roll in, as his office supervised the feeding of the armies still in the field and the tricky business of disposing of the many elephants the British had been given by grateful Indian princes throughout the campaign, which were eating their way through huge quantities of food. He had made an estimated £40,000 as Steward and Commissary – a fortune large enough to set him up as a substantial country landowner in England.

  With this considerable shower of wealth upon one who had known only restricted circumstances, a new and controversial feature of Clive’s personality emerged: his love of ostentation. His house was host to a round of parties; Clive himself bought fifteen pairs of silk breeches and three velvet ones, twenty ruffed shirts, forty pairs of stockings and magnificent silver lace, brown and blue coats – as well as the full costume of an Indian prince.

  He was a young bachelor, just emerged from the slog and butchery of a long military campaign, wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. He was the star of the settlement that summer, regaling his hosts with tales of his exploits, dazzling the ladies and doing favours for his friends – one of his most attractive traits. Dalton, who was one of the prime beneficiaries, remarked, ‘I hear that you keep one of the best houses in Madras,’ and congratulated him on ‘gallanting the ladies’.

  He was perhaps naive as to the impact of all this display on other less gifted and successful contemporaries. Those jealous of him in the army and in civilian society began to sneer and attribute his victories to luck. Lawrence was quick to spring to his defence:

  Some people are pleased to term Captain Clive fortunate and lucky; but, in my opinion, from the kn
owledge I have of the gentleman, he deserved and might expect from his conduct everything as it fell out; – a man of undaunted resolution, of a cool temper, and of a presence of mind which never left him in the greatest danger – born a soldier; for without a military education of any sort or much conversing with any of the profession, from his judgment and good sense, he led on an army like an experienced officer and a brave soldier, with a prudence that certainly warranted success.

  This was tribute indeed, from a superior officer, although Clive’s detractors asserted that Lawrence was obsessed with his protégé Clive. Yet the Old Cock was a tough professional, and his confidence in Clive had rarely been misplaced so far. Lawrence added, in respect of the ‘sneerers’: ‘let them sneer on, since they can’t bite. You are right in making it a subject of mirth.’ The brightness of Clive’s candle was to arouse the flutterings of the envious for the rest of his life.

  On his return, the glamorous captain was to indulge in one of his favourite pursuits: whoring. To today’s generation, as to anyone brought up in the Christian ethic, this seems an ugly side to Clive’s character – lacking morality, being exploitative and self-abasing in that he paid for sexual favours. In Clive’s time it was but the customary practice of any man with the money to pay for it.

  It must be remembered that no young lady of good reputation would even conceive of sex outside marriage – or she would forfeit her reputation. There was no available pool of young girls prepared to have premarital affairs with men, as there is today. For an energetic man with a high sexual drive in his twenties, the only available outlets were the local prostitutes.

  This was not a matter of specifically ‘colonial’ exploitation either: every Indian ruler or nobleman had his own retinue of girls, or harem. Even a man of modest means went to prostitutes. They were just part of life and the local economy – a considerable one, judging by the number there were – of the time. The Victorian era – a colonial import – had not begun. While not flaunting this practice in the face of polite Madras society or the Church’s prohibition, Clive, like any other young man, would hardly have bothered to conceal his habits from his contemporaries.

  * * *

  Female company of a higher order was also at hand. In June, soon after the fall of Trichinopoly, there had arrived to swell the small band of marriageable young ladies a party of eleven girls, among them Mun Maskelyne’s sister, Margaret. Her brother had long seen her as a potential match for Clive, and had written home such glowing accounts of him even before she sailed for India that he must have seemed a figure of truly heroic stature for a pubescent girl in her mid-teens.

  Just 17 years old when she reached India, she had been brought up by an aunt at Purton Stoke and an uncle at Purton Down, and educated at a good school near Cirencester. Both her aunt and uncle knew India well, and she must have been awed to reach the subcontinent at last after the usual cooped-up journey of eight months. She was put up at Mun’s house, where he was in enforced idleness, having been released on parole by the French after being captured near Arcot.

  From an early age she seems to have shown considerable intelligence and character. She was small and slim, with fine, delicate skin, large pretty eyes under attractive dark eyebrows, a gentle mouth, a slightly receding chin and a graceful neck. Her hair was dark and flowing, generally done up in a set on top of her head or cut fairly short.

  Although not a conventional beauty – her nose was a little large and bulbous at the end and she could present a slightly mousy appearance – she displayed a keen intelligence in her eyes and was quick-witted and humorous as a talker. Mun at least considered her the equal of any man or woman in conversation, a suitable match for his now famous friend.

  There is no record of her early courtship with Clive, but it is clear they must have met early that summer during the round of balls, picnics and dinners, although they did not begin to see each other frequently until the autumn. From the first this sweet, impressionable, but also shrewdly self-advancing girl was entirely bowled over by Clive, the hero of the settlement, now worldly, self-confident and exuberant in place of his old shyness. The fact that he was not the best-looking man in Madras would have made no difference. He was certainly the most glamorous, most eligible and, for his age, the richest.

  Margaret Maskelyne may also have considered him a little beneath her: coming as she did from more literate and sophisticated southern England, Clive may have seemed a little rough-hewn from backward Shropshire, although his gentry background was entirely respectable. But Mun had no objection to him socially, and that cannot have been much of a drawback in her eyes. She was in love with him from the first, if she was not already in love with his image from before.

  Clive, who had long enjoyed the freedom of being a bachelor, although probably struck by her grace and intelligence, seems to have been a good deal less certain. He feared curtailment of his freedom to enjoy the company of his drinking friends and to go out on the town.

  Dalton had teased him in a letter from Trichinopoly (which the former was longing to leave): ‘I hear that you keep one of the best houses in Madras. By God, it would be a good joke if your countenance was to smite one of [the ladies] and you were to commit matrimony. I should however be concerned as it would put me out of all hopes of the pleasure I propose myself in ******* Covent Garden etc.’

  The rumours were certainly flying fast from that autumn onwards, but Mun, at least, seems to have been far from certain of the match – or perhaps he was trying to scotch the gossip in case it put Clive off. Dalton wrote again to Clive in October, ‘The swarthy world here had spread a report that you were on the point of committing matrimony. But Maskelyne has undeceived me on that particular, he says you fuck as usual.’

  * * *

  Before then, however, Clive was to interrupt his pleasant round of commerce, entertainment, courtship and womanising in Madras when he was called up again to do military service. The trouble this time was two French forts – Covelong, 30 miles south of Madras on the coast, and Chingleput, 20 miles inland from Covelong – which between them had the power to intercept traffic between Fort St George and Fort St David.

  Clive was given command of the only troops then available – 200 men just arrived from England without any training at all – ‘apparently the very refuse of London’ – and 500 barely trained sepoys. The march to Covelong was short and easy, but when Clive’s forces came under fire from the French, they panicked. Clive shamed them soon afterwards by exposing himself without hesitation to fire. As he positioned his guns for a bombardment, he heard reports that a strong French detachment was on its way from Chingleput. He speeded up his siege preparations and seems secretly to have made contact with the French commander at Covelong – who agreed to surrender without a fight.

  Clive soon learnt that the relief force had turned back – it was said because they heard who was in command of the British – and he pursued them, successfully overtaking them and ambushing them, killing 100 men and taking 300 prisoner. He chased the remainder back into Chingleput.

  This fort presented a potentially major challenge: it had formidable natural defences, being three-quarters surrounded by a lake, a swamp, and flooded rice fields. Only on the south side was it approachable, and that was well fortified. Clive settled down to a prolonged bombardment, while also secretly opening up negotiations with the commander.

  On the fifth day of the siege, this functionary surrendered the fort – provided he was allowed to keep his flock of turkeys and his supply of snuff. Although no walkover – anyone other than Clive might have taken much longer to succeed – it was hardly the ‘glorious campaign’ described by Saunders. But it showed the almost effortless ease with which Clive could now conduct military campaigns, as well as the demoralisation of the French in southern India after the fall of Trichinopoly. For the local French commander, there hardly seemed any point in continued resistance.

  Shortly afterwards Clive suffered the first of the painful attacks of fev
er and abdominal pain that were to dog him for the rest of his life. At first the attacks occurred every few hours, and then every few days, lasting much of October and November. It was widely assumed he was suffering from gallstones probably accentuated by malaria, which explained the fever – although he may have had a venereal disease as well.

  The pain and fever were real enough to those around him, and could not be dismissed as psychosomatic, as some have claimed. However, modern research suggests that a man like Clive, prone to immense bouts of mental and physical activity over several months, may experience a sudden virtual collapse of his system as the toll on his body catches up with him during a period of inactivity.

  This can produce quite strong physical symptoms, as well as leaving the victim much more vulnerable to conditions like gallstones and malaria. The physical illness coincided with what seems to have been a manic-depressive mental breakdown of elation followed by deep depression, so unlike the usually cool-headed Clive. Again, such symptoms are typical in a man who has driven himself far beyond most people’s endurance when finally his mind is allowed to rest and take stock.

  Depression is, of course, also a symptom of malaria, which recurs throughout life, as in Clive’s case, and which, if not the cause, would certainly have exacerbated the problem. To classify him as a manic-depressive, with a major mental illness, would be a mistake, however. Like Churchill and several other men of enormous physical and mental stamina who tax themselves virtually beyond endurance, black depression was the price to be paid at the end. Thus it may not have been a chronic condition for Clive, but an acute one brought on by exertion.

  Certainly there was a sensitive and even morbidly self-critical side to Clive – as was demonstrated in his early youth. But then, unknown and unregarded, he had good reason for feeling unloved. Now, wealthy beyond his wildest expectations and a hero to his fellow countrymen, he had no reason for his misery (although he may have been wounded by those jealous of him who, even then, had begun to belittle his achievements).