Most people in Calcutta believed that she would inevitably triumph: and the young Nawab had a shock when it became evident that Mir Jafar had changed sides and also supported Shaukut Jang. However, most of the court at the capital of Murshidabad stood by Aliverdi Khan’s chosen successor.
Siraj-ud-Daula sent his dead uncle’s widow, the Begum’s sister, along with the chief banker in Bengal and head of its most influential Hindu family, the Jagat Seth – ‘Banker of the World’ – to persuade his aunt to submit in the exotic moated palace – the Moti Jhil – where she had retired with her lover. She submitted, but only after Siraj-ud-Daula had agreed to spare her lover’s life. He was banished, she was bundled off to the Nawab’s harem, and her fortune was seized.
Siraj-ud-Daula then set off with his army to Shaukut Jang’s base. His cousin hastily acknowledged his right to the throne before the Nawab reached him. Having bribed the Nawab of Oudh, Bengal’s most powerful neighbour, not to attack, the young prince quickly established a decisive ascendancy. So far there was little to justify the view that Siraj-ud-Daula was an incompetent or a coward, however capricious and cruel he might be.
CHAPTER 12
The Black Hole
One of the Begum’s chief advisers – by some accounts the real power behind her – was Raj Ballabh, a high government official. It was his son, Krishna Das, who had sought asylum in Calcutta, as his father was being investigated for embezzlement. He brought his family and a large fortune with him, and almost certainly bribed British officials to let him in.
The Calcutta authorities showed an extraordinary insensitivity and ignorance of local politics. Siraj-ud-Daula, always suspicious of the British after the contemptuous way they had treated him, now became convinced that they had been behind the Begum’s plot all along (there is no evidence for this, although they certainly preferred her).
The Nawab now turned his attention to the British. His principal courtiers, including Mir Jafar, too strong a man to strike against, in spite of his earlier disloyalty, advocated a show of force, backed by strength, but also urged flexibility.
Siraj-ud-Daula had three principal arguments against the British: first, that they continued to occupy Bengali territory and engage in illegal private trade; second, that they had taken in a wanted opponent of his; and, third, that, like the French and the Dutch, they were trying to strengthen their defences. He resolved to get tough.
Whatever the new Nawab’s personal failings, his policy towards the British at least had the virtue of coherence and was even reasonable under the circumstances. The British response had neither of those things to be said for it: it was foolish, arrogant, complacent, provocative, insulting and conducted from a position of acute weakness.
With exquisite ineptness, the Calcutta council proceeded to drive Siraj-ud-Daula into a corner from which an attack on the settlement was the only way he could save face, and possibly his throne. The only conceivable defence of the British action is that they supposed he was anyway resolved to attack, and that to have made concessions would have displayed weakness. Unfortunately, all the evidence suggests that they thought he would never attack, that they believed they were acting from a position of strength, and that they could treat him with contempt. In this they were totally and tragically mistaken.
* * *
The four senior members of the council in Calcutta were the governor, Roger Drake, two traders, William Frankland and Charles Manningham, and James Holwell, the magistrate. The two traders were united in placing commercial considerations above all others. Holwell showed some vestiges of common sense, but was also vain and self-seeking, a chubby, self-important little man.
The nominal leader of the council, Drake, was widely despised among his own people. Appointed acting governor at the age of only 30, he had still not been confirmed in the job after four years and was treated by many of the local merchants with ribaldry and contempt. This increased when his wife died and he married her sister.
As one contemporary observer recalled, this could ‘never be forgiven him, for the crime was not only itself bad but after that every man of character and sense shunned and avoided him, and this was the means of his running after and keeping very indifferent company, and of committing a thousand little meannesses and low actions, far unbecoming any man, much more a governor’. This brash, arrogant young man, singularly ill-suited for negotiation during a period of extreme danger, now had the task of dealing with an even younger and more unstable potential adversary – although undoubtedly a cleverer one.
Drake’s first mistake was his response to a plea by the best-informed and most intelligent of the British merchants in Bengal, William Watts, who ran the trading post just outside the Bengali capital of Murshidabad, that Krishna Das should be handed over to the authorities. Drake overrode his fellow council members and refused. Siraj-ud-Daula sent an emissary to ask for the fugitive. Drake is said to have torn the emissary’s letter up before his face. He was thrown out of town on the allegation that he was a spy.
Watts was appalled. ‘The moment I was acquainted with the affair I dreaded the consequences of affronting so considerable a servant of a young man intoxicated with power and wealth, and who expected an implicit obedience to his will. I therefore immediately applied to all the great men about the nabob to prevent [the envoy] complaining, and the affair was seemingly hushed up.’
Meanwhile, Siraj-ud-Daula received replies from the three European settlements to his order that they should stop building up their fortifications. The Dutch denied they were doing so, the French answered that they were merely repairing existing defences. The official British reply was on similar lines to that of the French. The Nawab knew that the British had in fact been repositioning their guns along the river in front of Fort William, had built a new redoubt, and were clearing parts of the Maratha Ditch – all fairly minor activities.
But Drake was said to have been personally rude to the Nawab’s emissary, even telling him that if the Nawab wanted the Ditch filled up, it could be with the heads of his own subjects. The envoy insulted by Drake is said to have asked Siraj-ud-Daula, ‘What honour is left to us when a few traitors who have not yet learned to wash their backsides reply to the ruler’s orders by expelling his envoys?’
The young king was furious at the direct insult. He expostulated: ‘I swear by the Great God and the prophets that unless the English consent to fill up their ditch, raze their fortifications, and trade upon the same terms they did … I will totally expel them from the country.’ But he added to his envoy that ‘if [the British] are willing to comply … they may remain’.
Yet his attitude towards the British was straighforward. As he put it:
I have three substantial motives for extirpating the English out of my country; one is that they have built strong fortifications and dug a large ditch in the King’s dominions contrary to the established laws of the country; the second is that they have abused the privileges of their dustucks [duty-free passes] by granting them to such as were in no ways entitled to them, from which practice the King has suffered greatly in the revenue of his customs; the third motive is that they give protection to such of the King’s subjects as have by their behaviour in the employs they were entrusted with made themselves liable to be called to an account and instead of giving them up on demand they allow such persons to shelter themselves within their bounds from the hands of justice. For these reasons it is become requisite to drive them out.
His demands were an end to the fortification programme, an end to abuses of the trading concession, and a withdrawal of political asylum for the Nawab’s enemies. These were not unreasonable. However, the same envoy he had sent to Calcutta three times already was ‘threatened to be ill used if he came again on the same errand’.
The Nawab now began to resort to tougher tactics. Watts’s fort at Kasimbazar was surrounded by armed men, while measures were taken to intercept British craft along the Hugli and at the entrance to the Bay of Bengal. By 2 June Watts wa
s begging for reinforcements of at least 100 men because he feared attack. He urged the council at Calcutta either to send the men or yield to the Nawab’s demands. It refused to do either.
Watts, who had only 50 men and a handful of old guns to defend the fort against the Nawab’s 30,000-strong army, was summoned to Siraj-ud-Daula’s presence. Suddenly he was seized, his hands were bound behind his back and he was forced to order his men to surrender. The colonel of the garrison committed suicide in protest at the decision.
Watts was later much criticised for his weakness. But the council’s refusal to reinforce him made any attempt at resistance by the garrison pointless, and a fight there would have brought Fort William only a short breathing space. Watts’s pregnant wife was allowed to take refuge in the French settlement where Jean Law, its senior trader, treated her courteously. Watts and his second-in-command were treated with respect by the Nawab. His chief minister, Rai Durlabh, suggested that matters would be settled if the British paid a ransom of 2 million rupees – but he was willing to haggle. Not only would Drake not consider paying the ransom, but the seizure of Kasimbazar convinced him that the Bengalis did indeed intend to attack Calcutta – and he was almost mystically certain of his ability to defeat them.
The Nawab’s army confirmed his worst suspicions by moving southwards towards Calcutta. By now it had been swollen to 50,000 men, accompanied by 500 elephants and 50 guns. The British were unimpressed; the guns, it was said, had only clay projectiles. Drake decided to take the offensive, sending 15 soldiers in a boat upstream with instructions to make as much noise as possible, and also sending three boats to a fort near Calcutta, which landed a force to spike the guns there. These actions achieved little, but enraged Siraj-ud-Daula.
* * *
Only after this display of bravado did Drake summon a council of war to prepare for the defence of Fort William on 7 June. The state of readiness was pitiable, even a criminal dereliction of duty. The commander of the garrison, Captain Minchin, was so abysmal a soldier that Holwell later remarked, ‘touching the military capacity of our commandant, I am a stranger. I can only say we are unhappy in him keeping it to himself, if he had any; as neither I, nor I believe anyone else, was witness to any part of his conduct that spoke or bore the appearance of his being the commanding military officer in the garrison.’
Worse still was the state of the ordnance and ammunition. The adjutant-general wrote afterwards that there were ‘no cartridges of any kind ready. The small quantity of grape in store had lain by so long that it was destroyed by worms; no shells fitted nor fuses prepared for small or great. The few that were thrown at the siege burst half way. There were two iron mortars, one of 13 and the other of 10 inches, sent out about three years ago. The 10-inch mortar we had just finished the bed for it, but the 13-inch one lay but useless for want of one; tho’ there was upwards of three hundred shells sent out for both, all that could be prepared was not above twenty, and such as was thrown of them burst, some after quitting the mortar, others half way. We had but a small quantity of powder, and the greatest part of that damp.’
There were hardly any men, either, to wield this pitiable arsenal. Nominally the garrison contained 500 men, but was down to half strength. Some 70 were sick, and 25 had been deployed outside Calcutta, leaving just 165, mainly of Portuguese-Indian descent. As for the defences, these consisted of a line of guns along the waterfront of Fort William itself, pointed out over the river as a deterrent to attack from that side.
To protect these, a wall had been erected at either end of the fort which, Orme was later to remark, ‘would resist one shot of a six-pounder, but be forced by the second’. The bastions on the landward side of the fort were overlooked just 30 or 40 yards away by substantial merchants’ houses.
The principal British houses of the settlement stretched away on either side of the fort along the river bank for about a mile altogether, and extended a quarter mile or so inland. To the north of these were prosperous Indian merchant houses; to the south the ‘black town’ of the poorer Indians began. The ‘Maratha Ditch’, which was supposed to protect the whole city, was only four miles long on the north side and petered out further down.
Still wildly optimistic about the superiority of British arms and their chances of survival, and doubtful whether an Indian attack would ever take place – although Drake himself showed rare insight in now believing it would – the council decided to defend a circle around the European houses. In practice such a line was indefensible except against very feeble opposition, and the British would have done best to concentrate all their inadequate firepower inside the fort itself, which might then have been capable of withstanding a prolonged siege.
Manningham, a pompous trader with no military experience, was solemnly proclaimed a colonel by the council, and Frankland a lieutenant-colonel, to earn the honours of fighting off the Indian assault. Drake meanwhile ‘by beat of drum caused all the inhabitants fit to bear arms to be assembled’.
In the humid central square of Fort William, some 250 English, Portuguese and Armenian settlers in a motley variety of civilian clothing were organised in lines to reinforce the red-coated garrison up to 365 men. They made a shambolic army. According to Holwell, ‘when we came to action there was hardly any among the Armenian and Portuguese inhabitants, and but a few among the European militia, who knew the right from the wrong end of their pieces [matchlocks]’.
This tiny force was split into four. Some 100 men trooped to the east to take up a position near the courthouse, to face the threat from the landward side of Calcutta, under the command of the second-ranking soldier, Captain Clayton, and Holwell. Another 100 or so were sent to protect the southern approach. Some 70 went north under the command of the fort’s chaplain. A further 25 under Ensign Piccard were sent to man Perrin’s Redoubt to the north, while some 20 were held in reserve to reinforce any of these four positions that needed it.
The remaining 200 or so, under the command of Governor Drake, ‘Colonel’ Manningham and ‘Lieutenant-Colonel’ Frankland, and Captain Minchin, remained to man the fort – uselessly, unless the outlying positions fell. These, in turn were all the more indefensible and likely to fall because nearly half the garrison was well behind their lines.
* * *
On 16 June the English citizens of Calcutta retired into Fort William, along with several hundred men, women and children of mixed Portuguese-Indian ancestry. Intimidated by the Nawab’s approaching armies, local landowners withheld food from the town; the siege had begun.
Three sloops – the Prince George, Fortune and Chance – were sent to reinforce Perrin’s Redoubt upriver in an attempt to block an attack from the seaward side. The scene was now fully set for one of the worst and most disgraceful fiascos in British military history, mitigated only by the appalling tragedy that was to befall some of the defenders.
That same day the Nawab’s forces, a gigantic army of tens of thousands supported by retainers, elephants, camels, concubines and looters, began to pour into the outlying areas of Calcutta. The inhabitants of the ‘black town’ had already fled. In a great cacophony of noise and colour, looting began.
The first real engagement of the battle was a Bengali cannonade against Perrin’s Redoubt and the three sloops nearby. With just three dozen men, the commander at the redoubt, Ensign Piccard, kept up such intense fire that the Nawab’s 4,000 men could not mount a successful attack. The six cannon of the Indians also surprisingly failed to make much impact on the walls of the outpost.
At six o’clock, as equatorial darkness without dusk blanketed the scene, the Nawab’s guns abruptly ceased firing. At midnight, Piccard led a raid into the thicket from which most of the firing had come, caught the enemy sleeping and unawares, killed about 80 men and drove the rest from the cover of the trees, successfully spiking four cannon.
The Nawab’s army withdrew from its positions and moved eastward and southward to try and find another way across the Ditch into the central part of Calcutta. The
complacent council of war could be forgiven for going to bed that night with little to ruffle their mood: the British had driven off the first attack of the enemy.
The sheer size of Siraj-ud-Daula’s army had not yet sunk in, and the British had gravely underestimated his determination. His commanders soon found that the Maratha Ditch could be crossed by men, though not by cannon. The Nawab himself, with his guard of honour, moved over it at Dum Dum (Cow Cross Bridge), establishing his headquarters in the garden of one of the wealthiest Indian merchants in Calcutta, Omichand, a name to recur throughout the rest of Clive’s life, and to be fatally intertwined with his own.
There could now be no doubt that Siraj-ud-Daula was in deadly earnest about seizing Calcutta, and that one setback would not send the Bengali army scurrying. In this, due credit should be given him. All too frequently a determined show of European force could cause panic in an Indian army; no significant victory had ever yet been won by an Indian prince against a major European force. Although the British were woefully unprepared, Siraj-ud-Daula could not be sure of this.
That same night, the council – wisely for once – gave orders to burn down the merchants’ houses overlooking the fort. To the 3,000 or so encamped inside Fort William in conditions of varying squalor, the loss of the peace and security of that beautiful and prosperous settlement with its elegant façades must have seemed sudden and bewildering.
As the houses dissolved into flames, crimson against the darkness, the sound of looting and revelry could be heard beyond; some 7,000 Bengali camp followers had gone on a plundering spree in the ‘black town’. For most of the inhabitants of the fort, the women and children in particular, the situation must have been fraught with horror and terror. But Drake and his men, consoled by Piccard’s success, were still confident even as the noose closed about them.
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