Clive

by Robert Harvey

  The French influence had been decisively crushed in Bengal. Throughout India, there was now much greater fear of the English than of the French. Moreover, Calcutta was secured and the British controlled a large swathe of the Hugli river. The issue for the British was, once again, whether to be content with their gains or to embark further upstream into the Indian continent. For Clive at least, much as he protested that he expected to return to Madras at any time, the answer was clearcut.

  Yet for the moment his rivals – Watson, Coote and the council – had regained the initiative through a battle in which Clive’s forces had made little of the running. Although by now fully confident that he had regained his old abilities as a commander on the swampy marshland of that diseased tropical riverside, he was still only one of a number of chiefs among the British forces.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Deceivers

  Later public opinion in Britain was to rage about the morality of what now happened: full-scale British complicity in a conspiracy to rid a huge Indian kingdom of its ruler.

  Macaulay’s judgement is typical. Clive,

  in other parts of his life an honourable English gentleman and soldier, was no sooner matched against an Indian intriguer, than he himself became an Indian intriguer, and descended, without scruple, to falsehood, to hypocritical caresses, to the substitution of documents, and to the counterfeiting of hands …

  We are convinced that Clive was altogether in the wrong, and that he committed, not merely a crime but a blunder. That honesty is the best policy is a maxim which we firmly believe to be generally correct, even with respect to the temporal interest of individuals; but, with respect to societies, the rule is subject to still fewer exceptions, and that for this reason, that the life of societies is longer than the life of individuals …

  The entire history of the British in India is an illustration of the great truth, that it is not prudent to oppose perfidy to perfidy, and that the most efficient weapon with which men can encounter falsehood is truth. During a long course of years, the English rulers of India, surrounded by allies and enemies whom no engagement could bind, have generally acted with sincerity and uprightness; and the event has proved that sincerity and uprightness are wisdom. English valour and English intelligence have done less to extend and to preserve our Oriental empire than English veracity. All that we could have gained by imitating the doublings, the evasions, the fictions, the perjuries which have been employed against us, is as nothing, when compared with what we have gained by being the one power in India on whose word reliance can be placed.

  No oath which superstition can devise, no hostage however precious, inspires a hundredth part of the confidence which is produced by the ‘yea, yea’, and ‘nay, nay’ of a British envoy. No fastness, however strong by art or nature, gives to its inmates a security like that enjoyed by the chief who, passing through the territories of powerful and deadly enemies, is armed with a British guarantee.

  The mightiest princes of the East can scarcely, by the offer of enormous usury, draw forth any portion of the wealth which is concealed under the hearths of their subjects. The British government offers little more than four per cent; and avarice hastens to bring forth tens of millions of rupees from its most secret repositories … The greatest advantage which a government can possess is to be the one trustworthy government in the midst of governments which nobody can trust.

  In fact, pace Macaulay, the deciding factor in the British ability to redeem its promises was British power. Without power – and this hung in the balance in Bengal – no promise could have been kept. Any blow-by-blow account of the actual course of events, while far from clearing Clive of duplicity (in fact he deserves enormous credit for his skill in deceit, which was essential to victory), must adjudge this claim as a ludicrous example of Victorian moral hypocrisy – heartily approving of the conquest of Bengal, but denouncing the means by which it was brought about. Without employment of such means, the end would never have been achieved.

  As we shall see, Clive’s policy was a masterpiece of tactical manoeuvring against an extremely devious and not unintelligent ruler, surrounded by untrustworthy middlemen bent on betraying both sides. In that Clive’s intrigues avoided serious bloodshed, a colossal defeat for British arms and the probable end of the British presence in India, they must be considered an unqualified success, far exceeding that of other, less-skilled generals whose more conventional and prosaic victories were achieved at a huge cost in lives.

  Clive’s failing, to most conventional historians, was not that he displayed the qualities of a master diplomat, politician and statesman, showing formidable cunning and skill; but that victory was achieved – although to the last Clive could not be sure of it – largely before the battle was ever fought, disappointing those who like their battles to be straightforward confrontations of arms, leaving piles of corpses.

  The true criticism of Clive is altogether different: once again, he showed a guerrilla’s almost reckless courage. He staked everything on one throw, against enormous odds. He was gambling beyond measure. That he knew the exact size of the risk he was taking is clear. Yet for any man to have placed not just the survival of his men in battle, but the very future of the British in India, into one colossal throw of the dice, is open to question. But the justification of any gamble is success, and he succeeded. That fact alone exonerated and justified him. He had that greatest asset of the most accomplished of statesmen and generals, luck.

  * * *

  There were not one, but two, conspiracies. The one supported by Omichand involving Yar Latuf Khan, one of the Nawab’s senior generals, which was backed also by the Seths and the Hindu aristocracy. And the one backed by Clive, in which most of the Moslem aristocracy was rallying around Mir Jafar, the chief general of Siraj-ud-Daula’s army.

  Scrafton, Clive’s young, reckless and unscrupulous agent, was informed of the first by Omichand, who was in his sickroom. Scrafton then called on the Nawab – whom he had last seen on the eve of the battle for Calcutta in all his martial magnificence. Siraj-ud-Daula ‘fell a’laughing and shaking his head’, exclaiming ‘give him a horse and a dress, no let it be an elephant’. In the event it was just a horse.

  Watts, much better informed than Scrafton, favoured the second conspiracy surrounding Mir Jafar, which was backed by Manik Chand and the Nawab’s best general, Rai Durlabh, who had had enough of being ordered around by Siraj-ud-Daula’s effete young favourites. Mir Jafar was son-in-law to Aliverdi Khan, his most trusted general, and uncle to Siraj-ud-Daula, who had repeatedly humiliated him in public and dismissed him. Moreover, Mir Jafar effectively sent Clive a blank cheque to set out his demands in a treaty in exchange for British support.

  Watts wrote on 23 April 1757 that Mir Jafar was ‘ready and willing to join their forces, seize the Nabob and put up another person approved of. If you approve of this scheme, which is more feasible than the other [Omichand’s] I wrote about, he [Mir Jafar] requests that you will write your proposals of what money, what land you want, or what treaties you will engage in.’

  The select committee, acting sensibly for almost the first time, decided to act on the recommendation of the agent in Murshidabad with the best knowledge and judgement – Watts. They even proposed recalling Scrafton, although eventually they decided to leave him there after Clive protested vigorously.

  However, all sides now gave Mir Jafar their seal of approval. On 1 May the committee fatefully decreed that Siraj-ud-Daula’s ‘dishonesty and insolence show that the recently made treaty was concluded by him only to gain time; the absolute certainty of his intention to break the peace, as shown by his intrigues with the French; the hatred felt for the Nabob by everybody makes it probable that there will be a revolution whether we interfere or not, and it would be a mistake not to assist a probable successor and so obtain the exclusion of the French’.

  Omichand, however, was furious at what he saw as the discarding of his own plot. The Seths now switched their own support to the
more powerful Mir Jafar, and the merchant’s role as an intermediary was reduced to almost nothing. Indignant and devious, he now sought to switch sides, offering himself to the Nawab as his agent.

  The pressure on Watts became intense. The Seths had warned him that the Nawab had twice threatened to impale him or cut off his head. Now the Englishman believed Omichand was about to betray him and Mir Jafar. The other conspirators would have nothing to do with Omichand. But Watts attempted desperately to appease him and prevent news of the plot leaking out.

  The merchant now astonishingly insisted that, as the price of his not revealing all, he must be awarded 5 per cent of the Nawab’s treasury, reckoned at £40 million, under the terms of the treaty with Mir Jafar. On 16 May Watts, in a panic, fearing for his life as well as the success of the conspiracy, told Clive of Omichand’s terms, and also sent a signed and sealed blank piece of paper from Mir Jafar on which the British were to set out their terms for supporting the conspiracy.

  It was evident at this stage that Mir Jafar and his associates were desperate to be rid of Siraj-ud-Daula, and that they believed they could not do so without British support. The Bengalis needed the British as much as vice versa to be rid of an unpopular, dissolute, frivolous and often vicious tyrant.

  * * *

  A major crisis had arrived in the form of Omichand’s potential betrayal, which threatened to unravel the whole conspiracy. Clive came up with a simple and entirely dishonest solution. He could not bow to Omichand’s demands without infuriating the other conspirators; but he could not take the risk that the Calcutta merchant would betray the plot. So he came up with an astonishing contrivance.

  The select committee was by now almost entirely under the spell of this energetic, frantic, decisive personality, so changed from the morose figure of the earlier part of the campaign. It debated ‘how we might deceive Omichand and prevent a discovery of the whole project, which we run the risk of, should we refuse to insist on the unreasonable gratification he expects and demands; and on the one hand it would be entirely improper to stipulate, much more to demand with any obstinacy, such extravagant terms from Mir Jafar for a person who can be of no service in the intended revolution. So on the other it would be dangerous to provoke a man of Omichand’s character by seeming to take no care at all of his interests, and slighting his weight and influence, which might prompt him to make a sacrifice of us and ruin our affairs entirely.’

  Thus a ‘double treaty’ must be drafted, ‘both to be signed by Mir Jafar and by us; in one of which the article in favour of Omichand is to be inserted, in the other to be left out, and Mir Jafar is to be informed of that which we design to abide by and esteem authentic with our reasons for taking such a step’.

  The real treaty was drafted on white paper, the fake one on red. The payment Omichand sought was reduced through haggling by a third, so as not to make him suspicious. For good measure, with unblinking insincerity, Clive told Watts to ‘flatter Omichand greatly, tell him the Admiral, Committee and self are infinitely obliged to him for the pains he has taken to aggrandise the Company’s affairs, and that his name will be greater in England than it ever was in India’.

  A further obstacle suddenly raised its head. Watson refused to sign the red treaty on ‘a strict principle of delicacy’ – presumably that to do so would be to compromise the good name of His Majesty’s navy – as opposed to the agents of the Company, who were on a lower and more venal plane. Omichand, who knew that Watson’s authority was equal to Clive’s, would have suspected treachery without his signature; and in the immortal words of Macaulay: ‘Clive was not a man to do anything by halves. We almost blush to write it. He forged Admiral Watson’s name.’

  In fact, Watson almost certainly authorised the forgery. The secretary of the Bengal select committee at the time wrote that ‘he shrugged up his shoulders and said laughingly that he had not signed it but that he had left it to them to do as they pleased’. One of Watson’s officers was later to claim that he objected not just to the forgery – which he certainly knew of – but to the whole conspiracy. In fact, he consistently lent Clive his support, and even that of his sailors, over the next few weeks, although he expressed doubts about the chances of success.

  According to Clive, the admiral ‘gave the gentleman who carried it [the treaty to his flagship] leave to sign his name upon it’. The gentleman was called Mr Lushington. Watson had no hesitation in claiming his share of the prize money after the conspiracy had proved successful; unfortunately he died just two months later, so the exact truth was never established. It was to be the most controversial episode in Clive’s career, and one which returned to haunt him in later life.

  The historian Sir Henry Cotton’s comment seems appropriate:

  In war, fraud is no more dishonorable than killing is murder. The Duke of Wellington might have thought the sham treaty a needless finesse; but he would have hanged the Hindu banker without scruple on the morrow of Plassey. He would certainly not have paid him the quarter-of-a-million sterling which was his price, as Colonel Malleson thinks Clive should have done.

  This is echoed by the Indian historian Fazl Rubee:

  If Mir Jafar and Clive used any deceit at the time of the revolution such things were always done on such occasions. Whenever any revolution took place at the time of the Hindu Raj or Mohammedan government such plottings were carried on to a far greater extent. We know, for instance, what Rajah Khan did and how Aliverdi Khan plotted against Serferaz Khan. These things have always occurred, and politicians have justified them when they have been done in the service of their country. But such things were not carried on against Siraj-ud-Daula to the extent that had been common in former times.

  It is hard to escape the conclusion that the controversy of the Omichand deal was a storm got up purely by Clive’s enemies as a means of pulling him down, and later resurrected by Victorian moralists.

  * * *

  Clive resorted to a flurry of deception, perhaps counting on the fact that Drake and the council by their obtuseness and arrogance before his arrival had given the impression to the Bengalis that they were incapable of either intrigue or intelligence. The Nawab had by now decided to take on the British, ordering Mir Jafar to Plassey, where the bulk of his forces under Rai Durlabh, some 15,000 men, were still concentrated.

  Nundcomar, another treacherous go-between, was suddenly summoned at midnight. He refused to come. He was then invited at dawn by Clive to watch the British army exercising outside Chandernagore, where he was lectured about the Nawab’s behaviour. This was the beginning of an extraordinary softness on the part of Clive towards Nundcomar, a brahmin whose duplicity was later far to exceed even that of Omichand.

  In a panic, Nundcomar informed Siraj-ud-Daula that Clive was planning to march that very day – which sent the Nawab into one of his characteristic rages. He heard a rumour simultaneously that the British were sending ammunition to Kasimbazar in a small flotilla of barges. They were searched and found to be empty. The Nawab was by now in a state bordering on hysteria.

  These signs of hostility were succeeded by a small flurry of acts of appeasement. Clive announced that he was sending half his army down from Chandernagore, as well as his cannon. He said he was keeping the rest there only because, since the Nawab’s army had destroyed Calcutta, ‘there is not much room for more soldiers without endangering their lives by sickness’. But he suggested the Nawab should also withdraw his troops from Plassey.

  Even more subtle was Clive’s reaction to a letter that arrived on 12 May purporting to come from the chief of the Marathas, promising him the support of 120,000 cavalry against the Nawab. This said, among other things, that ‘whatever goods and riches you have lost in Bengal, the double of its value shall be restored by me. Do not on any account make peace with the Nabob. In a few days my forces shall enter Bengal, and the trade of that province shall be entirely yours. The French shall not remain in Bengal. Your forces shall keep them out by sea, mine, by land.’

 
; It was too good an offer to be true. Clive assumed at once it was a forgery of the Nawab’s. He wrote back with fine calculation that while he still got on well with the Nawab, there was a possibility of war after the rainy season had ended – when in fact he was determined to overthrow him well before then. He instructed Watts and Scrafton to show a copy to the Nawab, to demonstrate that the British would have none of these conspiracies, and that they would ‘stand by him to the last’. Siraj-ud-Daula was so pleased that he recalled half of his forces, and all his three commanders – Mir Jafar, Rai Durlabh and Manik Chand. He told their troops to stand easy, but failed to pay them off promptly.

  * * *

  The climax was now approaching. On the one hand Clive seemed fully to have regained his old furious energy, self-confidence and extraordinary ability to persuade others to get things done. The relationship between him and the select committee had completely changed: he was in charge, and they did his bidding. Watson, while retaining his prickliness and sense of professional superiority, was no match for his intellect or energy, and his ships anyway could proceed no further upriver, thus being unable to contribute further.

  On the other hand the stress upon this brilliant, vigorous man in assuming responsibility for the whole expedition was exacting. He was, as he preferred, once again ensconced in luxury: he had commandeered the colonnaded house of Renault at Ghyretty, near Chandernagore. A magnificent rococo French building, embellished with columns and frescoes, it stood in an extensive park by the river, like something transplanted from Versailles to the disease-infected tropics.

  The gloom of ruined Calcutta must have seemed behind him; he even confidently invited Margaret to join him. He was encircled again by colonial magnificence. In this splendid house he seems to have recovered his sense of proportion and self-confidence. It was the first real comfort he had enjoyed since leaving the peace and luxury of Fort St George nearly a year earlier.