Clive always showed a remarkable ability to combine the endurance of extraordinary hardship and squalor in the field with his men with a love of wealth and luxury when he was off it. It must have seemed quite surreal to dwell in this baroque palace by the banks of the sluggish Hugli while a great battle that would decide the fate of India seemed imminent and plots raged through the Nawab’s capital upriver. His only melancholy was to observe the bodies of children swathed in garlands of flowers and left to float downstream by Hindu custom.
Clive was being driven relentlessly forward, weaving the most complex webs of deceit. This once straightforward – if able and extraordinarily vigorous and talented – military hero was now to show himself on a level with anything out of Renaissance Italy or contemporary France. He conspired like a Medici or a Talleyrand, and, like them, was quite clear in his goals.
Clive brooded on the intrigue that would seal his fate and that of the British in India during the dark nights in that astonishing palace dripping with humidity and infested by insects and lizards. He was making a bid for absolute power. Yet he was close to losing the very rules that are necessary to regulate any man, beyond which there is only the limitless horizon of madness.
* * *
Some 100 miles upriver at Murshidabad, madness seemed already to be gnawing at the soul of his principal adversary, Siraj-ud-Daula, as, immersed in idleness and pleasure, he awaited the slow approach of the man dubbed in southern India ‘the Invincible’. In place of the decisive arrogance which he had shown as he marched at the head of the armies that had taken Calcutta, he faced his nemesis with a giggling insouciance.
His advisers warned him that Mir Jafar ‘is treacherously bent on ruining this royal house … we ought to put them [the conspirators] down first, so that the English, on hearing the news, will take themselves to flight. The presence of these two will be the cause of distraction and anxiety to us as they are sure to practise treachery.’ But Siraj-ud-Daula, in his splendid palace across the river from the teeming immensity of Murshidabad took no notice, fearing that to move would precipitate the crisis; Mir Jafar was too strong.
The atmosphere in the Nawab’s capital was pregnant with intrigue. Watts, who was in fear for his life, was desperate to get the agreement with Mir Jafar concluded, and also to spirit Omichand, who might at any moment betray the plot to the Nawab, out of Murshidabad. At last he succeeded in arranging for Scrafton and the Calcutta merchant to leave in palanquins.
However, on the journey, Omichand managed to give Scrafton the slip and go and visit Rai Durlabh, the commander of the Nawab’s standing forces at Plassey and one of the conspirators. Whether he suspected or not that he was being double-crossed by the British, he made mischief, and caused Rai Durlabh to raise further objections to the British terms – in particular the huge payments demanded from the Bengalis, as he was also the Nawab’s treasurer. These were transmitted to Mir Jafar, causing further delay.
The terms included, as well as the restoration of British privileges, the total expulsion of the French from Bengal, 177 lakhs in reparations for damage to Calcutta, a large increase in Company land around Calcutta, and a ban on building Bengali fortifications anywhere between Hugli and Calcutta. In addition, the fake treaty provided for the payment of 20 lakhs to Omichand.
After Rai Durlabh’s intervention, the bargaining was suddenly resumed, with Watts growing ever more desperate. There were rumours that his head had been exhibited on a pike. He wrote to Clive in exasperation, ‘If you think you are strong enough, I am of the opinion we had better depend on ourselves and enter into no contract or have any connection with such a set of shuffling, lying, spiritless wretches.’
At last Watts was summoned to Mir Jafar: he was taken to his palace in a closed dooley usually used to transport women to the harem, to deceive the Nawab’s spies. In the exotic surroundings of the women’s quarters, Mir Jafar solemnly signed the treaty, swearing both on the Koran and on the head of his beloved 17-year-old son, Miran.
Watts was spirited away again. But, as the fevered atmosphere in Murshidabad continued to grow, he had to wait in an agony of frustration until the treaty reached Clive safely, taken by one of the few couriers trusted by both sides, Omar Beg. With every day that passed, Watts’s position grew more dangerous.
At last the Nawab decided to move against Mir Jafar, and sent a party of soldiers to arrest him. They were beaten up by the general’s retainers and sent back to the Nawab. Mir Jafar was promptly dismissed as paymaster-general; but Siraj-ud-Daula lacked the nerve to send a larger force against him, for fear of igniting civil war in the capital.
Watts, fearing for his life, left Murshidabad along with the two remaining members of the British mission on the evening of 12 June, ostensibly to join a hunting party near Kasimbazar. This turned into a desperate and dangerous flight. According to Sykes, who accompanied them initially:
They set out from the country seat, attended by a Mughal servant, a few peons, and their greyhounds, having previously left directions with their servants to provide a supper, telling them they would return and entertain the Dutch that evening.
It was dark before they arrived at Daudpur, although they travelled at speed. On the nearby plain was encamped Rai Durlabh, an officer of the Nabob’s with a very large force. Here they were exposed to imminent danger, falling unawares of the outposted guards, but the darkness of the night favoured their escape.
By striking off into the plain and taking a circuit of the whole camp they regained the road and arrived about one o’clock in the morning at Augurdip, where a second misfortune threatened their destruction. They unexpectedly found themselves in the midst of a body of horse, which had been stationed there to prevent the passing or repassing down or up the country of any Europeans.
The first notice they had of this danger was the neighing and kicking of the horses about; their riders luckily were asleep. At this place they quitted their horses, and embarking on two open boats which they had the good fortune to seize, proceeded down the river.
They reached Clive himself two days later. With their flight, Murshidabad was thrown into further turmoil. The Nawab had previously assembled an armed force to attack and seize Mir Jafar, and mobs ran wildly through the streets in preparation. Not knowing the specifics of the conspiracy, Siraj-ud-Daula was thrown into a panic by Watts’s flight. He feared that the British were about to make their move; with much of his army ready to desert on account of non-payment, he suddenly reversed himself again, deciding he needed Mir Jafar on his side to ensure the loyalty of his troops.
He went personally to his rival to beg his services. As Mir Jafar wrote, ‘The guns and arrows were all ready against me, and the people were in arms day and night. Mr Watts’s news was known early on Monday. This startled the Nabob; he thought it absolutely necessary I should be soothed; he came to me himself. On Thursday Eve the Hugli letter arrived that they [the British] were marched. I was to be with him.
‘On three conditions I consented to it. One, that I would not enter into his service; secondly, I would not visit him; lastly I would not take a post in the army. I sent him word that if he agreed to these terms I was ready. As he wanted me, he consented. But I took this writing from all the commanders of the army and artillery: that when they had conquered the English they should be bound to see me and my family safe wherever I chose to go.’
* * *
Clive’s plot now seemed in serious danger of unravelling altogether. It looked as though Mir Jafar had switched sides again and joined up, albeit with ill-grace, with the Nawab. The latter, thus strengthened, ordered his forces out of Murshidabad to join his standing army at Plassey.
Clive decided to strike before the onset of the rainy season made movement impossible. The countryside would soon be treacherously swampy, and he could not expect the conspiracy, such as it was, to survive until after the rains. He ordered reinforcements up from Calcutta: some 150 soldiers and sailors were sent up, leaving the town totally undefended.
On 11 June Clive’s forces moved, leaving 100 or so to defend Chandernagore. Altogether, he controlled some 3,000 men – 600 British and European soldiers, 100 Eurasians, 170 artillerymen, and around 2,100 Indian troops. The sepoys, along with ten cannon and two howitzers, travelled by land, the Europeans by boat. The main British ships with their cannon could travel no further upstream.
The reckoning was now drawing close. Clive had been sucked further and further into the continent, up the Hugli river, calculating always that boldness was its own reward. Yet beyond the treacherous river and the oppressive jungle there lay an unseen enemy of tens of thousands. Clive now sent a disguised ultimatum to the Nawab, listing the wrongs done to the British and the way he had broken the previous treaty. He offered to accept mediation by the Nawab’s principal generals, headed by Mir Jafar.
By 17 June Clive had reached Patna and ordered Eyre Coote, now promoted to major, to advance to the front at Kutwa, some 14 miles away, with a force of 700 and two cannon. It was an impressive obstacle, a fort whose walls were about a mile long altogether and which commanded the approach to Murshidabad and contained a lot of grain.
Coote’s force came under fire as it approached the fort, and he promptly threatened to storm it, giving no quarter. As his forces attacked, the defenders fled. Clive’s small army moved forward and had to shelter in the squalid native town from a sudden torrent of tropical rain.
CHAPTER 16
Plassey
In this dismal encampment, far removed from the decadent baroque palace of Chandernagore, Clive had to make the most agonising decision of his life. Before him lay a branch of the Hugli river which he needed to cross if he was to attack the Nawab’s force at Plassey, halfway to Murshidabad, some 40 miles away. Ferrying his army in boats presented no problem; but retreating across it after a defeat would be to invite appalling carnage among his men, particularly if the river had been further swollen in the interval by the monsoon rains.
If the British were beaten, Clive faced the danger not just of a lost battle and orderly retreat, but a rout with his army caught like rats in a trap by the rising waters. The stakes were immense. It was rumoured that de Bussy was approaching Bengal with a considerable French force, and that Law was despatching men to help the Nawab.
A defeat for Clive would leave Calcutta virtually defenceless, except for the guns of Watson’s ships, and at the mercy of a second occupation by the Nawab. The French might join with the Nawab as his partners in Bengal while also attacking Madras, now so depleted of its forces.
Against that, there was only a colossal gamble: that Clive’s conspiracy would come off. In effect he depended upon the word of Indian princes, which Clive’s long experience in India had shown to be entirely untrustworthy – and nowhere more so than in Bengal.
Desperately, he sought to pin down Mir Jafar, now riding alongside the Nawab once again.
It gives me great concern that in an affair of so great consequence to yourself in particular that you do not exert yourself more. So long as I have been on my march you have not yet given me the least information what measures it is necessary for me to take, nor do I know what is going forward at Murshidabad.
Surely it is in your power to send me news daily; it must be more difficult for me to procure trusty messengers than you; however the bearer of this is a sensible, intelligent man, in whom I have great confidence. Let me know your sentiments freely by him. I shall wait here till I have proper intelligence to proceed. I think it absolutely necessary that you should join my army as soon as possible.
Consider the Nabob will increase in strength daily. Come over to me at Plassey or any other place you judge proper, with what force you have. Even a thousand horse will be sufficient, and I will engage to march immediately with you to Murshidabad. I prefer conquering by open force.
He heard nothing in reply. He was growing frantic, sending emissaries to any of the Nawab’s enemies he could think of – the Marathas, the Nawab of Oudh, the powerful prince on Bengal’s northern borders – in a desperate search for allies. Reports from scouts reckoned that Law and 300 or so Frenchmen were only three days’ march away. Clive was being lured into a trap; all his time-consuming manipulations were coming to nought. Mir Jafar had double-crossed him and was with the Nawab.
He wrote desperately and uncharacteristically for advice from the select committee in Calcutta, so that he would not be entirely left out on a limb whatever decision he might take. ‘I am really at a loss how to act over the present situation of our opponents’ – but he received no reply. None indeed was to come until after the Battle of Plassey, and its views were ‘so indefinite and contradictory that I can put no other construction on it than an attempt to clear yourselves at my expense had this expedition miscarried’. The general in his tent, agonising and unhappy, could find no helpful advice from the quarrelsome, grasping pygmies of Calcutta.
The decision would have to be his alone. The mind of this usually impulsive, decisive man was a turmoil, a battleground between his instincts, which were to advance, and his formidable intelligence, which told him that to do so would be suicidal folly. Nothing seemed to be coming right. The signs were universally inauspicious. In a state of agitation and grim pessimism he did something he had never done before an engagement – summoned a council of war to seek the advice of his commanders.
Just in advance of the meeting a letter, sewn in a slipper, arrived from Mir Jafar at last. It was a sign; but it could scarcely have been less committal. ‘Tomorrow, the day of the Eade [a Moslem festival], by the blessing of God I shall march. I shall have my tent fixed to the right or left of the army. I have hitherto been afraid to send you intelligence. After I am arrived in the army mutual intelligence will be easier, but here the Nabob has fixed guards on all the roads. Your letters come too open to me; I hope that till our affairs are publicly declared you will be very careful.’
The missive could hardly have said less: although friendly in tone, it carefully avoided any commitment – whether through fear it might be intercepted, or because Mir Jafar had reached a deal with the Nawab, and the letter was intended as a feint, Clive could not know. He felt less than reassured. Meanwhile a letter had reached him from Watts describing how Mir Jafar had denounced him as a spy to impress the Nawab’s emissary, who had arrived during a talk between the army commander and the Englishman.
* * *
The once all-certain, all-powerful Clive summoned his council of war. There were nine senior officers present and seven junior ones. The first group divided seven–two against fighting, among the noes Clive and his second-in-command, Kilpatrick. Of the junior officers, four were in favour of fighting, three against.
Coote was one of those who argued passionately that they should move forward. ‘We should come to an immediate action; or, if that was thought entirely impracticable, we should return to Calcutta; the consequence of which must be our own disgrace, and the inevitable destruction of the Company’s affairs.’
Clive intensely disliked the overbearing Coote, who had little understanding of the conspiracy. The British commander himself was not considering a return to Calcutta; but if Mir Jafar failed to come forward with any specific promise, he felt the British should wait in force on the other side of the river, possibly until the end of the monsoon. The conspiracy would have been proved worthless, and would unravel; but equally the Nawab would prove incapable of striking across the river until the autumn.
To cross a river which might soon become unfordable, and to face a vastly superior force, must be folly. The battle was off after the decision of the council of war, which confirmed Clive in his pessimism. A famous scene was now played out.
In Orme’s description, Clive retired ‘into an adjoining grove, where he remained near an hour in meditation which convinced him of the absurdity of stopping where he was; and acting now entirely from himself, he gave orders, on his return to his quarters, that the army cross the river next morning’. Clive was later to deny this
version of events, because it shows him to have been both unheroically hesitant and dangerously impulsive. But it seems certainly to have been the truth. Coote confirmed that Clive told him only an hour after the council had met that he intended to move next day.
It was the key decision. The more robust attitude of his junior officers had impressed him. Also, if he missed his chance, Coote would forever be able to castigate him with lacking boldness. Finally, and most importantly, he decided that if he failed to cross he would lose the initiative for the first time against Siraj-ud-Daula.
The Clive myth was based on his fearlessness, which he had hitherto displayed throughout the Bengal campaign; to hesitate now would allow the enemy to gain new heart. Clive’s old maxim of attack being the best form of defence reasserted itself; but it was a gamble on an altogether different scale from anything he had tried before. He was engaged in a huge game of bluff, a poker game where upstaging his opponents was all. If he lacked the confidence to move forward, it was quite certain that the conspirators would be quick to mend their fences with the Nawab; a gigantic opportunity would have been lost. If he did move forward boldly, Mir Jafar and the others might just yet be prevailed upon to keep to their side of the bargain.
All of Clive’s successes had been based on a judicious decision to take the offensive, suddenly and against seemingly impossible odds, which every time had thrown his Indian enemies into confusion. The only difference this time was the stakes involved – the very survival of the British in Bengal and, possibly, India.
Many men have been rendered over-cautious by the size of the responsibility involved. Clive, at the age of 32, decided to turn against the caution of seniority and resort to youthful type. He was composed and decisive when he returned from the grove, although it is believed he agonised most of the night. The following day, as the first of his troops crossed over, he wrote to Mir Jafar: ‘If you cannot go even this length to assist us, I call God to witness the fault is not mine, and I must desire your consent for concluding a peace with the Nawab.’
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