After lengthy haggling, it was agreed that the new Nawab should pay half of what he owed the British immediately, two-thirds in bullion and one-third in jewels, plate and gold, and the rest in equal instalments over the next three years. Clive visited the treasury himself to satisfy his curiosity. From this was to derive his most famous remark before an inquiry of the House of Commons: ‘When I entered the Nawab’s treasury at Murshidabad, with heaps of gold and silver to the right and left, and these crowned with jewels … by God … at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.’
He was led into the large chamber, where fabulous wealth glittered all around him: King Solomon’s mines could not have been more resplendent. In addition to his two lakhs under the treaty, Clive was given a personal gift by the new Nawab of 16 lakhs: altogether he took some £230,000 (at today’s values, a colossal fortune worthy of an English duke). It was true he could have taken more, and that he turned down the gifts of the Hindu nobility. But by any standards his victory had made him fabulously wealthy.
Within a couple of days, the first half-payment to the British was loaded on to 75 boats, each carrying a lakh (around £15,000). This procession, bearing around £1 million altogether, perhaps the largest shipment of booty in history, set off in a large and colourful regatta of music, drums and flags, and was joined at Hugli by an impressive British naval escort. To those who watched, it must have seemed that the very wealth of Bengal was being taken downriver.
At Calcutta, salutes were fired, balls were held and partying went on into the night in celebration of Clive’s victory and the astonishing quantity of plunder. Each member of the council received around £27,000 and each subaltern in the army some £3,000. The navy and army received around £400,000 altogether. There was a near-mutiny in the army at the proposal to give the navy, which had done so little, a share. Clive, always a stickler for military discipline, promptly issued an edict declaring that he had been treated by some of his officers with ‘the greatest disrespect and ingratitude’, and threatening to withdraw their share of the money. It was one of the greatest treasure hauls in history. Altogether, by the end of his rule, Mir Jafar was to pay the British some £3 million or so, of which five-sixths went directly back to England.
What of Omichand? According to Orme’s account of Clive’s conversation with the Seths, Scrafton is said to have taken the merchant, who had been standing outside the conference room, aside and told him, ‘Omichand, the red paper is a trick; you are to have nothing.’ Orme went on, ‘These words overpowered him like a blast of sulphur, he sank back fainting, and would have fallen to the ground had not one of his attendants caught him in his arms.’ Omichand thereupon ‘lapsed into a state of imbecility’.
Clive was later to remark that ‘when the real treaty came to be read, the indignation and resentment on that man’s countenance bars all description’. According to Macaulay:
Omichand revived; but his mind was irreparably ruined. Clive, who, although little troubled by scruples of conscience in dealing with Indian potentates, was not inhuman, seems to have been touched. He saw Omichand a few days later, spoke to him kindly, advised him to make a pilgrimage to one of the great temples of India, in the hope that a change of scene might restore his health, and was even disposed, notwithstanding all that had passed, again to employ him in the public service. But, from the moment of that sudden shock, the unhappy man sank gradually into idiocy. He, who had formerly been distinguished by the strength of his understanding and the simplicity of his habits, now squandered the remains of his fortune on childish trinkets, and loved to exhibit himself in rich garments, and hung with precious stones, and then died.
Parts of this account seem to have been untrue. ‘Omichand shams sick and swears he has lost faith in man,’ Scrafton wrote. Clive even suggested the merchant could be useful again: ‘he is a person capable of rendering … great services while properly restrained, therefore not to be wholly discarded’. Omichand in fact continued to conspire, and Clive offered to restore his saltpetre contract, but eventually grew sufficiently irritated with him to suggest he go on a pilgrimage to get him out of the way. The merchant died 18 months later, certainly deeply embittered, but not out of his mind.
Clive’s revolution now moved inexorably on to devour its next victim. Siraj-ud-Daula had fled for the region of Patna, which was said to be still loyal. After nearly a week of travelling upstream the deposed Nawab’s party reached Rajmahal. There, dirty and disguised as peasants, they arrived at the cell of a Moslem fakir, Dana Shah. He took pity on them, and prepared a meal of rice cooked with butter and dhal and shredded onion. The holy man noticed that his chief guest was wearing very rich slippers, and slipped out to question the boatman. When he learned the truth, the holy man, whom the Nawab had either oppressed or, on some accounts, mutilated in the days of his full power, ‘rejoiced at this first fair opportunity of glutting his resentment and enjoyed his revenge’.
Meanwhile Jean Law, with his party of itinerant Frenchmen, had reached Rajmahal, where he had secretly learnt of Siraj-ud-Daula’s approach and intended to join him and set him up against the British. Tipped off by the fakir, the governor of Rajmahal, Mir Kasim – Mir Jafar’s brother-in-law – and Mir Daud, the new Nawab’s brother, arrived with a large armed guard and seized Siraj-ud-Daula. Law, hearing what had happened, quickly retreated. Mir Kasim, a powerful and ruthless personality soon to feature large in the history of Bengal, threatened and bullied Luft un-Nisa to reveal the whereabouts of her treasure, worth tens of thousands of pounds, while Mir Daud helped himself to the pleasures and treasures of the other women.
By 2 July the former Nawab was back in Murshidabad, and paraded mockingly through the streets as crowds jeered and spat on him. ‘He was in so wretched a condition, that the people of God, who saw him in that wretchedness, and remembered the delicacy, the glory, and the care and pomp in which he had been bred from his very infancy, forgot at once the ferocity of his temper, and the shameful actions of his life, and gave themselves up to every sentiment of pity and compassion, on beholding him pass by.’
According to Scrafton, Mir Jafar and his son Miran now decided to put him to death immediately lest ‘Clive’s clemency and moderation should plead for his preservation’. This may have been special pleading; there is no other evidence that Clive sought to intercede. It was Trichinopoly all over again. Mir Jafar entrusted his predecessor to the care of Miran, who at just 17 years old had a personality such that ‘pity and compassion answered no other purpose than that of spoiling business’, according to Ghulam Husain Khan. He was ‘more expeditious and quick-minded in slaughtering people’ than his father.
A retainer, Muhammad Beg, stabbed Siraj-ud-Daula viciously to death, and the body was then paraded on the back of an elephant through the streets of the city. Mir Jafar came to Clive next morning to apologise for the murder, saying that the captive was trying to organise an insurrection in the city – something clearly impossible in his wretched and imprisoned state. Clive later disingenuously asserted that the Nawab had been killed by a disgruntled retainer. As with Chanda Sahib at Trichinopoly, Clive’s second great opponent had met his death at the hands of his traditional enemies without the English commander’s intercession. Ghasita Begum, the former Nawab’s hostile aunt, and his mother Amina, were put in a boat, rowed out into the Buriganga river and drowned.
* * *
The morality of these events later caused Clive to be dogged by a storm of controversy never experienced by a British commander. It is worth noting, though, that at the time in India they aroused no controversy whatever. Clive’s treatment of Omichand has already been touched on: the merchant, who had twice betrayed the British, was bent on doing so a third time out of greed, and was deceived by a trick on his own level – which probably saved hundreds of British lives as well as their interests in India.
Clive’s acceptance of his huge prize was seen in contemporary India as simply taking possession of the spoils of war; any Indian conquero
r would have done the same, and taken more. Clive’s Bengali biographer Chaudhury has a fine passage on the subject:
With respect to all methods of money-making, fair or foul, England and India stood at opposite poles. To consider corruption alone, there was in England a recognised and accepted form of it – which was to use money to gain or keep political power and position; in India, on the contrary, it lay in using political power for personal monetary gain. Far from being regarded as corruption, monetary gain from personal position was universally regarded in India as the main use of political power. Statecraft had evolved in such a manner that for a long time politics, strictly so-called, had been thought of in terms of wars against other kings or one’s own king for the purpose of personal aggrandisement; and administration was the means of making money. To have political power and not to use it for making money was inconceivable in India.
Hence the total incomprehension between the two systems.
Should Clive have abided by a higher European morality? No such standard existed at the time in Britain. To the winner his booty – the recognised principle abroad. The king’s commanders – Watson and Coote – saw no reason not to help themselves to their fair share, as did the council in Calcutta.
The directors of the Company in London congratulated him on his good fortune. He formally reported these transactions. They were entirely public and above board. The Indian conspirators, Mir Jafar and Rai Durlabh, his chief minister, helped themselves to their own share of the treasury. Only as the British later began to accept a measure of responsibility for the good government of Bengal – and in this Clive ironically was to be the catalyst – did they begin to show scruples about such behaviour. For the moment, Clive had captured the biggest privateer’s hoard in history, and good luck to him.
It is harder to absolve Clive for some degree of responsibility in the murder of the Nawab. Undoubtedly the British commander had the power to stop it, particularly as the wretched parade through the city must have alerted him to what was about to happen. Certainly the ex-king had been responsible for terrible sufferings among his own people and the British at Calcutta. At the same time, Clive answered to British law and, as the effective ruler of Murshidabad, had a responsibility to see it applied to so illustrious a figure, even if the outcome might have been the same.
Instead he made no move to take charge of the prisoner or to make his concerns known. He must have expected the murder, yet did not attempt to stop it. It can be assumed he saw Siraj-ud-Daula, if he had lived, as a possible threat to Mir Jafar, and had few scruples about seeing him done away with. The Nawab had been a particularly cruel and nasty piece of work, and his murder was extremely popular among the British community in Calcutta, who had suffered so much. Clive was an accomplice through his inaction; although his behaviour was entirely understandable, it besmirched a man who showed remarkably little spirit of revenge against his military enemies throughout his career.
* * *
Clive’s first instinct after his triumph had been, in a characteristic fit of sadness after exertion, to return to Britain – which hardly suggested that his role as the new monarch of Bengal had gone to his head. Within a couple of months, tropical diseases had carried off his two chief lieutenants, Watson and Kilpatrick, before they had the chance to enjoy their new fortunes. Just before he died, Watson learnt that Admiral Byng had been shot for hesitating to fight at Minorca. Watson’s surgeon observed: ‘He reflected and reasoned much on the uncertain basis on which an officer’s character stands, and concluded with observing how much more hazardous it is for him to err on the cautious than the desperate side’ – a judgement no doubt influenced by Clive’s success. Clive himself fell ill in the aftermath of the great stress and exhaustion of the campaign up the Hugli.
Many of his friends returned home. He wanted to enjoy his new and colossal wealth in England. He aspired to build a new and grand country seat at Styche Hall; his ambition was to get into parliament, this time on the king’s side. He was suffering from post-battle depression.
But he shrugged it off more quickly than usual: as the magnitude of his power sunk in, so did a proper perception of his responsibilities. He had won only a battle; he needed now to consolidate victory and place British control of Bengal on a permanent footing. It was threatened on all sides: from the French, by princes along the border, from the outlying rulers of Bengal, by intrigues against Mir Jafar and through the schemes of the new Nawab himself, who had no intention of subordinating himself to the British for longer than absolutely necessary.
Clive’s first priority was to deal with the French. He had been incensed by Law’s attempts to rescue Siraj-ud-Daula, and advised him to surrender. As Law and his small party set off to escape, Clive sent Coote in hot pursuit. The king’s officer embarked on an intensive chase in the heat of the summer of no fewer than 450 miles, before giving up his quarry when Law reached the territory of the powerful Nawab of Oudh. On the way Coote’s men were accused of mistreating the women of Rajmahal – a charge he vehemently denied. Clive bitterly – and, it seems, unjustifiably – criticised the failure of Coote’s expedition.
On 12 July Margaret Clive and her tiny daughter had reached Calcutta from Madras, along with Jenny Latham. There Clive joined her in late summer, having decided after all to postpone his departure because of the ‘superior considerations’ of leaving ‘this country in peace’ and ensuring ‘the settlement of the province’.
Clive’s first priority was to ensure that Mir Jafar knew in no uncertain terms who was boss. He wrote a series of letters to the princes of India explaining how he had won his wars and given the throne to the new Nawab. He informed the Nawab of the Carnatic, Muhammad Ali, that he had defeated an army of 100,000 men.
Cheekily he himself wrote to the Great Mogul asking him to confer his seal of approval – the subah – upon Mir Jafar while the hapless ruler of Bengal was ordered to put up the funds for the necessary bribe to the emperor. This was no mere boastfulness on Clive’s part: he had to ensure that all of India knew that the British were paramount in Bengal.
The Mogul Emperor nominally appointed Clive commander of 5,000 horse and 6,000 foot, with the title of Flower of the Empire, Defender of the Country, the Brave First in War – which raised him to the status of the great Indian nobility. While this secured an official seal of approval for British rule, Clive set out to force the peppery Mir Jafar to stick to his treaty obligations and pay his monies on time.
It soon became apparent that while the new Nawab was not so capricious and cruel as his predecessor, he could make himself almost as unpopular by quarrelling with everyone. Heavily influenced by the vicious, psychopathic and increasingly powerful Miran, he began to fall out with his much wiser and more effective chief minister, Rai Durlabh, and then with the Seths and the Hindu merchant aristocracy as well.
High on drink and bhang – a drug made from a hemp-like plant – for most of the day, Mir Jafar also indulged heavily in his harem. Luke Scrafton, whom Clive left behind as his proconsul in Murshidabad, described him as ‘a sour old chap and must be sweetened by applications of well-timed presents, though I believe nothing would be so acceptable as some fine liqueurs’. Clive, who saw little enough to be grateful for in Mir Jafar’s actions at Plassey, was soon describing him as ‘the old fool’ and Miran as a ‘worthless young dog’.
Clive’s problems were hugely exacerbated by the shortage of good men with which to administer his new empire. Scrafton himself, although immensely able, was unscrupulous. He engaged in raising illicit taxes. The Company’s servants were paid only modestly, and encouraged to make their fortunes through their own self-aggrandisement; they had no duty to administer good government.
Naturally, this caused intense local resentment. Clive, who believed that British rule would endure only through good government, begged the Company for ‘capable young men from the civil service’ to be sent out to him, as well as keen professional soldiers. Owing to sickness, a staggering three quart
ers of the men who had embarked with Clive from Madras were dead a year later.
* * *
In November the first crisis in Clive’s dominion broke out. The crotchety old man in Murshidabad announced his intention to go into the Indian hinterland to Patna, in order to tame the governor of the border state of Bihar, Ramnarayan, who had been a supporter of Siraj-ud-Daula and was now said to be intriguing with the powerful Nawab of Oudh – and possibly the French – in the next-door state. Mir Jafar also wanted to make a show of strength in the outlying areas of the country. The Nawab’s plan was to murder Ramnarayan and install his own brother-in-law, the feared Mir Kasim, as governor.
Clive instantly resolved that he must send an expedition to accompany the Nawab: it was essential that Mir Jafar remain under British restraint. Moreover, Bengal itself would be threatened if his forces were defeated by the Nawab of Oudh. However, he had no wish to leave Calcutta undefended, as there were reports that the French were again gathering in strength in southern India. A French fleet was also said to be on the way, and Clive was about to lose his naval support, which was returning home. In addition, Kilpatrick and many of the garrison had been struck down by cholera and died.
Clive was forced to march on 17 November. He found Murshidabad in a state bordering on civil war. Rai Durlabh and the Hindu notables had been intriguing against Mir Jafar in the outlying areas of Bengal. The chief minister was allegedly conspiring to oust the old warrior and install a new Nawab; two possible candidates had emerged – and Mir Jafar had retaliated by having one assassinated. The Nawab was himself said to be plotting to murder the chief minister, who stayed behind in the capital, protected by his personal bodyguard, while Mir Jafar travelled to Patna.
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