Within days he had set off with what was left of the garrison in Calcutta – around 450 men – leaving it defenceless. The council was frantic. Once again the Bengali empire seemed threatened, with Clive at the head of a tiny force and Calcutta wholly unprotected should Mir Jafar and Miran suddenly turn on it.
When Clive arrived at Kasimbazar, the British base outside Murshidabad, he found Mir Jafar yet again presiding over a shambles of plots and counter-plots. The Nawab had also run out of money to pay the British or his own troops. Omar Beg, now his chief minister after Rai Durlabh’s removal, a man trusted by both sides, joined Clive and the Nawab on an elephant for lengthy discussions. Immediately afterwards, Clive set off for Patna with a large force commanded by Miran; wisely, for once, Mir Jafar had decided to stay at home to hold the capital while his scheming son was out of harm’s way.
As Clive and Miran travelled north at great speed, the urgency of the crisis became apparent. Ramnarayan was said to have visited the Shahzada’s camp to make his peace; the latter had meanwhile crossed the Karamnassa river from Oudh into Bihar. Clive, who had backed Ramnarayan in the past against Mir Jafar, was incensed: ‘What power has the Shahzada to resist the united forces of the Nawab and the English? Think then, what will be your fate,’ he told Ramnarayan by messenger.
Once again Clive mercilessly pushed his forces forwards to the very limits of their endurance: they covered some 400 miles in just three weeks. As they approached Patna, he learned that Ramnarayan was after all preparing to fight the Shahzada. The governor had been apparently prevaricating only because there was no sign of reinforcement.
With Clive approaching, Ramnarayan escaped from the Shahzada’s camp, sent him an offensive letter and provoked an attack. Heavy casualties were inflicted on Ramnarayan’s forces, although the besieging army was kept outside the walled city. When the Shahzada heard of Clive’s approach – he was still ten miles away from the city – the siege was lifted and his army retreated.
Clive went in hot pursuit, and the Shahzada’s men were soon wholly dispersed, the young heir crossing back over the river with just 300 men and asking the British commander for his protection. Clive replied with contempt and warned the Nawab of Oudh, who had backed him but cunningly refrained from direct intervention, that he would fight him after the monsoon if he tried anything.
Two of the rajahs in the hill country of Boadgerore, who had sided with the Shahzada, promptly made their peace. Uncharacteristically, Clive went in pursuit of the third, the rajah of Pulwansing, deep in rocky and wooded hills. In intense heat he methodically laid waste to the country, destroying some 300 villages and the main town of Nookah before the rajah made his peace. It was a remarkable act of savagery by Clive, prompted by a legitimate desire to secure Bengal’s borders, but more reminiscent of his Indian and British opponents than the normally clement commander.
His savagery suggests that his always fragile psychological façade had cracked at last, perhaps under the pressure of the march, perhaps under that of his over-extended position – at the head of a small force, surrounded by treachery on all sides, his capital of Calcutta far away and undefended. It was to be the blackest mark against Clive’s humanity. Clive returned in cruel triumph to Murshidabad at the end of June. He had arrived at his heart of darkness at last.
CHAPTER 18
Emperor of Bengal
Patna was not to be the farthest he was to travel into the subcontinent, but Clive now seemed corrupted beyond repair by power. In the past eighteen months he had followed up his triumph at Plassey with the seizure of a colossal portion of Bengal’s wealth, much of it for himself; with a series of brilliant manoeuvres aimed at reducing the power of the new Nawab and keeping him dependent on British goodwill; and with a masterful tactical stroke against the French, followed by a frenzied campaign in northern India that had ended in an orgy of destruction entirely untypical of the man.
He was all-powerful, his tactical genius overwhelming. Indian princes quailed before him. He was carried everywhere in palanquins, on elephants, by magnificent barges, enjoying the best house in Calcutta. There was no Englishman on the continent to challenge his authority. Having cowed Bihar and repulsed the very Emperor of India’s scion, he was returning to the ever-treacherous Mir Jafar, whom he had protected, to exact his reward. The ruler of Bengal was deeply in his debt. But for the Englishman, the country might have been invaded by the army of the Shahzada and the Nawab’s throne in Murshidabad toppled by the conspirators around him.
Some credit for the defeat of the Shahzada must go to Ramnarayan – although his sudden escape from the imperial camp probably owed much to his guess that Clive would scatter all before him. But for Clive’s approach, Ramnarayan might well have made his peace with the Shahzada. Only the ferocity and speed of the British advance changed his mind and persuaded him to give serious resistance to the invader.
But Clive was now confirmed as the all-powerful ‘Invincible’, a man whose very presence could put his enemies to flight. Mir Jafar, always scheming and yearning to throw off the British yoke, must have viewed the proconsul’s return with deep apprehension. In fact Clive thought the Nawab might have to be replaced in the fullness of time – but not immediately – in order to prevent any attempt at the succession by the cruel and scheming Miran.
Meanwhile, Mir Jafar was what Clive wanted: an extremely weak Nawab, beset by enemies. Now, high on challenge, sated by power, apparently omnipotent and feared by all, Clive was to commit the single most controversial and indefensible act of his career.
Clive had already asked for the customary payment for his imperial rank, a jagir – the tax take of a particular area – from the Seths as early as January 1759. As the Englishman’s honour from the Mogul Emperor was an entirely honorary one, Clive was pressing his hand a little far – particularly in view of the immense payments to him after Plassey.
Mir Jafar parried by saying he would grant Clive the revenues from an area of Orissa then under threat of external invasion and impossible to extract taxes from – unless Clive in person was prepared to do so. In June, however, the Seths went to him to tell him the Nawab was now willing to award him the jagir from land in Bengal.
When Clive returned to Murshidabad after the Patna expedition, Mir Jafar turned out to meet him in all his splendour, with a full retinue and accompanied by the Jagat Seth – who, it will be remembered, was believed to have been conspiring with the Shahzada and must certainly have had a hand in the return of Ramnarayan to the Bengali fold, earning Mir Jafar’s gratitude. The Jagat Seth bore a silk bag containing a document.
Clive did not open it – presumably because he knew the contents, although the aim was to demonstrate his public indifference towards this offering. It was a gift ‘unasked, or indeed unthought of’ – an annual income of 300,000 rupees, befitting his imperial rank, around £27,000 a year, which would give him an income to equal that of the largest magnates in England. But – the gift was nothing other than the rent the East India Company paid to the Nawab for its lands around Calcutta. As the rent had already been stopped because of the Nawab’s slow payment of monies due under the treaty before Plassey, it barely affected him.
It was, in fact, a poisoned chalice. The Company’s landlord would now be its own employee: Clive, its servant, would receive its rent. Moreover, as would not have been the case if Clive had been awarded a jagir from Bengali-controlled lands, Clive could be certain of being paid – both under English law and honour. Perhaps this was its attraction for him. It was an entirely reliable source of income.
Whether the idea was a fantastically misconceived one of Clive’s in the first place, or whether, unusually, he had been taken in by his adversaries, he proved staggeringly inept and ill-judged in accepting the jagir rather than pressing for a major payment directly from the treasury at Murshidabad. Greed – the lure of a truly colossal income on top of his already staggering capital gains in Bengal – had got the better of him. For him to become collector of rents
from the East India Company showed an astounding lack of judgement, and one which was to haunt him and destroy his political career in England.
Clive was later to defend himself on the grounds that he made a full report to the East India Company at the time; and the directors had approved. But they had no choice in view of Clive’s virtuous defence of their interests in Bengal. Others, such as Dupleix, had received jagirs, or at least been promised them.
But this was no defence: Clive was laying claim to his own Company’s monies – which at the time were not being paid, for good reason, to the Nawab – but would have to be paid to Clive under English law. That he failed to foresee the intense fury that his decision to award himself a payment from his own employers would arouse in Britain shows that he was losing his grip on reality after two and a half years as dictator of Bengal. The seeds of his political failure in Britain were being sown.
Moreover, Clive was clearly being excessive in seeking an income which would virtually double the one he could expect from his existing capital. He could not possibly argue that his achievement in driving off the Shahzada justified it. From a ‘colonial’ point of view, there could be less objection; as a result of the Seths and Mir Jafar’s contrivance, the money was to come from London, not Bengal. But for Clive not to see through the ruse or, as one must suppose, to welcome the fact that the income was cast-iron precisely because it would have to be paid by the East India Company exposed a giant hole at the heart of his previously robustly healthy commonsense.
To a man whose word was god, at whose approach armies fled, who was courted by every nobleman and deferred to by his British peers, who was high on the intoxication and corruption of absolute power, it seemed defensible. Yet it was not to appear so to anyone else. For the first time in his career, Clive had been outwitted by his Indian opponents.
* * *
On his return to Calcutta in July 1759, Clive found that Mir Jafar and Miran had duped him on another score – compelling him once again to respond to a sudden crisis. This time the problem lay with the smallest of the foreign communities – the Dutch, whom Clive had been relentlessly squeezing out. The saltpetre monopoly had already been taken away from them and given to the British. The latter also now had the right to search Dutch ships passing up the Hugli.
Vernet, head of the Dutch factory at Kasimbazar, had approached first Miran, then the Nawab, to prepare a strategy of resistance to the British. Mir Jafar readily agreed, indicating he was ready to abandon them. Thus encouraged, the Dutch sent a large force from Batavia, their headquarters in the Dutch East Indies; they knew the British strength at Calcutta had been reduced to one-third owing to the despatch of Forde’s force to the Northern Circars. The British agent in Batavia advised the council in Calcutta of the despatch of the Dutch ships.
Forde himself had arrived in Bengal in a fury after Coote was preferred as British commander, and agreed to work with Clive against the Dutch. According to reports reaching Calcutta, the Dutch force was around twice the size of the English army of some 500. Clive advised the Nawab to punish the Dutch for exceeding their powers in Bengal, and sent troops downstream from Calcutta to search boats coming upriver.
The Nawab, meanwhile, had been invited to another massive jamboree in Calcutta, including bands, a theatre performance and a shower of gifts. But the Dutch had by now reached Fulta. Mir Jafar promised the British he would threaten the Dutch ships.
Instead, when he returned, he spoke to the Dutch ‘very graciously’ – although he did not offer them help against the British. He was playing his old double game, as at Plassey, of waiting to see which side would prevail. The Dutch themselves hesitated, wondering if they could succeed without the Nawab’s open support. Adrian Bisdom, head of the Chinsurah command, argued for restraint; Vernet for war.
Clive showed no such hesitation. Three ships were sent downriver while guns were positioned along the shore and a company of sepoys was moved up to Chinsurah. On 7 November, with Bisdom struck down by illness, Vernet acted, threatening retaliation if Dutch ships continued to be searched (one had been found to contain troops). Clive replied tongue-in-cheek that he was acting under the Nawab’s orders, but that he would use ‘his friendly offices’ to mitigate the former’s temper.
Angrily, the Dutch burnt down East India Company houses near Fulta and searched seven English vessels, tearing down their colours. Clive, who had been careful about taking aggressive action against ships from a country with which Britain was not at war, now had his pretext for acting. He at least was not guilty of firing the first shot. He ordered the British ships to outflank the Dutch, trapping them in the river. The Dutch threatened to open fire but did not do so.
On the night of 21 November the Dutch, who lacked pilots to navigate further upriver, landed 700 European and 800 Malay troops downstream from Calcutta. When Forde informed Clive, the British commander was said to have been playing cards, and sent him the laconic note, ‘Dear Forde, fight ’em immediately, I will send an order of council tomorrow.’
Three small British ships now moved forward to intercept the Dutch squadron of seven men-of-war: within two hours of furious fighting and brilliant British manoeuvring, six were captured or sunk, and the seventh was seized shortly afterwards. The Dutch troops were now cut off on land. An attempt was made by the Dutch in Chinsurah to send a force to rendezvous with the main expedition; this was intercepted on 24 November by Forde and routed. The following day, with 370 Europeans and 800 sepoys, he encircled the much larger, but by now demoralised and apprehensive Dutch force on the plains of Badara, near the river, and, in just half an hour of ‘short, bloody and decisive action’, the Dutch were defeated and surrendered for the loss of no more than 10 British dead, against 320 of the enemy.
The council in Chinsurah was in consternation. Miran had suddenly appeared with a large army and, instead of attacking the British, as arranged, was threatening to sack the Dutch garrison. Clive turned up in person to warn the psychopathic youth off. The Dutch surrendered, paying the British a ransom of ten lakhs, and agreeing not to strengthen the garrison.
A merchant viewed as ‘the prime instigator of these troubles’, Khwaja Wajid, was arrested and a few days later died of a fever. Some alleged he was murdered by the British, but this seems highly improbable. They were not vengeful, and permitted the settlement to continue. The British triumph was now complete: the last major European presence in Bengal had been humbled beyond recovery, the French expelled from India.
* * *
Clive now faced a more formidable enemy: his own masters in Britain. Seen from at least six months’ travelling and 5,000 miles away, news in India came back as though through the wrong end of a telescope. Both the directors and public opinion in England had been appalled by the news of the fall of Calcutta – which reached them fully a year after the event.
Just a month later the good news came of its recapture. The man who had brought them up to date with events was Josiah Holwell, the self-important and energetic little magistrate who had survived the Black Hole and had styled himself the sole hero of the darkest days of the siege of Calcutta. With eminent political sense he had immediately travelled to England to give his version of events and to insist that he be made governor of Fort William.
Even the directors saw through his unsuitability for the post, and instead decided to appoint a rotating chairmanship, changing every three months, which would include Holwell, as well as the mediocre Becker, the cowardly Manningham and the heroic Watts. The wretched and ludicrous Drake was at last to be dispensed with – although in fact Clive had long been de facto Governor of Calcutta and the whole of Bengal. The directors had not yet learnt of the success at Plassey.
When news of the new leadership reached Clive on 20 June, he was incensed; his name was not even mentioned, the directors assuming he had returned to Madras (although Holwell, at least, must have known he would stay on). The three local rotating governors promptly handed their mandate on to Clive, which he accepted
, although he remained furious with his superiors. The first really bad blood had been sown between them.
Clive’s authority now grew increasingly absolute: the deaths of Watson and Kilpatrick had been followed by the departure from India of Watts early in 1759 and Scrafton from Murshidabad the following August. Warren Hastings, then aged just 25, another protégé of Clive’s, was appointed to the post of resident at the palace – Clive’s man at the Nawab’s court.
Clive showed no hesitation in advising the young man: ‘It is a nature of these people though to do nothing through inclination, a few sepoys or chokeys now and then will greatly expedite the payment … [avoid] extremities and [show] as much spirit and resolution as will convince [the Nawab] that we will always have it in our power to make ourselves respected. [Because of British weakness] instil into the Nawab high notions of the great force which is coming out … assure him Pondicherry will soon be in our possession.’
He added, in an unconscious echo of Macaulay’s later strictures that was entirely at variance with his past actions, ‘I would leave all trickery to the Hindus and Muslims to whom it is natural, being well convinced that the reputation we have in this country is owing among other causes to the ingenuity and plain dealing for which we are distinguished.’
Hastings seems to have accepted his directions, although he thought Clive was a poor judge of character in admiring the qualities of Nundcomar, now appointed tax collector for the British of a large region. The young resident intensely distrusted the brahmin. Scrafton had written, ‘It is really amazing to see how Nundcomar dupes the colonel.’ Hastings labelled Nundcomar ‘the Necromancer’. It was an uncharacteristic error of Clive’s judgement that was to haunt the British in India, and Hastings in particular. Hastings himself, however, was to make a fortune at Murshidabad trading in salt, opium, tobacco, timber and boat-building.
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