* * *
Under the barrage of ill-informed criticism from Calcutta, Carnac, who was seen as Clive’s stooge, was recalled and a Scottish soldier of quite formidable toughness and ruthlessness, Major Hector Munro, was despatched to try and quell the desperate threat in the west. It is possible that Carnac lacked the necessary steel; but his tactical retreats had at least held the line. Like his friend Clive, there was no element of savagery in him.
The same could not be said of Munro; the desperate nature of the threat, particularly in the absence of Clive’s military genius, may have required a harsh response to counter Mir Kasim. Within a short time of Munro’s arrival, a nearby garrison mutinied. The new commander promptly seized twenty-eight of the mutineers and court-martialled them.
Eight were tied over the muzzles of cannon, which were then fired – an old Indian method of punishment, but one which had a devastating effect on those that witnessed it. Munro wrote with satisfaction, ‘there was not a dry eye amongst the [English] marines who witnessed this execution, although they had long been accustomed to hard service; and two of them had actually been on the execution party which shot Admiral Byng in the year 1757’.
The remaining twenty were executed at different military outposts, as examples. The mutinous tendencies of these front-line border troops disappeared overnight. The danger to them of disobedience was greater than that posed from the front by the enemy.
In October 1764, Munro, with his strengthened and disciplined forces, at last advanced on Oudh against the three allies – the powerful Nawab of Oudh, the audacious Shah Alum, and the vicious Mir Kasim. Unlike Clive at Plassey, Munro had done little to strengthen his position through intrigue. His army was only twice the size of Clive’s – around 900 European troops, 900 Indian cavalry and 5,000 sepoy infantry.
The army of the three Indian allies was around 40,000 strong, about the same as Clive’s opposition at Plassey. They included 5,000 legendary Rohilla cavalry, and had not been suborned and divided through conspiracy as at Plassey. The Battle of Buxar lasted from dawn to dusk on 24 October. It was fought with scarcely believable ferocity before the Indian army finally fled. The sepoy infantry was described as ‘a wall which vomited fire and flames’ against the approaching cavalry.
A large part of the rump was surrounded and slaughtered because it could not get across a river whose bridge had been destroyed on the orders of the Nawab of Oudh to discourage retreat. It was a harder fought engagement than Plassey, and involved much greater slaughter, which only served to underline Clive’s skill in avoiding a full-scale engagement in his own battle. The stakes were not quite as high – the three allies would still have had to conquer all Bengal had they won.
But it decisively tilted the scales against the triple alliance, and strengthened the precarious British position after Clive’s departure from India. It was certainly the most important battle that had been fought by the British in India after Plassey. The grim, ferocious Munro deserves the credit for a remarkable victory. Shah Alum was the first to recognise this, congratulating Munro and saying that he had been no more than a prisoner of the Nawab of Oudh, which may have been partly true.
Mir Kasim fled, and this vicious and formidable antagonist of the British in India was reduced to wandering poverty. As late as 1776 he surfaced, writing to Warren Hastings that Sumru and Mir Jafar had connived in the execution of the British prisoners. He died destitute in a tent at Paliwal near Delhi a year later; his last shawl was sold to provide a winding sheet. Bloodthirsty and ruthless though he was, he deserves some credit as the first Indian ruler who had tried to throw off the British colonising yoke, and one who was a much more effective soldier and intriguer than either Chanda Sahib in the Carnatic or Siraj-ud-Daula in Bengal; unlike them, he escaped with his life.
The Nawab of Oudh, refusing to surrender Mir Kasim to the British, fled to the west where, with depleted forces, he sought the help of the Marathas who for a time made him their virtual stooge. Munro meanwhile pushed his way forward like a steamroller through battle after battle and had seized Allahabad by February 1765.
The goal was Benares, the sacred city that was the capital of Oudh. The council at Calcutta, always wildly over-optimistic, assumed that Munro’s successes meant that the huge kingdom of Oudh was theirs for the taking. They demanded that Benares be given over to the British and that Mir Kasim and Reinhardt be handed over. They offered Oudh to Shah Alum in exchange for the revenues from Benares.
The young emperor was by now firmly on the British side. But the Marathas, with the Nawab of Oudh as their reluctant leader, launched one last ferocious attack. Carnac, who by now had been restored to the British command, defeated them in a short, furious fight on 3 May, and the Nawab surrendered himself to the British. The Marathas were driven out a couple of weeks later after another battle. The Nawab claimed that he had been an unwilling tool of the Marathas and, like the emperor before him, pleaded for reconciliation with the British.
What had happened in Clive’s absence was a relapse into corruption and incompetence on the part of the colonists which had almost resulted in the loss of Bengal; only the extreme toughness and ability of the British military commanders in the field had averted disaster. The success of men like Carnac, Coote and Munro in the field proved that Clive’s military exploits against Indian arms could be repeated. What had been sadly missing was his common sense, political genius and administrative skills.
The stupidity and cupidity of his political successors had very nearly lost the empire he had won; and that was to prompt his return. With extraordinary difficulty the empire had been just maintained in his absence; but politically it was rotten to the core. The wretched Vansittart was replaced by a governor hardly less incompetent. Clive’s empire had been saved only through superb soldiery. The whole structure of a mercantilist council, presided over by an incompetent governor astride a subculture of venality and greed was no foundation for a permanent colonial structure.
* * *
As reports of the chaos in Bengal filtered back to England several months later, Clive, his domestic political fortunes at a low, bogged down in his fight for the jagir, found himself increasingly drawn back to the affairs of the continent where he had made his name. He had backed Vansittart at the beginning, who had shone with ‘so peculiar and bright a lustre’. He had opposed Coote, Vansittart’s enemy. He was indulgent towards Vansittart’s ‘one false step’ of installing Mir Kasim.
He was then absurdly snubbed by the vain young governor. When Clive sought to make a present of an elephant to the king, Vansittart had two shipped in to George III in the early hours of the morning without informing Clive. Clive began to realise that Vansittart was resentful of his predecessor and in league with Sulivan. He wrote to Walsh that the new governor was ‘a very dirty fellow’.
The chaos in Bengal had played into Clive’s hands. As the East India Company’s shares fell by some 14 per cent, Clive proposed that he should return to India with exceptional powers to save the situation. He wanted to be avenged on his enemies in the country and to restore good government to his terrifyingly ill-governed and abused conquests. This marked a turning point in his career. Up to then, his greatest ambition had been to achieve political power in England. India had been but a springboard, in terms of both money and reputation. After his return in 1760, he had never intended to go back to Bengal. Now, bitterly frustrated at home, he sought to revisit the scene of his first glory, once again as absolute ruler.
On 12 March 1764, at the general court of proprietors, it was proposed that Clive return as governor amid tumultuous acclamation. Clive said he would do so only if the directors fully backed him – in other words, if Sulivan was removed as chairman. Clive published a furious attack on his opponent – A Letter to the Proprietors of the East India Stock, some sixty pages long.
On 12 April the election was held, with Clive winning six directors, Sulivan six, while twelve were uncommitted. Sulivan, however, failed to secure the ch
airmanship, and Clive’s ally Rous secured the post. By nearly 200 votes, the general court of the East India Company voted to extend his jagir by ten years, while a slightly ridiculous statue of Clive in Roman dress was erected in East India House.
Clive also succeeded in laying down his terms for a return to Bengal. They included dictatorial powers over the council and a minimum standing army of 3,000 European troops. For his part he promised ‘not to enrich himself by one farthing by any pay or emolument he might receive’ – a bow in the direction of pressure from the grass roots of the Company. But his pledge also marked the advent of an older and wiser Clive, who would lack for nothing now that he had secured his jagir. Clive was appointed a Knight of the Bath at last – although still not an English peer. He claimed that his return to India constituted ‘a very great sacrifice and a point of honour against my own natural inclinations’.
Yet as he prepared for his third and last tour of duty there, he contemplated departure from a country where in spite of his magnificent houses, estates and wealth, he was politically a third-rater, mere lobby fodder for the forces ruling England at the time, sneered at by many of his contemporaries, with no prospect of significant advancement. In India he would once again become a virtual dictator, the first citizen in the land at a crucial turning point in the continent’s history, the potential saviour of British interests which were now threatened for a third time.
The greatest misery was to leave his children, Ned, now 10 and just starting at Eton, Becky, Charlotte and the tiny Margaretta; all three girls had been born since his return. Miserably, Margaret agreed to ‘follow the fortune of my first and best friend, my husband … contributing towards making my Lord’s stay in India less afflicting to him in such a separation from his children’.
But renewed pregnancy intervened at the last moment and, almost certainly to her great relief, she had to stay behind. Clive, now embarking on his own, wrote sadly, ‘God only knows how much I have suffered in my separation from the best of women.’ It was the first prolonged break in their married life, although there had been shorter ones while he was in Calcutta and she in Madras, and her relationship with him had long been conducted in the curious hubbub of a virtually ceaseless public existence.
Clive’s first letter to Margaret on board ship suggests a hint of reconciliation after marital discord. ‘Nothing could afford me greater pleasure than to find you reconciled to my departure in a manner consistent with that good sense which I know you to be mistress of, and consistent with that superior duty which you owe to our children.’ It is hard not to believe that there had been considerable anguish between them – whether in her disapproval of his decision to go back to India, or her disappointment at not being able to leave, or his disapproval of her failure to accompany him.
Clive’s letter was, for him, unusually long and thoughtful. He wrote extensively to her on the journey, a sign of how difficult the break must have been. He himself was accompanied by Mun, her brother, and his aide-de-camp and a newcomer to his entourage, Henry Strachey, his private secretary, a protégé of George Grenville. In addition Clive travelled in style as usual, taking an assistant secretary, a steward, a valet, a groom, a French chef and four musicians – truly the retinue of a potentate.
* * *
By contrast with his speedy last voyage, the Kent, which left Portsmouth in June, took more than four months just to get across to Rio de Janeiro. The journey, as Clive amusingly described it, was plagued by one Mrs William Sumner who ‘seemed possessed of every disagreeable quality which ever belonged to the female sex without being mistress of one virtue (chastity excepted), to throw into the opposite scale’. She insisted on the windows being kept open, and played the same tune on the harpsichord for four hours a day.
At Rio, the ship put in for nearly two months and Clive’s musicians all deserted him to join the Rio Opera. He was furious, writing childishly with the implied threat of attack to the Portuguese viceroy that he was ‘too sincere a friend to the Portuguese nation to deprive her capital settlement of any of its defenders, especially in its present weak and almost defenceless condition’.
In fact Clive enjoyed the tropical heat and extraordinary beauty of the town, with its backdrop of mountains cascading to the sea, and was far from unhappy with his sojourn there. A month after sailing, as the winds turned favourable, he reached Cape Town. After a further five months, he arrived in Madras, where he learnt of Munro’s victory at Buxar.
By now he had wearied of months of inaction and wrote feverishly to Rous in England of his plans. ‘See what an Augean stable there is to be cleansed. The confusion we behold, what does it arise from? Rapacity and luxury, the unreasonable desire of many to acquire in an instant what only a few can, or ought to, possess … in short the evils, civil and military, are enormous, but they shall be rooted out.’
Once again briefly ensconced in that scene of his youthful glory, Fort St David, he immediately reassumed the mantle of man of action, dictator, Emperor of India, Clive the all-powerful. The frustration of his limited political power in England, of his inability to make an impact there, of his struggles with the armchair generals in Leadenhall Street, devious directors and scurvy politicians, slipped away.
At nearly forty years of age, Clive was a man with a mission again – the most challenging of his entire career. He was about to declare war not on another native prince, but on his own countrymen, his colonial successors, those who had nearly squandered his achievement in conquering Bengal. That they would be harder to fight than his old Indian opponents, he had no doubt. His task was nothing less than the establishment of good government in India. ‘Alas, how is the English name sunk,’ he lamented. He would raise it again to new heights.
It seemed a terrible irony that Clive, who had enriched himself more than any single individual through his conquest of Bengal, should now persecute his fellow countrymen for doing the same. But that can be ascribed to his greater maturity and vision in middle age. He was no longer an ambitious young adventurer out to make his fortune, but a statesman who saw that the Indian empire would have to be consolidated if it was to survive at all.
The time for plunder was over. The time for good government, for placing what was to become the Raj on firm foundations, had arrived. It was a formidable task, and he could by no means be certain he would succeed. If he failed, British India was doomed at birth; if he persevered, he could claim the credit not just as a great military commander and conqueror, a shrewd diplomat and politician, but as a true statesman.
On this third tour of India, Clive had arrived with some of the fury and reforming zeal Oliver Cromwell had displayed in England 100 years before. The two men could not have been less alike in some respects: in particular, Clive lacked a sense of divine mission and was overfond of the good life. But in his energy, fearsome determination and – now – radical reforming instincts, Clive had returned to India as Cromwell once had to his quarrelsome parliament, to dissolve his own creation and commonwealth because it had proved unworthy of him.
Clive had set the British to rule over Bengal, and they had failed him. He must come back as military dictator, sweep the whole rotting structure away and start afresh. ‘Take away this bauble,’ Cromwell had said in disgust, seizing the mace of the House of Commons. Clive’s temper was hardly better when he arrived at last down the familiar, sluggish, steamy stretch of the Hugli river opposite the elegant Georgian sprawl of Fort William at Calcutta.
* * *
He had never expected to see it again. As he was brought ashore in indignity on a porter’s back, he was greeted by a respectful council headed by John Spencer, who had succeeded the wretched Vansittart. He was accorded every pomp and deference – practices instituted by the vainglorious Vansittart – a European bodyguard decked out in white and gold, mace bearers and no fewer than 100 servants to attend him in his magnificent house on Fort William’s main promenade, to which he soon added two large wings.
He cut a magnificent fig
ure in full uniform, at the height of his energies, tall, with the no-nonsense gait of command, an ample stomach and a gaze of ferocious determination that intimidated his fellow countrymen, not to mention the terrified Indians he came into contact with. No longer nagged by domestic concerns and a wife to bring him down to earth, he was power and energy incarnate.
On the day he arrived, he took his seat in council and asked to be informed of events during his absence. He received his old sparring partner, Jean Law, now reinstated as governor-general of the French trading post, and Vernet, still in charge of the Dutch possessions. He greeted a small crowd of dignitaries. He took to bed paper and candles so that he could continue to work all night.
Clive learnt that after Mir Jafar had returned to the throne, the British had imposed a staggering demand of £530,000 on him as compensation for the ruin and atrocities inflicted by Mir Kasim – whom the British had themselves installed. A further £250,000 was demanded as a gift for the army and navy. The old man could only pay by instalments, and was forced to disband a large part of his army to raise the money; Mir Kasim had helped himself to most of the treasury.
Meanwhile the abuses Mir Kasim had tried to resist had returned with a vengeance. The system of tariffs and duty-free passes for the British had been reinstated. They and their agents would quite openly plunder whole villages of their produce. As the situation declined alarmingly, Mir Jafar had died at last on 5 February.
The council had chosen as his successor his exact opposite, a plump, uninspiring youth, Najm-ud-Daula, son of Mir Jafar by a dancing girl. The aim was to set up a puppet king. The council under Spencer and its most dominant personality, John Johnstone, imposed its terms: the Nawab’s army should be reduced to the status of a bodyguard, along with a police force for keeping public order and raising taxes. The British would appoint his ministers – and his chief minister was to be Muhammad Reza Khan, an old ally of the British. Nundcomar, the old Nawab’s chief minister, the devious brahmin who had attempted to frustrate the colonial power at every turn, resisted this, but was stripped of all his offices. Only Rai Durlabh, the last veteran of the original Bengali cause at Plassey, remained.
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