The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire

by William Dalrymple

  By the end of the week, of the 5,000 EIC troops in Bihar, 3,000 had been killed, arrested or gone over and joined Mir Qasim’s army. Among the dead was the envoy sent by the Calcutta Council, James Amyatt. He had safely reached as far as Murshidabad, when he was attacked in his boat and killed while resisting arrest by the local military governor. ‘In spite of his pleas, begging to be sent alive to Mir Qasim to suffer whatever he should decree, at a signal he and his companions were cut to pieces and killed.’6

  An outraged Mir Qasim wrote to Calcutta complaining that Ellis, ‘like a night robber, assaulted the Qila of Patna, robbed and plundered the bazaar and all the merchants and inhabitants, ravaging and slaying from morning to the afternoon … You gentlemen must answer for the injury which the Company’s affairs have suffered; and since you have cruelly and unjustly ravaged the city and destroyed its people, and plundered to the value of hundreds of thousands of rupees, it becomes the justice of the Company to make reparation for the poor, as was formerly done for Calcutta [after its sack by Siraj ud-Daula].’7

  But it was far too late for that. There was now no going back. Across Bihar and Bengal, the provincial Mughal elite rose as one behind Nawab Mir Qasim in a last desperate bid to protect their collapsing world from the alien and exploitative rule of a foreign trading company. Whether Mir Qasim realised it or not, all-out war was now unavoidable.

  A week later, on 4 July 1763, the Council in Calcutta formally declared war on Mir Qasim. As a measure of their cynicism, they voted to put back on the throne his elderly father-in-law, the former Nawab, Mir Jafar. The latter had used his retirement to become a fully fledged opium addict and was now even more befuddled than before. As careless with the state finances as ever, the old Nawab promised to reimburse the Company up to Rs5 million* for the expense of fighting his ambitious son-in-law.

  Mir Jafar was carried back to his erstwhile capital by the large Company expeditionary force which left Calcutta three weeks later. It marched out on 28 July, at the muggy height of the Bengali monsoon heat. It consisted of about 850 Europeans and 1,500 sepoys. ‘The English, caught more-or-less unprepared, forced their French Prisoners-of-War to serve in the army commanded by Major Adams,’ wrote Jean-Baptiste Gentil. ‘This officer wasted no time in marching to Murshidabad, which [on 9 July] he subjugated after a battle with the military commander of the place at Katwa, near Plassey. The Major arrived outside Rajmahal at the height of the rains, and his army suffered greatly. But he captured the Nawab’s artillery and munitions, as well as the food supplies of his camp, and then quickly stormed Rajmahal.’8

  Making war against the Nawab they had personally installed only five years earlier was not only a political embarrassment for the Company; it was a financial disaster: ‘The Company was sinking under the burden of war,’ wrote Luke Scrafton, ‘and was obliged to borrow great sums of money from their servants at eight per cent interest, and even with that assistance were obliged to send their ships half-loaded to Europe [as they did not have spare bullion to buy the Indian goods to send to London].’9 But militarily, the campaign against Mir Qasim was a slow but steady success.

  It was quickly becoming clear that Mir Qasim’s New Army was still not sufficiently well armed or trained to take on the Company’s veteran sepoys. The Company was certainly taking much higher casualties than it had done when facing old-fashioned Mughal cavalry armies, but each time the two infantry armies closed it was Mir Qasim’s troops who eventually fled. The Company victory at Katwa, where Major Adams ambushed and killed one of Mir Jafar’s bravest generals, Mohammad Taki, was followed by a second at Gheria three weeks later: ‘After a fierce, heroically courageous struggle, the forces of Mir Qasim Khan were again broken and scattered,’ wrote Mohammad Ali Khan Ansari, ‘and the breeze of victory fluttered in the flags of the Company.’

  The defeated troops flew as fast as they could, on the wings of haste, falling back into Bihar, to the fortified hilltop Udhua Nullah. Here Mir Qasim Khan, foreseeing such a day, had prepared a strong defensive emplacement. In this remote fortress the torrent flows fast down from the mountains into the Ganges and is very deep; both its banks are wild and thickly forested; there are no roads other than that which goes over the only bridge. This was built by Mir Qasim, who also dug a deep moat, and built above it a strong defensive wall rivalling that of Alexander, connected to the mountains; facing that is a long lake stretching from the mountain to near the Ganges. Mir Qasim had an earthen bridge built across the moat. There was also a road on top of the walls, winding and turning like the curls of a bride’s hair, which gave the only access. For this reason, Mir Qasim placed great reliance on the impregnability of Udhua Nullah and was convinced that the English would never take it, or if so, only after a long struggle. But Fortune had turned her face away from him.10

  It was here that the remaining 20,000 troops of Mir Qasim’s New Army made their last stand. During the first month of the siege, Major Adams’ heavy guns made no impression on the fortifications. But lulled into complacency by their spectacular defences, Mir Qasim’s generals let their guard down. As Ghulam Hussain Khan put it, ‘They trusted so much to the natural strength of that post, and to the impracticability of the enemy forcing the passage, that they became negligent in their duty; for most of the officers that had any money made it a practice on the beginning of the night to gorge themselves with wine, and to pass the remainder of it in looking at the performance of dancing women, or in taking them to their beds.’11

  Only one of Mir Qasim’s generals made any effort to harass their besiegers at the bottom of the hill. This was an energetic and intelligent young Persian cavalry commander who had recently arrived in India from Isfahan. His name was Mirza Najaf Khan, a name that would be long celebrated in Mughal histories. Najaf Khan found local guides and got them to lead a group of his men through the marshes at the base of the hill. ‘They left quietly and forded the outflow of the lake. Then at dawn, he made a sudden rush on the English encampment, where the elderly Nawab Mir Jafar was in his tents. They attacked so vigorously that the ranks of his troops were shaken as if by an earthquake.’12

  Unfortunately for Mir Qasim’s defenders, one of the guides was captured, and a week later, on 4 September, he led Major Adams’ troops up the same hidden path, through the swampy morass, to the back of the Mughal entrenchments: ‘The English managed to find out the route by which Mirza Najaf Khan had arrived to make his surprise dawn attack, and now used the same route themselves,’ wrote Ansari. ‘They sent one of their platoons of tall young men to carry out this mission.’

  In the middle of the darkest night, they negotiated the outflow of the Lake with water up to their chins, carrying their muskets and powder bags aloft. In this way they reached the defensive emplacement, where they put up their ladders and scaled the walls. The defenders, relying on the difficulty of crossing the waters of the nullah and the lake, heedless of their enemies, were fast asleep on their pallets. The English fired and fell on them, killing and wounding many.

  In the darkness, Company troops had crowded below in front of the gateway, and as soon as it was forced open, they entered in one rush, and made a slaughter such as on the Day of Judgement, with the cries of the damned rising all around! Many – those who awoke and were not slaughtered in their sleep – in their panic ran to escape over the monsoon-swollen river, and were drowned in the icy, rushing torrent. That night, nearly fifteen thousand men met their end. One hundred cannon were captured.

  Najaf Khan managed somehow to escape from the clutches of the English and headed for the mountains; but many more were drowned or shot while crossing the river. One group, led by Sumru, also managed to re-join, after much falling and stumbling, what remained of Mir Qasim’s army in Monghyr. The English sounded the victory drums and raised their battle-standard in the conquered camp. This battle came to an end at one and a half hours after day-break.13

  Mir Qasim was not in the fort that night; he had just left for Monghyr and so lived to fight another day
. But he never entirely recovered from the loss of Udhua Nullah. ‘He seemed broke in two; he betrayed every mark of grief and affliction, and passed the whole day in the utmost despondency … He threw himself onto his bed, tossing in a torment of grief, and ceased taking advice from Gurgin Khan.’14 With few other options, he fell back on Patna, taking his prisoners with him.

  Mir Qasim now became obsessed with the idea that he had been betrayed and that his own commanders were working against him. ‘He had already tended to vicious cruelty,’ wrote Ansari, ‘but now, as the star of his good fortune faded, and cracks appeared in his governance, he pushed ever further down the path of brutality.’

  Worried and depressed by the succession of defeats, he decided to send his treasures and jewels, as well as his favourite wife, to the great fort at Rohtas, in the company of a few trusted retainers. He let loose all the other women of his harem, simply expelling them onto the streets. These two notorious defeats, and the shocking expulsion of the womenfolk made some of his attendants turn the gaze of their obedience away. But as Mir Qasim’s vicious cruelty left no-one any room for independent judgement in words or actions, his authority remained as before. Every day, he allowed more suspicions to crowd into his mind, and finally, gave the order for all his many prisoners to be killed.15

  In his enveloping paranoia, Mir Qasim first ordered the assassination of Gurgin Khan, the Wolf, his most loyal Armenian commander. To this act of extreme folly and self-harm, Jean-Baptiste Gentil was an eyewitness. ‘On the march to Patna,’ he wrote, ‘the enemies of Mir Qasim persuaded him that he was being betrayed by his minister, Gurgin Khan, who they said had been influenced by his brother, who was held by the English in their camp. The Nawab swore to destroy his faithful minister, calumnied as a traitor. Gurgin Khan was fully aware of these odious schemes.’ Gentil writes, ‘I always had my tent pitched next to that of the minister and we took our meals together.’

  One day when he was late coming for dinner, I was sitting in front of the various dishes sent from the Nawab’s kitchen and started to eat from these: the minister entered and stopped me, saying ‘What are you doing? Don’t you know these could be poisoned? How careless of you, when you know all the calumnies being spread about me and my brother – I have many enemies, take care!’ He immediately ordered these dishes to be cleared away, and had others brought to table which had been prepared by less suspect hands.

  Half way between Monghyr and Patna an attempt was made to assassinate him. By chance I had had my bed set up in front of his tent because of the heat, so the assassins thought their plot discovered and postponed till the next day, which was a marching day. The minister arrived later than usual because of the bad roads, and called for dinner to be served immediately. As he was crossing the encampment of his cavalry, he was accosted, in the midst of the horses by a Mughal cavalryman who complained of being short of money and that food-stuffs had become un-affordably expensive, even though he had just received his salary.

  Gurgin Khan was angered by the man’s request for more money, and called out for one of his attendants and the horseman withdrew. I was overcome with heat, and as the minister was now talking of other matters, I left him to find somewhere cooler. I had barely gone thirty steps, when I heard the attendants who had stayed with the minister calling out for help: I turned, and saw the horseman slashing at Gurgin Khan with his sword.

  His attendants were unarmed and dressed in light muslin robes, as was the minister: it was already too late to come to his help, as he had received 3 blows quick as lightning: the first severed half his neck, the second slashed through his shoulder-bone, the third gouged his kidneys. The assassin struck him again in the face as he fell to the ground, after tripping on the long horse-tethers while he sought to run to his tent, fifty paces away. As he was wearing only thin light muslin, the sword cut right through. The horseman disappeared as soon as he had struck him.

  I ran up and helped to ease the minister onto his palanquin and ordered the bearers to carry him into his tent, where he gestured to be given something to drink: we gave him water, which ran out of the wound in his neck. Seeing me beside him, Gurgin Khan looked fixedly at me, and struck his thigh 3 times, as if to signal that he had fallen victim to calumny, and that I should take care for my own safety.16

  After that, it was the turn of Raja Ram Narain, the former Governor of Patna, who had fought so bravely against Shah Alam. Raja Ram Narain was a Kayasth, from a Hindu community who served the Mughals as administrators, and who often used to send their children for a Persianate madrasa education. Ram Narain had grown up loving Persian poetry and had been one of the students of Shaikh Muhammad Ali Hazin of Isfahan, arguably the greatest Persian poet of the eighteenth century, who moved as an exile to Benares. Realising that his execution was imminent, Ram Narain wrote a last series of couplets, in the style of his ustad (poetic master). These verses of sadness and resignation were once famous in the region:

  Enough! My life flickers away, a solitary candle,

  Flames from its head, waxy tears flow down its skirts

  Your flirtatious beauty, my dark days, all will pass,

  A king’s dawn, a pauper’s evening, all will pass

  The garden visitor, the laughing rosebud, both are fleeting

  Grief and joy, all will pass.17

  Shortly after composing these last verses, Raja Ram Narain was shot by Sumru, still shackled in his prison cell, on the orders of Mir Qasim.

  The Jagat Seths were next. When Ellis and his companions were arrested, Mir Qasim had carefully examined the private papers of the English which had been captured at the factory. Among these was found a letter from Jagat Seth Mahtab Rai and his cousin Maharaj Swaroop Chand to Ellis, encouraging him to attack the Nawab, and offering to pay the costs of the military campaign. These two brothers had been moved from their house at Murshidabad and rehoused by order of the Nawab in a large haveli in Monghyr, adjoining a magnificent garden, where they were indulged with every luxury. ‘The brothers were immensely rich,’ wrote Gentil, ‘beyond the dreams of avarice, and were by far the richest bankers in the whole of Hindustan.’

  They had provincial governors of Bengal appointed or dismissed with each transfer of money to Delhi. They were accustomed to have everything and everyone yield beneath the weight of their gold; and so they entered into cabals with Ellis, Amyatt and others, as they had done so many times before. But this time they were found out.

  Once the Nawab had seen the correspondence, he had them arrested and put in chains. But it was only after the assassination of Gurgin Khan and Ram Narain that Mir Qasim determined to make the Jagat Seth brothers suffer their punishment. I arrived at court at nightfall, and found the Nawab alone with his officer of pleas, who was just presenting a petition in the name of these two unfortunates. They begged to be pardoned, and offered four crores [40 million] of rupees* if he were prepared to grant them their lives and liberty.

  At these words, Mir Qasim turned to me and exclaimed: ‘Do you hear what this man is suggesting? On behalf of the two brothers? Four crores! If my commanders heard that, they’d run off to set them free, and would without hesitation give me up to them!’

  ‘Don’t move!’ he added to his officer of pleas, and immediately called for Sumru. The German assassin arrived and the Nawab repeated to him the Jagat Seths’ offer, ordering him to kill them both forthwith. At the same time, he forbade all present to leave his tent until Sumru came back to announce that the execution had been carried out. He said he had shot them, still in their chains, with his pistol.18

  In his crazed despair, on 29 August Mir Qasim wrote one last time to Warren Hastings asking for permission ‘to return to his home and hearth with a view to proceeding finally on a pilgrimage to the holy shrines [in other words, to be allowed to retire from office and go on the Haj to Mecca]’.19

  Hastings was sympathetic to the situation which had driven his protégé to such savagery, but he also realised it was much too late to save him from his own act
ions: he had now waded too deep in blood. ‘The hoarded resentment of all the injuries which he had sustained,’ wrote Hastings, ‘was now aggravated by his natural timidity and the prospect of an almost inevitable ruin, [which] from this time took entire possession of his mind and drove from thence every principle, till it satiated itself with the blood of every person within reach who had either contributed to his misfortunes or, by connection with his enemies, become the objects of his revenge.’20

  When Mir Qasim realised that even his former friend was unable to save him, he played his last remaining trump card. He wrote to Major Adams, questioning the legitimacy of the EIC actions and making one final threat: ‘For these three months you have been laying waste to the King’s country with your forces,’ he wrote. ‘What authority do you have? But if you are resolved on your own authority to proceed in this business, know for a certainty that I will cut off the heads of Mr Ellis and the rest of your chiefs and send them to you.’21

  Just before he took Monghyr on 6 October, Adams sent a brief response to the ultimatum: ‘If one hair on the heads of the prisoners is hurt,’ he wrote, ‘you can have no title to mercy from the English, and you may depend on the utmost form of their resentment, and that they will pursue you to the utmost extremity of the earth. And should we, unfortunately, not lay hold of you, the vengeance of the Almighty cannot fail to overtake you, if you perpetrate so horrid an act as the murder of the gentlemen in your custody.’22