by G. A. Henty
Chapter 22: Plassey.
As the English troops advanced, they were met on the outskirts of thesettlement by the enemy, who contested bravely every garden andinclosure with them. The British force was, however, too strong to beresisted, and gradually the French were driven back, until they formedin rear of the battery. Clive at once took possession of the housessurrounding it, and from them kept up, all day, a heavy fire upon thedefenders; until, at nightfall, these fell back upon the fort, afterspiking their guns. The loss of this position compelled the French toabandon the other outlying batteries, from which, during the night,they withdrew their guns into the fort.
The next four days Clive spent in bringing up the guns landed from thefleet, and establishing batteries round the fort; and on the 19th heopened fire against it. On the same day the three men of war; the Kentof sixty-four guns, the Tiger of sixty, and the Salisbury of fifty,anchored just below the channel, which the governor believed he hadblocked up. The next four days were spent by the fleet in sounding, todiscover whether the statements of the French deserter were correct.
During this time, a heavy cannonade was kept up unceasingly betweenClive and the fort. In this the garrison had the best of it, silencedsome of the English guns, killed many of the assailants, and wouldcertainly have beaten off the land attack, had the fleet not been ableto interfere in the struggle.
All this time, the governor was hoping that aid would arrive from thenabob. The latter, indeed, did send a force under Rajah Dulab Ram, butthe governor of Hoogly, bribed by Omichund, sent messages to thisofficer urging him to halt, as Chandranagore was about to surrender,and he would only incur the anger of the English, uselessly.
On the morning of the 23rd, having ascertained that a channel wasfree, the fleet advanced. The Tiger, leading, made her way through thepassage and, taking up a position abreast of the northeast bastion ofthe fort, opened a heavy fire upon it with her guns, and harassed thebesieged with a musketry fire from her tops. The Kent was on the pointof anchoring opposite the watergate, when so heavy a fire was pouredupon her that, in the confusion, the cable ran out; and the shipdropped down, till she anchored at a point exposed to a heavycrossfire from the southeast and southwest bastions. Owing to thisaccident, the Salisbury was forced to anchor a hundred and fifty yardsbelow the fort.
The French fought with extreme bravery. Vastly superior as were theEnglish force and guns, the French fire was maintained with thegreatest energy and spirit, the gunners being directed and animated byMonsieur De Vignes, captain of one of the ships which had been sunk.No advantage was gained by the Tiger, in her struggle with thenortheast bastion, and the guns of the southwest bastion galled theKent so severely that the admiral, neglecting the southeast bastion,was forced to turn the whole of his guns upon it.
De Vignes concentrated his fire against one point in the Kent, andpresently succeeded in setting her on fire. The conflagration spread,a panic ensued, and some seventy or eighty men jumped into the boatsalongside.
The officers, however, rallied the rest of the crew. The fire wasextinguished, the men returned to their duty, and the cannonade wasrecommenced.
After the battle had raged for two hours, the fire of the fort beganto slacken, as one after another of the guns was dismounted. MonsieurRenault saw that the place could be no longer defended. Of his hundredand forty-six soldiers, over ninety had been killed and wounded.Collecting the remainder, and their officers, with twenty Sepoys, thegovernor ordered them to leave the fort immediately; making a detourto avoid the English, who were aiding the fleet by attacking the landside, and to march to Kossimbazar to join Monsieur Law, who commandedthere. Then, there remaining in the fort only the clerks, women, andwounded, he hoisted a flag of truce.
Terms were speedily arranged. The governor, and all the civilians andnatives, were allowed to go where they chose, with their clothes andlinen. The wounded French soldiers were to remain, as prisoners ofwar.
Chandranagore cost the English two hundred and six men. The attackupon the French colony was blamed by many, at the time, for in thehour of English distress they had offered to remain neutral, insteadof joining the nabob in crushing us. Upon the other hand, there wasforce in the arguments with which Admiral Watson had defended hisrefusal to sign the treaty of neutrality. That treaty would not bebinding, unless ratified by Pondicherry; and to Pondicherry it wasknown that the most powerful fleet and army France had ever sent toIndia was on its way. It was also known that Bussy, at the court ofthe Nizam of the Deccan, was in communication with the nabob. Thus,then, in a short time English interests in India might be menaced moreformidably than ever before, and the crushing out of the Frenchcolony, almost at the gates of Calcutta, was a measure of extremeimportance. It was hard upon the gallant governor of Chandranagore,but public opinion generally agreed that the urgency of the casejustified the course adopted by the English authorities at Calcutta.
Suraja-u-Dowlah was filled with fury, at the news of the capture ofChandranagore; but hearing a rumour, two days later, that the Afghanswere upon their march to attack him, he wrote letters to Clive andWatson, congratulating them upon their success, and offering to themthe territory of Chandranagore, on the same terms upon which it hadbeen held by the French.
But the young tyrant of Moorshedabad was swayed by constantlyfluctuating feeling. At one moment his fears were uppermost; the next,his anger and hate of the English. Instead of recalling the army ofRajah Dulab Ram, as he had promised, he ordered it to halt at Plassey,a large village twenty-two miles south of Moorshedabad.
The English were represented at his court by Mr. Watts, who had thegreatest difficulty in maintaining his position, in the constantlychanging moods of the nabob. One day the latter would threaten toorder him to be led to instant execution, the next he would load himwith presents.
Besides Mr. Watts, the English affairs were conducted by Omichund who,aided by the Sets, or native bankers, whom Suraja-u-Dowlah hadplundered and despoiled, got up a conspiracy among the nabob's mostintimate followers.
The history of these intrigues is the most unpleasant feature in thelife of Clive. Meer Jaffier, the nabob's general, himself offered toMr. Watts to turn traitor, if the succession to the kingdom wasbestowed upon him. This was agreed to, upon his promise to pay, notonly immense sums to the Company, but enormous amounts to theprincipal persons on the English side. So enormous, indeed, were thesedemands, that even Meer Jaffier, anxious as he was to conclude thealliance, was aghast. The squadron was to have two million and a halfrupees, and the same amount was to be paid for the army. Presentsamounting to six millions of rupees were to be distributed betweenClive, Major Kilpatrick, the governor, and the members of the council.Clive's share of these enormous sums amounted to two million, eightythousand rupees. In those days, a rupee was worth half a crown. Neverdid an English officer make such a bargain for himself.
But even this is not the most dishonorable feature of the transaction.Omichund had, for some time, been kept in the dark as to what wasgoing forward; but, obtaining information through his agents, hequestioned Mr. Watts concerning it. The latter then informed him ofthe whole state of affairs, and Omichund, whose services to theEnglish had been immense, naturally demanded a share of the plunder.
Whether or not he threatened to divulge the plot to the nabob, unlesshis demands were satisfied, is doubtful. At any rate, it wasconsidered prudent to pacify him, and he was accordingly told that heshould receive the sum he named. Clive, and the members of thecouncil, however, although willing to gratify their own extortionategreed, at the expense of Meer Jaffier, determined to rob Omichund ofhis share. In order to do this, two copies of the treaty with MeerJaffier were drawn up, on different coloured papers. They were exactlyalike, except that, in one, the amount to be given to Omichund wasentirely omitted. This was the real treaty. The other was intended tobe destroyed, after being shown to a friend of Omichund, in order toconvince the latter that all was straight and honorable.
All the English authorities placed their sign
atures to the realtreaty, but Admiral Watson indignantly refused to have anything to dowith the fictitious one; or to be a party, in any way, to the deceitpractised on Omichund. In order to get out of the difficulty, Clivehimself forged Admiral Watson's signature to the fictitious treaty.
A more disgraceful transaction was never entered into, by a body ofEnglish gentlemen. That Mr. Drake and the members of his council, thepitiful cowards who fled from Calcutta, and refused to allow the shipsto draw off its brave garrison, should consent to such a transactionwas but natural; but that Clive, the gallant and dashing commander,should have stooped to it, is sad, indeed.
It may be said that, to the end of his life, Clive defended hisconduct in this transaction, under the excuse that Omichund was ascoundrel. The Indian was not, indeed, an estimable character. Openly,he was the friend and confidant of the nabob while, all the time, hewas engaged in bribing and corrupting his officers, and in plottingwith his enemies. This, however, in no way alters the facts that herendered inestimable service to the English; and that the men whodeceived and cheated him were, to the full, as greedy and grasping ashimself; without, in the case of the governor and his council, havingrendered any service whatever to the cause.
At last, the negotiations were complete. More and more severely didClive press upon the nabob. Having compelled him to expel Law and theFrench, first from Moorshedabad and then from his dominions, hepressed fresh demands upon him; until the unfortunate prince, drivento despair, and buoyed up with the hope that he should receiveassistance from Bussy, who had just expelled the English from theirfactory at Vizapatam, ordered Meer Jaffier to advance, with fifteenthousand men, to reinforce Rajah Dulab Ram at Plassey.
Clive, in fact, forced on hostilities. His presence, with that of aconsiderable portion of his army, was urgently required at Madras. Hewas sure, however, that the instant he had gone, and the English forcewas greatly weakened, the nabob would again commence hostilities; andthe belief was shared by all in India. He was, therefore, determinedto force on the crisis, as soon as possible; in order that, the nabobbeing disposed of, he should be able to send reinforcements to Madras.
While these negotiations had been going on, Charlie Marryat hadremained in Calcutta. He had been severely wounded in the attack onChandranagore, and was carried down to Calcutta in a boat. On arrivingthere, he heard that the Lizzie Anderson had just cast anchor off thefort. He caused himself at once to be conveyed on board, and wasreceived with the greatest heartiness and pleasure, by his old friend,the captain; and assiduously attended by the doctor of the ship. Inorder that he might have as much air as possible, the captain had asort of tent, with a double covering, erected on deck. During thedaytime the sides of this were lifted, so that the air could passfreely across the bed.
Charlie's wound was a severe one and, had he been nursed in a hospitalon shore, it is probable that it would have been fatal. Thanks,however, to the comforts on board ship, the freshness and coolness ofthe situation, and the care of all surrounding him, he was, after someweeks' illness, pronounced convalescent; and was sufficientlyrecovered to join the force with which Clive marched against Plassey.
This force consisted of nine hundred and fifty European infantry, ahundred artillerymen, fifty sailors, and two thousand one hundredSepoys. The artillery consisted of eight six-pounders and two smallhowitzers. The army of the nabob was fifty thousand strong, andagainst such a force it was, indeed, an adventurous task for an armyof three thousand men, of whom only one-third were Europeans, toadvance to the attack. Everything depended, in fact, upon Meer Jaffierand his two colleagues in treachery, Rajah Dulab Ram and Yar LutfKhan.
The nabob, on hearing of Clive's advance, had sent to Monsieur Law;who was, with a hundred and fifty men, at a place over a hundred milesdistant; to which he had, in accordance with the orders of Clive, beenobliged to retire; and begged him to advance to join him, with allspeed. The nabob had with him forty or fifty Frenchmen, commanded byMonsieur Saint Frais, formerly one of the council of Chandranagore.These had some field pieces of their own, and also directed the nativeartillery, of fifty-three guns; principally thirty-two, twenty-four,and eighteen pounders.
Had Clive been sure of the cooperation of Meer Jaffier and hisconfederates, who commanded three out of the four divisions of thenabob's army, he need not have hesitated. But he was, till the lastmoment, in ignorance whether to rely upon them. The nabob, havingbecome suspicious of Meer Jaffier, had obtained from him an oath,sworn on the Koran, of fidelity; and although the traitor continuedhis correspondence with Clive, his letters were of a very dubiouscharacter, and Clive was in total ignorance as to his real intentions.So doubtful, indeed, was he that, when only a few miles of ground andthe river Bhagirathi lay between him and the enemy, Clive felt theposition so serious that he called a council of war; and put to themthe question whether they should attack the nabob, or fortifythemselves at Katwa, and hold that place until the rainy season, whichhad just set in with great violence, should abate.
All the officers above the rank of subalterns, twenty in number, werepresent. Clive himself, contrary to custom, gave his vote first infavour of halting at Katwa. Major Kilpatrick, who commanded theCompany's troops, Major Grant of the 37th, and ten other officersvoted the same way. Major Eyre Coote declared in favour of animmediate advance. He argued that the troops were in high spirits, andhad hitherto been everywhere successful, and that a delay would allowMonsieur Law and his troops to arrive. He considered that, if theydetermined not to fight, they should fall back upon Calcutta. CharlieMarryat supported him, as did five other officers, all belonging tothe Indian service.
The decision taken, the council separated, and Clive strolled away toa grove, and sat down by himself. There he thought over, in his mind,the arguments which had been advanced by both sides. He saw the forceof the arguments which had been adduced by Major Eyre Coote andCharlie Marryat; and his own experience showed him that the daringcourse is always the most prudent one, in fighting Asiatics. At last,he came to a conclusion. Rising, he returned to the camp; and, meetingMajor Coote on the way, informed him that he had changed his mind, andwould fight the next day.
Charlie returned to his tent after the council broke up, disheartenedat the result. He was greeted by Tim.
"Shure, yer honor, Hossein is in despair. The water has filled up theholes, where he makes his fires, and the rain has soaked the wood. Yerdinner is not near cooked yet, and half the dishes are spoilt."
"It does not matter a bit, Tim," Charlie said. "You know I'm notparticular about my eating, though Hossein will always prepare adinner fit for an alderman."
"We are going to fight them tomorrow, yer honor, I hope," Tim said."It's sick to death I am of wading about here in the wet, like a duck.It's as bare as the bogs of ould Ireland, without the blessings of thepigs and potatoes, to say nothing of the colleens."
"No, Tim, I'm afraid we're going to stop where we are, for a bit. Thecouncil of war have decided not to fight."
"Shure and that's bad news," Tim said. "The worst I've heard for manya day. What if there be fifty thousand of 'em, Mister Charles, haven'twe bate 'em at long odds before, and can't we do it agin?"
"I think we could, Tim," Charlie replied; "but the odds of fifty-threeheavy cannon, which the spies say they've got, to our ten popguns, isserious. However, I'm sorry we're not going to fight, and I'm afraidthat you must make up your mind to the wet, and Hossein his to givingme bad dinners for some weeks to come; that is to say, if the enemydon't turn us out of this."
A few minutes later, Lieutenant Peters entered the tent.
"Is it true, Charlie, that we are not going to fight, after all?"
"True enough," Charlie said. "We are to wait till the rains are over."
"Rains!" Peters said, in disgust; "what have the rains got to do withit? If we had a six weeks' march before us, I could understand the wetweather being a hindrance. Men are not water rats, and to march allday in these heavy downpours, and to lie all night in the mud, wouldsoon tell upon our s
trength. But here we are, within a day's march ofthe enemy, and the men might as well get wet in the field as here.Everyone longs to be at the enemy, and a halt will have a very badeffect.
"What have you got to drink, Charlie?"
"I have some brandy and rum; nothing else," Charlie said. "But whatwill be better than either for you is a cup of tea. Hossein makes itas well as ever. I suppose you have dined?"
"Yes, half an hour ago."
Just as Charlie finished his meal, Major Eyre Coote put his head intothe tent.
"Marryat, the chief has changed his mind. We cross the river the firstthing in the morning, and move at once upon Plassey."
"Hurrah!" Charlie shouted; "Clive is himself again. That is good news,indeed!"
"You will move your Sepoys down to the river at daybreak, and will bethe first to cross. There is no chance of any opposition, as the spiestell us that the nabob has not arrived yet at Plassey."
Several other officers afterwards dropped into the tent, for the newsrapidly spread through the camp. There was, as had been the case atthe council, considerable differences of opinion as to the prudence ofthe measure; but among the junior officers and men, the news that theenemy were to be attacked, at once, was received with heartysatisfaction.
"Here, major," a fellow subaltern of Peters' said, as he entered thetent, followed by a servant; "I have brought in half a dozen bottlesof champagne. I started with a dozen from Calcutta, and had intendedto keep these to celebrate our victory. But as, in the first place,all heavy baggage is to be left here; and in the second, it hasoccurred to me that possibly I may not come back to help to drink it;we may as well turn it to the good purpose of drinking success to theexpedition."
Some of the bottles were opened, and a merry evening was spent; butthe party broke up early, for they had a heavy day's work before them,on the morrow.
At daybreak, the troops were in movement towards the banks of theBhagirathi. They had brought boats with them from Chandranagore, andthe work of crossing the river continued, without intermission, untilfour in the afternoon, when the whole force was landed on the leftbank. Here Clive received another letter from Meer Jaffier, informinghim that the nabob had halted at Mankarah, and intended to entrenchhimself there. He suggested that the English should undertake acircuitous march, and attack him in the rear; but as this march wouldhave exposed Clive to being cut off from his communications, and as hewas still very doubtful of the good faith of the conspirators, hedetermined to march straight forward; and sent word to Meer Jaffier,to that effect.
From the point where Clive had crossed the Bhagirathi it was fifteenmiles to Plassey, following, as they did, the curves of the river. Itwas necessary to do this, as they had no carriage; and the men wereobliged to tow their supplies in boats, against the stream.
Orders were issued that, as soon as the troops were across, theyshould prepare to eat their dinners, as the march was to be resumed atonce. The rain was coming down in a steady pour as the troops,drenched to the skin, started upon their march. The stream, swollen bythe rains, was in full flood, and the work of towing the heavy-ladenbarges was wearisome in the extreme. All took a share in the toil. Inmany cases the river had overflowed its banks, and the troops had tostruggle through the water, up to their waists, while they tugged andstrained at the ropes.
Charlie, as a mounted officer, rode at the head of his Sepoys; whoformed the advance of the force. Three hundred men preceded the mainbody, who were towing the boats, to guard them from any suddensurprise. Tim marched beside him, occasionally falling back, andtaking a turn at the ropes.
"This is dog's work, Mister Charles," he said. "It's lucky that it'sraining, for the river can't make us wetter than we are. My hands arefairly sore, with pulling at the ropes."
"Ah, Tim, you're not fond of ropes, you know. You remember that nightat Moorshedabad."
"Faith, yer honor, and I'll not forget it, if I live to be as old asMethuselah. Well, yer honor, it will be hard on us if we do not thrashthem niggers, tomorrow, after all the trouble we are taking to be atthem."
At one o'clock in the morning, the weary troops reached the village ofPlassey. They marched through it, and halted and bivouacked in a largemango grove, a short distance beyond.