Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/20

10 the natives of India, Sabut Jung, or the daring in war. The hero of Arcot had, at Angria s stronghold, and now again under the walls of Calcutta, established his reputa tion as the first captain of the time. With 600 British soldiers, 800 sepoys, 7 field-pieces and 500 sailors to draw them, he had routed a force of 34,000 men with 40 pieces of heavy cannon, 50 elephants, and a camp that extended upwards of four miles in length. His own account, in a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury, gives a modest but vivid description of the battle, the importance of which has been overshadowed by Plassy. In spite of his double defeat and the treaty which followed it, the madness of the nawnb burst forth again. As England and France were once more at war, Clive sent the fleet up the river against Chandernagore, while he besieged it by land. After consenting to the siege, the nawab sought to assist the French, but in vain. The capture of their principal settle ment in India, next to Pondicherry, which had fallen in the previous war, gave the combined forces prize to the value of 130,000. The rule of Suraj-ud-Dowlah became as intolerable to his own people as to the English. They formed a confederacy to depose him, at the head of which was Jaffier Ali Khan, his commander-in-chief. Associating with himself Admiral Watson, Governor Drake, and Mr Watts, Clive made a treaty in which it was agreed to give the office of souba, or viceroy of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, to Jaffier, who was to pay a million sterling to the Company for its losses in Calcutta and the cost of its troops, half a million to the English inhabitants of Calcutta, 200,000 to the native inhabitants, and 70,000 to its Armenian merchants. Up to this point all is clear. Suraj ud-Duwlah was hopeless as a ruler. His relations alike to his master, the merely titular emperor of Delhi, and to the people left the province open to the strongest. After &quot; the Black Hole,&quot; the battle of Calcutta, and the treachery at Chandernagore in spite of the treaty which follow 3d that battle, the East India Company could treat the nawab only as an enemy. Clive, it is true, miglit have disregarded all native intrigue, marched on Moorshedabad, and at once held the delta of the Ganges in the Company s name. But the time was not ripe for this, and the consequences, with so small a force, might have been fatal. The idea of acting directly as rulers, or save under native charters and names, was not developed by events for half a century. The political morality of the time in Europe, as well as the comparative weakness of the Company in India, led Clive not only to meet the dishonesty of his native associate by equal dishonesty, but to justify his conduct by the declara tion, years after, in Parliament, that he would do the same again. It became necessary to employ the richest Bengalee trader, Omichund, as an agent between Jaffier Ali and the English officials. Master of ths secret of the confederacy against Suraj-ud-Dowlah, the Bengalee threatened- to betray it unless he was guaranteed, in the treaty itself, 300,000. To dupe the villain, who was really paid by both sides, a second, or fictitious treaty, was shown him with a clause to this effect. This Admiral Watson refused to sign; &quot; but,&quot; Clive deponed to the House of Commons, &quot; to the best of his remembrance, he gave the gentleman who carried it leave to sign his name upon it ; his lordship never made any secret of it ; he thinks it warrantable in such a case, and would do it again a hundred times ; he had no interested motive in doing it, and did it with a design of disappointing the expectations of a rapacious man,&quot; Such is dive s own defence of the one act which, in a long career of abounding temptations, stains his public life.

The whole hot season of 1757 was spent in these negotiations, till the middle of June, when Clive began his march from Chandernagore, the British in boats, and the sepoys along the right bank of the Ilooghly. That river, above Calcutta is, during the rainy season, fed by the overflow of the Ganges to the north through three streams, which in the hot months are nearly dry. On the left bank of the Bhagarutti, the most westerly of these, 100 miles above Chandernagore, stands Moorshedabad, the capital of the Mogul viceroys of Bengal, and then so vast that Clive compared it to the London of his day. Some miles farther down is the field of Plassy, then an extensive grove of mango trses, of which enough yet remains, in spite of the changing course of the stream, to enable the visitor to realize the scene. On the 21st June Clive arrived on the bank opposite Plassy, in the midst of that outburst of rain which ushers in the south-west monsoon of India. His whole army amounted to 1100 Europeans and 2100 native troops, with 10 field-pieces. The nawab had drawn up 18,000 horse, 50,000 foot, and 53 pieces of heavy ordnance, served by French artillerymen. For once in his career Clive hesitated, and called a council of sixteen officers to decide, as he put it, &quot; whether in our present situation, without assistance, and on our own bottom, it would be prudent to attack the nawab, or whether we should wait till joined by some country power ? &quot; Clivo himself headed the nine who voted for delay ; Major (afterwards Sir) Eyre Coote, led the seven who counselled immediate attack. But, either because his daring asserted itself, or because, also, of a letter that he received from Jaffier Ali, as has been said, Clive was the first to change his mind and to communicate with Major Eyre Coote. One tradition, followed by Macaulay, represents him as spending an hour in thought under the shade of some trees, while he resolved the issues of what was to prove one of the decisive battles of the world. Another, turned into verse by an Anglo-Indian poet, pictures his resolution aa the result of a dream. However that may be, he did well as a soldier to trust to the dash and even rashness that had gained Arcot and triumphed at Calcutta, and as a states man, since retreat, or even delay, would have put back the civilization of India for years. When, after the heavy rain, the sun rose brightly on the 22d, the 3200 men and the six guns crossed the river and took possession of the grove and its tanks of water, while Clive established his head quarters in a hunting lodge. On the 23d the engagement took place and lasted the whole day. Except the 40 Frenchmen and the guns which they worked, the enemy did little to reply to the British cannonade which, with the 39th Regiment, scattered the host, inflicting on it a loss of 500 men. Clive restrained the ardour of Major Kirkpatrick, for he trusted to Jaffier Ali s abstinence, if not desertion to his ranks, and knew the importance of sparing his own small force. He lost hardly a white soldier ; in all 22 sepoys were killed and 50 wounded. His own account, written a month after the battle to the secret committee of the court of directors, is not less unaffected than that in which he had announced the defeat of the nawab at Calcutta. Suraj-ud-Dowlah fled from the field on a camel, secured what wealth he could, and came to an untimely end. Clive entered Moorshedabad, and established Jaffier Ali in the position which his descendants have ever since enjoyed, as pensioners, but have not unfrequently abused. When taken through the treasury, amid a million and a half sterling s worth of rupees, gold and silver plate, jewels, and rich goods, and besought to ask what he would, Clive was content with 160,000, while half a million was dis tributed among the army and navy, both in addition to gifts of 24,000 to each member of the Company s com mittee, and besides the public compensation stipulated for in the treaty. It was to this occasion that he referred in his defence before the House of Commons, when he declared that he marvelled at his moderation. He sought rather to increase the shares of the fleet and the 