Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/21

Rh troops at his own expense, as he had done at Gheriah, and did more than once afterwards, with prize of war. What ha did take from the grateful nawab for himself was Jess than the circumstances justified from an Oriental point of view, was far less than was pressed upon him, not only by Jaffier Ali, but by the hundreds of the native nobles whose gifts Clive steadily refused, and was openly acknowledged from the first. He followed a usage fully recognized by the Company, although the fruitful source of future evils which he himself was again sent out to correct. The Company itself acquired a revenue of 100,000 a year, and a contribution towards its losses and military expendi ture of a million and a half sterling. Such was Jaffier Ali s gratitude to Clive that he afterwards presented him with the quit-rent of the Company s lands in and around Calcutta, amounting to an annuity of 27,000 for life, and left him by will the sum of 70,000, which Clivo devoted to the army. While busy with the civil administration, the conqueror of Plassy continued to follow up his military success. He sent Major Coote in pursuit of the French almost as far as Benares. He despatched Colonel Forde to Vizagapatam and the northern districts of Madras, where that officer gained the battle of Condore, pronounced by Broome &quot;one of the most brilliant actions on military record.&quot; He came into direct contact, for the first time, with the Great Mogul himself, an event which resulted in the most important consequences during the third period of his career. Shah Aalum, when Shahzada, or heir-apparent, quarrelled with his father Aalum Geer II., the emperor, and united with the viceroys of Oudh and Allahabad for the conquest of Bengal. He advanced as far as Patna, which he besieged with 40,000 men. Jaffier Ali, in terror, sent his son to its relief, and implored the aid of Clive. Major Caillaud defeated the prince s army at the battle of Sirpore, and dis persed it. Finally, at this period, Clive repelled the aggression of the Dutch, and avenged the massacre of Amboyna, on that occasion when he wrote his famous letter, &quot; Dear Forde, fight them immediately ; I will send you the order of council to-morrow.&quot; Meanwhile he never ceased to improve the organization and drill of the sepoy army, after a European model, and enlisted into it many Mahometans of fine physique from Upper India. He re- fortified Calcutta. In 1760, after four years of labour so incessant and results so glorious, his health gave way and he returned to England. &quot; It appeared,&quot; wrote a con temporary on the spot, &quot; as if the soul was departing from the government of Bengal.&quot; He had beon formally made governor of Bengal by the court of directors at a time when his nominal superiors in Madras sought to recall him to their help there. But he had discerned the importance of the province even during his first visit to its rich delta, mighty rivers, and teeming population. It should ba noticed, also, that he had the kingly gift of selecting the ablest subordinates, for even thus early he had discovered the ability of young Warren Hastings, destined to be his great successor, and, a year after Flassy, made him &quot; resident &quot; at the nawab s court. In 17 GO, at thirty-five years of age, Clive returned to England with a fortune of at least 300,000 and the quit- rent of 27,000 a year, after caring for the comfort of his parents and sisters, and giving Major Lawrence, his old commanding officer, who had early encouraged his military genius, 500 a year. The money had been honourably and publicly acquired, with the approval of the Company. The amount might have been four times what it was, had Clive been either greedy after wealth or ungenerous to the colleagues and the troops whom In led to victory. In the five years of his conquests and administration in Bengal, the young man had crowded together a succession of exploits which led Lord Macaulay, in what that historian termed his &quot; flashy &quot; essay on the subject, to compare him to Napoleon Bonaparte. But there was this difference in Olive s favour, due not more to the circumstances of the time than to the object of his policy he gave peace, security, prosperity, and such liberty as the caso allowed of to a people now reckoned at 240 millions, who had for centuries been the prey of oppression, while Napoleon warred only for personal ambition, and the absolutism ho established has left not a wreck behind. During the three years that Clive remained in England he sought a political position, chiefly that he might influence the course of events in India, -which he had left full of promise. He had been well received at court, had been made Baron Clive of Plassy, in the peerage of Ireland, had bought estates, and had got not only himself but his friends returned to the House of Commons after the fashion of the time. Then it was that he set himself to reform the home system of the East India Company, and commenced a bitter warfare with Mr Sulivan, chair man of the court of directors, whom finally he defeated. In this he was aided by the news of reverses in Bengal. Yansittart, his successor, having no great influence over Jaffier Ali Khan, had put Kossim Ali Khan, the son-in-law, in his place in considera tion of certain payments to the English officials. After a brief tenure Kossim Ali had fled, had ordered Summers, or Sumroo, a Swiss mercenary of his, to butcher the garrison of 150 English at Patna, and had disappeared under the protection of his brother viceroy of. Oudh. The whole Company s service, civil and military, had become demoralized by such gifts, and by the monopoly of the inland as well as export trade, to such an extent that the natives were pauperized, and the Company was plundered of the revenues which Clive had acquired for them. The court of proprietors, accordingly, who elected the directors, forced them, in spite of Sulivan, to hurry out Lord Clive to Bengal with the double powers of governor and com- mander-in-cliief. W T hat he had done for Madras, what he had accomplished for Bengal proper, and what he had effected in reforming the Company itself, he was now to complete in less than two years, in this the third period of his career, by putting his country politically in the place of the emperor of Delhi, and preventing forever the possibility of the corrup tion to which the English in India had been driven by an evil system. On the 3d May 17G5, he landed at Calcutta to learn that Jaffier Ali Khan had died, leaving him personally 70,000, and had been succeeded by his son, though not before the Government had been further demoralized by taking 100,000 as a gift from the new nawab ; while Kossim Ali had induced not only the viceroy of Oudh, but the emperor of Delhi himself, to invade Behar. After the first mutiny in the Bengal army, which was suppressed by blowing the sepoy ringleader from the guns, Major Munro, &quot; the Xapier of those times,&quot; scattered the united armies on the hard-fought field of Bttxar. The emperor, Shah Aalum, detached himself from the league, while the Oudh viceroy threw himself on the mercy of the English. Clive had now an opportunity of repeating in Hindustan, or Upper India, what he had accomplished for the good of Bengal. He might have secured what are now called the Xjrth- Western Provinces and Oudh, and have rendered unnecessary the campaigns of Wellesley and Lake. But he had other work in the consolidation of rich Bengal itself, making it a base from which the mighty fabric of British India could afterwards steadily and proportionally (rrow. Hence he returned to the Oudh viceroy all his territory save the provinces of Allahabad and Corah, which he made over to the weak emperor. But from that emperor he secured the most important document in the wlioJe of 