Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/227

Rh well as English, set at nought the Nawab's authority, and their factories were in arms against his revenue officers.

All this violent friction soon culminated in an explosion, brought about by an awkward attempt on the part of Mr. Ellis, chief of the Patna factory, to seize Patna city, with the object of forestalling an attack by the Nawab on his factory. Although Ellis took the place, he could not hold it, and his whole party was captured in their retreat; but the Company's troops marched against and defeated the Nawab, who, in his furious desperation, caused his English prisoners to be massacred and then fled across the frontier to the camp of the Vizir of Oudh. The Company, somewhat sobered by these tragic consequences of misrule, relinquished the more scandalous monopolies and restored Mir Jafir in 1763. When he died in 1765, the ruinous system of puppet Nawabs came practically to an end; for in that year Lord Clive, who had returned to India, assumed, under a grant from the Delhi emperor, direct administration of the revenue of the three provinces of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, an office that was entitled the Diwani. The Diwan had been originally the controller-general on behalf of the imperial treasury in each province, with supreme authority over all public expenditure; so that the investiture of the Company with this office added the power of the purse to the power of the sword, and rendered them directly and regularly responsible for the most important departments of government.