Page:The story of the Indian mutiny; (IA storyofindianmut00monciala).pdf/28

 and undertook to supplant Surajah Dowlah by a prince of his own choosing. At Plassey, with three thousand men, only a third of them Europeans, he routed the tyrant's army, fifty thousand strong—a momentous battle that counts as the foundation of our sovereignty in India. A new Nawab was set up, nominally under appointment from Delhi, but really as the servant of the English Company, who now obtained a considerable grant of land as well as an enormous sum in compensation for their losses by Surajah Dowlah's occupation of Calcutta. A few years later their nominee was dethroned in favour of a more compliant one, who also had to pay handsomely for his elevation. He ventured to rebel, but to no purpose. Lord Clive pushed the English arms as far as Allahabad; and henceforth, with whatever puppet on the throne and with whatever show of homage to the high-titled suzerain at Delhi, the Company were the actual masters of Bengal.

All over India spread the renown of Clive's small but well-trained Sepoy army. His subjugation of the effeminate Bengalees, Macaulay may well compare to a war of sheep and wolves; but this young English officer went on to defy the more warlike levies of the north