by John Keay
The inconvenience of news from their settlements being anything from six to eighteen months out of date had for once worked to the directors’ advantage; sailing schedules had delayed the bad tidings while speeding the good. In fact Siraj-ud-Daula had enjoyed the freedom of Calcutta (or ‘Ali-nagar’ as he had renamed it), and Drake and his men had endured the misery of Fulta, not for seven weeks but seven months. The Madras Council, mindful of its own plight ten years earlier, had indeed rushed reinforcements to its Bengal brethren. They had reached Fulta by the end of July. But this was in response to the first hint of trouble, namely Siraj’s move against the Kasimbazar factory. Presuming that a show of strength would be enough to ensure its restitution, this first detachment, commanded by Major Killpatrick, was only 200 strong and quite unequal to the new task of retaking Calcutta.
When Watson and Clive, after a rough and circuitous voyage by way of Sri Lanka and the Burmese coast, finally entered the Hughli, it was mid December and half of Killpatrick’s force had already succumbed to the climate. On the other hand, Drake and the Calcutta refugees, though ‘crowded together in the most wretched habitations, clad in the meanest apparel, and…surrounded by sickness and disease’, were in better heart. Survival had been something of a triumph in itself. According to Surgeon Ives, they ‘had so long been disciplined in the school of adversity as to make them kiss the rod’.
Perhaps therein lies an explanation for the spirit of reconciliation that had at last surfaced. In time Watts, then Holwell, had both been released, and along with most of the Company’s Dhaka establishment, had found their way down to Fulta. Since there was some doubt about the authority of a Fort William Council that could no longer convene in Fort William, they now formed themselves, with Drake, Clive and Watson, into a Select Committee. This ad hoc body was to acquire a permanent and influential status; it ‘carried out all the Revolutions which gave Bengal to the British…and in later years developed into what is now [1905] the Foreign Department’ (S. C. Hill).
With Drake and his erstwhile colleagues deriving their authority from the Company’s Bengal establishment, Clive and his troops from the Madras Council, and Watson and his squadron from the Crown, the Committee proved a vital forum in which to resolve the always simmering jealousies of a divided command. Clive, with a Royal commission as lieutenant-colonel in addition to his undisputed command of the Madras troops, was eventually able to dominate its deliberations. But its existence can also be seen as evidence of a growing sense of shared purpose amongst the Company’s servants in India. Already a young man called Hastings (with the unlikely first name of Warren) was acting as agent and caretaker for the Company’s interests in Murshidabad. The future and first governor-general of all the Company’s Indian establishments had been making a tour of the rural weaving centres when Siraj had attacked Kasimbazar. Now neither at liberty nor certainly in detention, he was still in Murshidabad, well if precariously placed to act as go-between.
Hastings’s news of the Nawab’s affairs was not encouraging. Defeat of the English had given Siraj such delusions of grandeur that to the Emperor in Delhi he had announced his success as ‘the most glorious achievement in Indostan since the days of Tamerlane’. Such a mighty conqueror could afford to be magnanimous and he had therefore commuted the sentence hanging over the Dutch and French establishments in favour of hefty fines and constant insults; it delighted him to reflect that he had not just conquered the English but had got the other Europeans to pay for it. In October his confidence was further boosted by the defeat of a rival for the Nawabship and confirmation from Delhi of his title. He celebrated the occasion by conducting a public stock-taking of his personal wealth, the grand total coming to 680 million rupees or £85 million. Clearly here was an Indian prince who had no pressing need of further cash. If the British at Fulta were ever to regain Calcutta, it would not be by the time-honoured expedient of dipping into the Company’s treasure chests.
Clive and Watson had already written to the Nawab demanding restitution and compensation. When by Christmas 1756 no reply had been received, tents were struck and anchors weighed. While Clive’s 1000 Madras sepoys marched upriver, his 800 European troops sailed alongside them in Watson’s ships. It was known that Siraj was back in Murshidabad but that his governor of ‘Ali-nagar’ had taken up position in the fort of Baj-baj which commanded the Hughli just below Calcutta.
Approaching the area Clive and a detachment of his troops were ambushed. Though outnumbered ten to one, they routed the attackers in just half an hour. The fort looked a more formidable proposition and, after a taste of Watson’s gunnery, was reserved for a copy-book assault by the cream of the troops on the following day. But this plan was frustrated by an act of notorious indiscipline. While Clive’s assault force lay in wait for the dawn, ‘one Strahan, a common sailor belonging to the Kent’, having evidently made too free with the ‘grog’, was seen to stagger uncertainly forwards, wade the fort’s moat, and ‘imperceptibly get under the walls’. There, according to Ives, ‘he took it into his head to scale a breach that had been made by the cannon of the ships’. Chance thus found him on top of one of the bastions and surrounded by incredulous guards ‘at whom he flourished his cutlass, and fired his pistol’. ‘Then after having given three loud huzzas, he cried out “The place is mine”.’
Responding to this outburst, some of his comrades, who had also ‘accidentally’ wandered into the same no-man’s-land, rushed the breach. They found Strahan bloodied but unbowed and still defending himself with ‘incomparable resolution’ plus the stub of his broken cutlass. By now the whole place was in an uproar. Sailors, sepoys and troopers poured into the breach; the fort’s garrison melted into the night. Thus Baj-baj, the first and, in the event, the only obstacle to the capture of Calcutta, fell to the British by mistake. The only casualty, a Scots captain, also fell by mistake; ‘he was unfortunately killed by a musket-bullet from one of our own pieces.’
Watson was hard put to conceal his delight at the mighty Clive being upstaged by one of his common sailors. It would have been a good moment to quote Lancaster’s grudging remark when adrift off the Cape – ‘these men regard no commission’. Instead Watson appeared to reprimand the miscreant. Strahan was taxed with a flagrant breach of discipline and duly confessed his guilt; it was indeed he who had taken the fort, he said, but he ‘hoped there was no harm in it’. Watson pretended to be unmoved. As the offender was led away to a punishment that never materialized he was heard to utter a solemn oath to the effect that, if flogged, he ‘would never take another fort by himself as long as he lived, by God’.
Such self-denial proved of no evil consequence when two days later the squadron began pounding Fort William. In less than an hour the Fort’s guns fell silent as someone ashore ‘hoisted an English pendant on a tree’. The British retook Calcutta as easily as they had lost it, noted the chief of the Dutch factory at Chinsura. The town’s inhabitants came out to welcome back their old masters and the only serious altercation was that between Captain Eyre Coote, the Royal officer who actually took possession of the place on behalf of Watson and the Crown, and Colonel Clive who immediately claimed possession for the Company by virtue of his superior rank and the command invested in him by the Madras Council. At one point the quarrel looked like ending in the arrest of Clive or even an exchange of fire.
It was not just a question of to whom belonged the honours. Clive seems to have viewed the situation as an important test of his authority. With the Admiral making common cause with the Bengal civilians, there was a real possibility of a peace being quickly concluded with the Nawab-on the basis of the old 1717 farman plus compensation, especially for private losses. But Clive had not come to Bengal to restore an unsatisfactory status quo ante and enrich the Bengal factors. He was there ‘to do great things’, as he told his father, not just to retake Calcutta but to leave the Company in Bengal ‘in a better and more lasting condition than ever’. The example of the French in Hyderabad, and of the French and then
the English in the Carnatic, could be emulated in Bengal. The unpopularity of Siraj, the danger posed by the French at Chandernagar, and – not least – the pecuniary and professional opportunities offered by a Bengal campaign, demanded that the Company take the offensive.
In the end, by a ‘pass-the-parcel’ compromise, Coote handed Calcutta over to Clive, Clive to Watson, and Watson to Drake and the Bengal Council. Then, evidently as part of the same transaction, the Council, ‘persuaded by Colonel Clive [author’s italics], immediately published a declaration of war against the Nabob [Nawab] in the name of the East India Company as did Admiral Watson in that of the King’.
Hostilities commenced immediately with an attack on the Nawab’s port of Hughli, which was virtually sacked, plus preparations to engage the army of the Nawab himself, now marching for the second time on Calcutta. Clive drew up plans for a redesigned Fort William and for the demolition of all those grand houses, now sadly ransacked, which commanded it. There was, though, no time to put the Fort on a defensive footing and it was therefore decided to await the enemy in camp just to the north of the settlement.
Meanwhile negotiations of a sort were in progress. In the previous year, with the English at his mercy, Siraj had proposed terms whereby their trading privileges as per the 1717 farman would be completely surrendered. This was, of course, totally unacceptable. But similarly the Select Committee now offered terms as extravagantly favourable as Siraj’s had been unfavourable. In addition to all the privileges included in the farman, many of which had never been conceded by the Nawabs, the Committee also demanded the right to coin its own rupees in Calcutta and to interpret dastak in its broadest possible connotation. Siraj ignored these suggestions; but when he next invited overtures, he found that the demands had been increased. It seemed clear that the Committee was determined on a trial of strength.
Nevertheless, the negotiations were still in progress when on 3 February the Nawab’s army began to file past Clive’s camp and set up its own on and within the eastern bounds of Calcutta. Why Clive did not attack as for two days the columns of horse and foot, elephants, oxen and artillery lumbered past his tent flaps is something of a mystery. Coote guessed there were 40,000 cavalry, 60,000 infantry and thirty cannon. Perhaps Clive simply did not know where to begin. With just 2000 foot, fourteen guns and no cavalry, it was essential to avoid galling and indecisive skirmishes. His preference, born of experience in the Carnatic, was always to strike hard and unexpectedly, often at night and usually against the enemy’s greatest concentration.
Such was precisely the intention when twenty-four hours later he did finally take the field. But a late start, plus heavy going across the paddies, meant that it was already daybreak when he reached the Nawab’s encampment near Chitpur. Obligingly a dense mist, not uncommon during the winter months, then blanketed his further movements and induced the sort of confusion in which European discipline showed to advantage. Pouring fire to left and right the British passed clean through the camp leaving more than a thousand dead in their wake. They missed, however, the Nawab’s headquarters and completely overshot their intended line of retreat. Thus when the sun finally melted the dawn mist, they were still within range of the Nawab’s cannon and themselves suffered unacceptable losses – fifty-seven dead – before regaining the safety of the Maratha Ditch.
Clive dismissively called this action ‘a tour through the Nawab’s camp’. But he also admitted that it was ‘the warmest service I was ever yet engaged in’; in retrospect, and not excepting Plassey (his next engagement) it was the nearest thing to a battle that he ever fought in Bengal. Whether he had won it was not immediately clear. After all he had been compelled to retreat under heavy fire and had had to abandon some of his guns. Watson quickly warned the Nawab that it was simply by way of an appetizer; he urged Clive to deliver the full menu without delay. But Clive thought it had served its purpose, and the Nawab put the matter beyond doubt by withdrawing his forces to Murshidabad and hastily agreeing to whatever terms were dictated. These were as proposed before the action.
The Colonel’s reluctance to push his military advantage was informed by three considerations. Adding the wounded to the dead, he had lost over 200 men, a tenth of his entire force; he could not afford further such losses. Additionally, having reinstated the Company in Bengal and gained important new commercial rights, like the mint, he knew full well that the directors would not thank him for prolonging hostilities which, however successful, were costly and fatal to trade. A speedy resumption of trade in the Company’s most valuable market was more important even than the safety of Calcutta, for on it depended the profitability of the Company and the confidence of its shareholders. ‘If I had consulted the interest and reputation of a soldier’, Clive told Payne, the Company’s chairman, ‘the conclusion of this peace might easily have been suspended.’ But his ambition now soared beyond soldiering, at which he had never been more than an amateur. To his father he confided his real objective – ‘the Governor-Generalship of India…if such an appointment should be necessary’. In furtherance of this ambition he needed to impress the Court of Directors with his credentials as a peacemaker, as the man who not only recaptured Calcutta but also restored its trade.
But the third consideration may have been the most decisive. In the same letter he also told Payne that ‘the delay of a day or two [in concluding the treaty with Siraj] might have ruined the Company’s affairs by a junction of the Nabob [Nawab] with the French’. Throughout their year of troubles with Siraj the British had been anxiously watching their main European rivals. Refugees from Kasimbazar and Calcutta had found a welcome sanctuary at French Chandernagar whose Councillors had refused to join Siraj on either of his marches against Calcutta. But neither had they joined the British in resisting Siraj. There were renegade Frenchmen in the Nawab’s army and French gunpowder had allegedly been used by the Nawab’s artillery.
The French maintained that they had scrupulously observed that old non-aggression pact between the two companies in Bengal; but this vague understanding was not such as someone bloodied in the campaigns of the Carnatic was likely to respect. Before leaving Madras Clive had made his intentions quite clear. He would ‘relieve the French of Chandernagar’ the moment word of a resumption of Anglo-French hostilities in Europe reached India. Rumours of just such an event had begun circulating in late 1756; they were duly confirmed at about the time of the Chitpur engagement when Commodore James, the hero of Suvarnadrug, made an unexpected appearance in the Hughli.
James, whose navigational skills stand comparison with his martial exploits, had conceived the idea of establishing a winter route between the west and east coasts of India, hitherto considered impossible because of the coastal winds, by sailing right round the Indian Ocean. Accordingly he had left Bombay heading south-west till ten degrees below the Equator, then bore east for Sumatra, and finally up the Malay peninsula. After ‘a feat unexampled in the navigation of those seas’ (C. R. Low) he delivered news of the outbreak in Europe of the Seven Years War. He also brought 500 welcome, if somewhat disorientated, Bombay troops. According to Ives, they ‘enabled us immediately to act offensively against the French’.
Although delighted, and perhaps indeed decided, by this unexpected reinforcement, Clive and Watson faced a number of problems. The French were pressing for a renewal of the old neutrality pact and in this they were half-heartedly supported by the Calcutta civil establishment and whole-heartedly by the Nawab. ‘If you are determined to besiege the French factories’, Siraj warned, ‘I shall be necessitated…to assist them with my troops.’ In effect the situation was precisely the same as that on the Coromandel coast at the beginning of the War of the Austrian Succession. Then the proximity of Barnett’s squadron had given Morse occasion to prevaricate over neutrality. Now the presence of Watson’s ships made the Bengal Committee prevaricate. The only difference – and it was a big one – was that on The Coast French shipping had been the temptation; in Bengal it was Chandernagar, the pri
ncipal French settlement.
Watson himself was the second problem. Chandernagar’s defences, like those of Gheriah and Baj-baj, cried out for the sort of cannonade which only his ships could deliver. It had to be a naval attack. Yet the Admiral was a real stickler for the niceties of engagement. As commander of a King’s fleet in time of war he was obliged to attack. Yet to do so on Bengali soil could be seen as flaunting the authority of the Moghul Empire, infringing the recently concluded treaty with the Nawab (which spoke vaguely of abjuring hostilities), and inviting the very conjunction of the French and the Nawab which Clive hoped to pre-empt.
On the whole then Watson seems to have preferred the idea of a neutrality pact; but here another problem arose. It transpired, although it should have been obvious from the start, that the French in Chandernagar could vouch only for their own neutrality, not that of Pondicherry nor, more crucially, that of de Bussy at Hyderabad. De Bussy was reportedly about to march on Bengal. He was coming to support the Nawab, said the French; against the Nawab, said the English. Either way, he was not going to observe any pact made by the subordinate councillors of Chandernagar. In an agony of indecision, Watson paced the poop of his flagship and invited guidance from the Select Committee. They stalled. A new approach was being made to the Nawab.
If Watson’s dilemma was the result of scruple, the same could not be said of Siraj’s predicament. Before his treaty with the British had been signed, he had awarded to the French all the concessions contained in it, thus for the first time giving the Compagnie a chance of trading on equal terms with the Company. Nothing could have been more provocative. At one fell swoop, the French had acquired all those privileges so painfully negotiated by Surman and so doggedly pursued by his successors. The British naturally assumed that this generosity presaged some secret understanding between Chandernagar and Murshidabad; yet the French, in spite of vigorous lobbying, failed to persuade the Nawab to declare himself. Possibly he was too anxious about de Bussy’s intentions. More probably he was worried about the effect on the British. Agent Watts was back at his post in Murshidabad and busily intriguing to bring all possible pressure to bear. Even Watson weighed in with a couple of resounding letters demanding of the luckless Nawab full implementation of the treaty, failing which ‘I will kindle such a flame in your country as all the water in the Ganges will not be able to extinguish.’
