by John Keay
But the final straw seems to have been the news of quite a different threat – not the first and by no means the last – from the other end of Siraj’s domain. Afghan troops, having sacked Delhi, were said to be advancing on Bihar, presumably to extort from Siraj some of that £85 million in his treasury. Although this particular attack never materialized, it seemed real enough at the time. Siraj ordered his own troops to advance to Patna and asked Clive to come to his aid. He was given to understand that the British would happily oblige but for the danger of leaving Calcutta exposed to the French. It was under these circumstances that Siraj wrote, or possibly someone forged, a note of sibylline opacity (and lavish punctuation) which the British chose to interpret as a carte blanche to attack Chandernagar.
You have understanding and generosity [went the note]; if your enemy, with an upright heart, claims your protection, you will give him his life; but then you must be well satisfied of the innocence of his intentions; if not, whatever you think right, that do.
Only one steeped in Oriental intrigue and conversant with the finer points of diplomatic utterance could possibly have seen in this an invitation to make war on the French. Perhaps the whole episode goes to show how adept the Company’s servants were becoming in these deep arts. In the course of a few weeks, they had turned Siraj from enemy into accomplice. Having master-minded a policy revolution, why not a palace revolution?
First, though, Chandernagar. In anticipation, Clive had already taken his troops across the Hughli. On 13 March 1757 he attacked and easily overran the suburbs, losing just one man in the process. The French had sensibly elected to make their stand within ‘Fort d’Orléans’ which bore much the same relationship to Chandernagar as Fort William to Calcutta. There they were safe until Watson began his bombardment on what Ives calls ‘the glorious morning’ of 23 March. Although it lasted for only three hours the engagement deserves that ‘glorious’ tag as one of the hottest and, as battles go, one of the most exciting ever staged.
Fifty miles from the open sea and twenty above Calcutta, the river is here about a quarter of a mile wide. Watson’s plan was to engage the fort’s whole waterfront with his three largest ships, the sixty-gun Tiger, the seventy-gun Kent, and the fifty-gun Salisbury drawn up in line astern. There had been grave doubts about whether such large ships could operate so far upriver; and there were further doubts about whether they could dodge the numerous vessels sunk by the French to prevent their closing. By dint of careful reconnaissance, the three warships negotiated these difficulties and amid heavy fire from the fort’s guns, including many 32-pounders, they manoeuvred into position. By now the tide, which had facilitated their approach, had turned. The Tiger took up position just fifty yards from the north bastion but the Kent, which was supposed to engage the middle of the curtain wall, drifted downstream to a position opposite the south bastion, thus elbowing the Salisbury out of the action.
‘The fire now became general on both sides and was kept up with extraordinary spirit’, writes Surgeon Ives who was soon busy attending to the casualties. Broadside and at stone’s throw range, the two tiers of the ships’ guns could scarcely miss, while from the tops of the rigging the marines poured small-arms fire on to the ramparts. Musket balls that passed over and into the walls of the Governor’s house in the centre of the fort were found to have been ‘beaten as flat as a half-crown’ by the impact. But, unlike Gheriah, Chandernagar boasted European artillery and European gunners. The rigging of the Kent was shot away in its entirety and her hull holed in 138 places; some of the French shells passed clean through one side and out the other; at one point she appeared to be ablaze and half the crew took to the boats only to be shamed into returning. Out of the Kent’s total complement of about 200, thirty-seven were killed and seventy-four wounded including all but one of the officers. The ship was a write-off. Although the Tiger fared less badly, her casualties were also appalling and ‘almost equalled those of the Kent’.
‘Perhaps you will hear of few instances where two ships have met with greater damage than the Kent and the Tiger in this engagement’, wrote one of the survivors. When the fort finally capitulated it meant the end of French prospects in Bengal; La Bourdonnais’s storming of Madras and Boscawen’s failure at Pondicherry had been amply avenged; and the British had at last afforded the Nawab awesome and incontrovertible evidence of their martial capabilities. But in the words of the same survivor, ‘we have never yet obtained a victory at so dear a rate’.
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Clive rated the capture of Chandernagar as ‘of more consequence to the Company than the taking of Pondicherry itself’. He was at pains to suggest that without his troops it could never have been effected and, in an effort to associate himself with the final capitulation, he again incurred the wrath of the Admiral. By depriving the French of their most profitable operation and of the base from which both Pondicherry and their Mauritius establishment were provisioned, it undermined the Compagnie’s whole position in the East.
It also undermined the Nawab’s position. ‘I am in hopes this last stroke will fix him’, wrote Clive. Such a resounding victory would surely convince the Nawab that a speedy compliance with all the obligations, mostly to do with compensation, incurred in the recent treaty was unavoidable. Certainly the defeat of the French had had a profound psychological impact on the unhappy Siraj. Henceforth fear of British displeasure dictated his every mood and informed his every move. With the absurd idea that Watson’s ships might set a course for Murshidabad, another fifty miles inland, he began intercepting the shallow draught barges and budgeroes which alone could use this part of the river; he then blocked it in two places. At one of these, about twenty miles below Murshidabad, he stationed a large part of his army. The spot was known as Plassey.
Clive’s expectations of the Nawab buckling under to British demands were disappointed, in part because the demands themselves were being continually increased. The terms of the treaty signed after Chitpur, as reinterpreted by Watts and expanded by the Bengal Committee, represented a crushing blow to both Siraj’s purse and his authority. To these terms were now added demands for the surrender of the French establishments at Kasimbazar and Dhaka plus the repudiation of a small French contingent under Jean Law, the French agent at Murshidabad. In happier times the duel of intrigue and bribery that was now joined between Law and Watts at the Nawab’s court could have played into Siraj’s hands. Now it merely played on his nerves, turning a hapless prince into a vacillating and vindictive hostage to circumstance. Law was threatened then feted, exiled then recalled (in vain), all within a few days; Watts fared little better and, with the idea of forcing a conclusion, even the Nawab’s advisers took to fuelling his fears.
At last in May the recurrent rumours of an impending coup by some of Bengal’s most senior dignitaries assumed substance. Watts passed word to Clive and Clive willingly invoked the king-making exploits of Dupleix and de Bussy. Along with the Bengal Committee he immediately endorsed this far more effective way of ‘fixing’ the Nawab.
Evidence for the contention, found in both English and Indian works, that the plot enjoyed popular support and was some kind of Hindu protest against Muslim rule is hard to substantiate. Mir Jafar, the man finally selected as the substitute for Siraj, was a relative by marriage of the previous Nawab and a Muslim. His principal backers were men of differing origins. They included the diwan Rai Durlabh who was a Bengali Hindu, the great banking family of the Seths who were Marwari Jains from Rajasthan, and Amin Chand (or ‘Omichand’) who is said to have been a Sikh (but sounds more like a Jat or a Jain). Unlike the Carnatic, Bengal had been under Muslim rule for several hundred years during which time native Hindus had become well established at all levels of the administration. There had also been many Bengali converts to Islam; it was a more integrated society. Yet the court of Murshidabad was as remote from the Bengali peasantry as that of Arcot from the Tamil peasantry. A self-contained power structure, it reflected the foreign origins of the Moghuls themsel
ves and included, as well as north Indians, Kashmiris, Persians, Arabs and Armenians. Like its counterparts in Hyderabad and Arcot, it ruled by oppression and equated administration with taxation. The army was the only enforcement agency and from the humble Baksari to the Pathan janissary or the European gunner, the Nawab’s troops were as much mercenaries as those of the Company.
The ‘revolution’, as Clive rightly called it, cannot be justified on consensual grounds. It was simply a palace coup – an expedient for transferring power that had become so common in late Moghul India as to constitute a normal form of succession. The only support vital to the Murshidabad conspirators was not popular but military, which meant ensuring disaffection in the Nawab’s ranks and, even more important in the aftermath of Chandernagar, ensuring British support. Clive provided it on the grounds that he feared that any moment he might be recalled to defend Madras against the French. He needed a quick settlement in Bengal and he saw more chance of it in the highly favourable terms being offered by the solid Mir Jafar than he did in the endless prevarication of the erratic Siraj.
By the end of May, after various subterfuges and a busy exchange of coded letters, the secret treaty with Mir Jafar was ready for signature. There arose a final complication over the share of the spoils to be allotted to Amin Chand, once the Company’s chief Indian agent and a man who claimed to have great influence with Siraj. He now demanded an exorbitant five per cent of the Nawab’s treasure. It was feared that, if the demand was not met, he would reveal all to Siraj and that, if it was met, the other conspirators would back out in disgust. Under the circumstances Clive had no hesitation in duping the wretched Chand by the rather obvious expedient of preparing two versions of the treaty. One, on red paper, included Chand’s share; the other, on white paper and deemed the real treaty, did not.
In the context of a revolution, and compared to some of the intrigues conducted by others (British as well as Indian), this little piece of duplicity would scarcely rate a mention. But eighty years later Thomas Babington Macaulay, like a finicky public health inspector, would pounce on it as incontrovertible evidence of the blackest turpitude in ‘the founder of our Indian empire’. Every subsequent biographer has, as a result, felt obliged to dissect the incident and agonize over its significance. The crime appeared all the worse because the fastidious Watson had also drawn attention to it by himself refusing to sign the red treaty, thus obliging someone else – ‘we almost blush to write it’ crowed Macaulay – to sign it for him. Clive’s biographers insist that he was not the forger. The evidence suggests that he would have been, had a colleague’s calligraphy not been preferred.
On 13 June, a year to the day since Siraj had begun his attack on Calcutta, 3000 British troops (a third of them Europeans) left Chandernagar heading north for Murshidabad. In spite of the treaty, Clive was still doubtful whether Mir Jafar and the other conspirators would come over to him. His anxieties surfaced publicly on 21 June when a Council of War, attended by all the senior officers, convened at Katwa just south of the Nawab’s encampment but on the other side of the river. The question posed was whether to attack ‘without assistance and on our own bottom’ or whether to wait ‘till joined by some country power’. Clive voted to wait; so did more than half the Council. But an hour, or possibly a day, later the Colonel changed his mind. A letter from Mir Jafar egging him on had tipped the balance. On the 22nd the troops crossed the river and on the 23rd they faced the Nawab’s army at Plassey (Placis, Palasi).
What followed has been well described as more in the nature of a transaction than a battle. The fighting began with a four-hour exchange of artillery from which the British withdrew behind a ditch. It ceased when a heavy monsoon shower dampened the enemy’s powder. In spite of Mir Jafar’s assurances, the British forces were still ‘fighting on their own bottom’ and Clive was again assailed with grave doubts. Having no idea which, if any, sections of the restless horde that nearly surrounded him were commanded by his co-conspirators, he decided to postpone any further action till after dark. No doubt he was hoping for more news from Mir Jafar in the meantime. He had thus retired to his quarters to change into a dry uniform when the really decisive action occurred.
Siraj meanwhile, equally uncertain of who was fighting for whom, had reached much the same conclusion. His most dependable general had been killed in the earlier cannonade and in turning now for advice to men like Mir Jafar he was also testing their loyalties. The results were not encouraging. All counselled a withdrawal to their fortified encampment till after dark. If such was the opinion of those who commanded the bulk of his forces there was no point, however suspect the advice, in attempting to fight on. As a first move, therefore, the forward artillery was withdrawn from the depression it had been occupying.
It was this movement that caught the eye of Major Killpatrick (he who had commanded the first detachment from Madras) while Clive was attending to his wardrobe. In defiance of orders Killpatrick with a small force swept forward to occupy the depression. At last the British were within the sort of range at which their field pieces and musketry could have effect. Clive rode on to the scene breathing fire at Killpatrick but was soon shouting for reinforcements. A massed cavalry charge against the new British position failed to materialize, probably because of Siraj’s orders to withdraw. So did a flanking movement which could easily have severed Killpatrick’s advance from the rest of the force. Evidently all the troops massed along the British flank were friendly spectators under the command of Mir Jafar and the other conspirators. Vastly encouraged by this realization, Clive’s men pressed bravely forward to the kill.
If the Nawab’s army numbered 50,000 in all, scarcely 12,000 actually stood by him and took part in the ‘battle’. Experience showed that a superiority of four to one was never enough in a straight fight between Moghul mercenaries and well-trained Company troops. There was thus sense as well as treachery in the advice to withdraw; as a result the Nawab’s casualties were kept to less than 500. British losses, in what posterity chose to regard as one of the world’s decisive battles, came to a grand total of four Europeans and fourteen sepoys, roughly the same as died from a single explosion aboard the Kent during the attack on Chandernagar.
Clive entered Murshidabad in triumph six days later and duly handed Mir Jafar to the Nawab’s throne. After a brief spell on the run, Siraj was captured and assassinated by Mir Jafar’s son on 2 July; it was exactly two hundred days since Clive and Watson had started up-river from Fulta.
The famous Two Hundred Days in which the British had made themselves masters of Bengal included only one decisive battle, Chandernagar, won at appalling cost by Watson and the ships of His Britannic Majesty’s navy. In whetting Orme’s appetite for his tale of ‘fighting, tricks, chicanery, intrigues, politics and the Lord knows what’, Clive should have reversed the order of play. Bengal was not won by fighting but by subterfuge. The triumph belonged to Clive but it was a triumph of subversion not conquest. On the face of it Plassey had guaranteed the success of the conspiracy; in reality it was the conspiracy which guaranteed the success of Plassey. The ritual of battle merely legitimized the transfer of power.
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Needless to say, there had been no possibility of inviting direction from London as these momentous events unfolded. In July 1757, as Calcutta celebrated the overthrow of Siraj and the imminent division of his spoils, London was trying to digest the Black Hole and diminish the loss of Calcutta. Supremacy in Bengal had been won by the British in Bengal and for the roughly two years that it took to receive a considered response from London it was up to them how they chose to exercise it. Under the new dispensation enormous opportunities existed – for an immensely lucrative trade freed of all restrictions, for territorial and revenue concessions, and for political power. They were rivalled only by unheard of inducements to personal enrichment. The Company had long since acknowledged that private wealth and the public good were by no means exclusive. Witness Thomas Pitt who amassed his second fortune without
prejudice to his status as Leadenhall Street’s darling. But while Pitt is remembered for his famous diamond, there is something about the way in which Clive and his colleagues now closed ranks to work the Murshidabad treasury which is more suggestive of Kimberley in the diamond days of Cecil Rhodes.
Had the Murshidabad treasure really amounted to the £85 million calculated by Siraj or even the £40 million supposed by Watts, all might have been well. But in fact, as Clive’s agents ascertained the moment they reached the capital, it came to only £1.5 million. Against this Mir Jafar’s liabilities in the form of compensation and presents promised to the English under the terms of the secret treaty came to over £2.5 million. Less than half of this was due to the Company as indemnity for the loss of Calcutta. The remainder was destined for private individuals – prize money to the army and navy, a handsome consideration for the Select Committee, individual presents for Clive, Watts, Watson etc, and further sums for the Indian conspirators. Clive’s share under these different heads totalled £234,000 – and there was more to come.
