Muzafar was murdered by Pathan mercenaries on his way to his capital, Hyderabad, so Bussy had his uncle, Salabat Jang, installed as nizam (ruler). For this service he received another handsome subvention. In just over eighteen months, Dupleix had made himself the power broker of southern India, secured a substantial land revenue for the Compagnie and, according to Madras gossip, engrossed for himself £200,000. It was not entirely a one-way traffic; Dupleix distributed various gifts to his Indian allies, including telescopes, glasses and French tapestries. Salabat and Chandra had hoped to receive portraits of their new, distant patron, Louis XV, and his family, but Dupleix could not obtain them. He was now a high-ranking Mughal official, having been declared Salabat Jang’s subadar (lieutenant) throughout the southern Deccan. And yet his achievements were illusory; sudden and often temporary switches of fortune were commonplace in India during this period of political flux, and there was no way of knowing for how long Dupleix and his protégés would enjoy their power undisturbed. Moreover, his masters in Paris were horrified by what they regarded as reckless gambling. In September 1752, the Controller-General of Finances vainly reminded him that ‘we want only some outposts to protect our commerce: no victories, no conquests, only parity of merchandise and some augmentation of dividends’.24
By now Dupleix was engaged in a proxy war with the East India Company. It had refused to tolerate a French puppet in charge of Karnataka, able to impede, perhaps throttle, vital trade with the hinterland. Pretenders were plentiful in mid-eighteenth-century India and one, Muhammad Ali, the son of Anwar-ud Din, was on hand and glad to take whatever the Company would offer him. He had fled to Trichinopoly after his father’s death and in May 1751 Chandra Singh began a campaign to evict him. The siege of Trichinopoly opened a contest between himself with his French sponsors and the Company for the control of Karnataka.
The departure of Boscawen’s squadron at the end of 1749 restricted the Company to land operations which, for the next four years, were undertaken to expel the French and their stooges from the hinterland of Madras. The immediate tactical objective in 1751 was the relief of Trichinopoly and the release of Muhammad Ali. Since the army encircling the city outnumbered the Company’s forces, only one option was open: a diversionary coup against Arcot, the capital of Karnataka. Leading an army of 200 white troops and 600 sepoys, Clive surprised Arcot on 1 September. It was undefended, for the garrison had run off after its commander lost his nerve on hearing the reports of his spies, who had described a foreign army marching calmly and resolutely through a monsoon thunderstorm. Despite having gained a psychological advantage, Clive’s situation was extremely tricky, for while he had been presented with Arcot’s well-stocked arsenal, its inhabitants were malevolent neutrals. As the Company’s soldiers marched into the city, a sergeant observed how they passed through ‘a millaion Spectators whose looks betrayed their traytours notwithstanding their pretended friendship and dirty presents’. Humble Indians, like their princes, understood the arts of duplicity. Almost immediately, Arcot was encircled by a 10,000-strong Franco-Indian army and the same NCO calculated that there were at least 2,000 of Chandra Singh’s secret sympathisers lurking in the city, all ‘willing to cut our throats had not that their dastardly spirits hindered them’.25
Clive responded to the enemy within and without the city by keeping both on their toes and never losing the initiative. His adversaries, at first short of suitable artillery and poorly commanded by Chandra’s son, Raja Sahib, were continually surprised and demoralised by sudden forays, sometimes at night. An attempt to batter down the main gate with elephants with spiked iron plates on their heads failed when they were peppered by musketry. Enraged by pain, the pachyderms turned round and trampled their escorts and the waiting assault troops. Elephants were the unfortunate accessories to Indian warfare then and for the next hundred or so years but, as Clive quickly realised, they were a double-edged weapon in a pitched battle. Wounded or frightened by the noise of gunfire, they naturally tried to escape, charging down those who had brought them to the battlefield.
The siege of Arcot lasted fifty days, during which Clive and his men resisted bribes, threats, bombardment and assaults. Losses were heavy, with the Company’s strength down to 240 in the final phase of the siege. On 14 November a small relief force arrived, commanded by Major James Killpatrick. Without pausing, Clive went on to the offensive. Reinforced by 600 horse under Morari Rao, a Maratha chief with whom he had made a secret alliance, Clive harried Raja Sahib’s army and turned its retreat into a rout.
The siege of Arcot was destined to become an imperial epic, one of those symbolic moments of empire when heavily outnumbered British forces refused to give up, first defying and then driving off their assailants in apparent contravention of all the laws of war. Heroic sieges punctuated the history of the British in India. Arcot, Jalalabad, Lucknow and Chitral entered imperial mythology as shining examples of the discipline, doggedness and steady courage of the British race. In the later examples those who manned the ramparts were presented as the defenders of order and civilisation and their strongholds were breakwaters around which surged the waters of chaos and barbarism. It was strangely appropriate that a siege marked the foundation of the Raj.
Arcot deserved its fame. It was a turning point in the fortunes of the British, for it had revealed that the French were not invincible. Clive’s reputation as a natural leader soared to new heights, and rightly so; he had displayed almost superhuman stamina, an ability to think on his feet and that quality which Napoleon desired most in his generals, luck. This amateur soldier had established two principles which would be followed by the professionals who succeeded him as commanders of British armies in India. The first was audacity at all times; whenever a tactical choice existed it was best to take the most daring alternative, for it was commonly believed that Indian fighting men were always discountenanced by the unexpected. When Indians were under British orders, it was essential that they learned to respect and admire their white officers. A magic touch was needed to transform the sepoy into a tiger, for the experience of the 1740s and 1750s seemed to indicate that the Indian soldier was instinctively timid. Clive saw more deeply into the sepoy’s psychology and realised that he possessed both courage and a sense of duty, which could be aroused by showing him how to be brave. Time and time again, Clive deliberately took risks under enemy fire to encourage his men. They responded and called him ‘sabit jang’ – steady in battle.26
After Arcot the tide of the war turned slowly in Britain’s direction. Bussy’s incursion into Maratha lands in 1751 had gone awry after his opponents had harassed his supply lines. Most importantly, an Anglo-Indian army was capable of beating a French one, and the lesson was punched home repeatedly during 1752 and 1753 by Clive and the Company’s new commander-in-chief, Colonel Stringer (‘The Old Cock’) Lawrence. He was a veteran of wars of the Continent, Culloden, and the Indian campaigns of 1747–48. Versatile and without the professional’s customary arrogance towards the amateur, Lawrence recognised Clive’s value and helped instruct him in the finer points of soldiering. The pair proved irresistible, winning a sequence of small-scale actions during the first half of 1752 which finally broke the siege of Trichinopoly and sealed the fate of Chandra Singh, who was captured and beheaded at the orders of his old foe, the Raja of Tanjore.
French power in Karnataka was now falling apart, but neither side had gained a decisive advantage. A stalemate ensued in which Dupleix found himself unable to sustain his pretensions. The Compagnie was after his blood, for he had dragged it into a conflict which it had not wanted and which it now seemed unable to win. His resignation had been demanded in 1752, but he ignored the summons home in the hope that he might still snatch some irons from the fire. He found none and grudgingly accepted the inevitable, leaving Pondicherry in October 1753. He had no regrets for what he had done: ‘Je trouve des contrariétés partout, mais mon courage et ma fermeté ne sont point alterés: ma confiance est toujours dans la Providence.�
�� Dupleix was able to face personal setbacks in comfort; it was estimated that he returned to France with £200,000. He had overreached himself as a politician, but had the consolation of knowing that he had raised French prestige in India. Three years after his departure, it was reported that the Bengalis ‘look upon [the French] as an enterprizing people with more of the spirit of the soldier than the merchant in them’.
VI
Dupleix’s replacement, Charles Godeheu, a Breton merchant and director of the Compagnie, arrived in Pondicherry with powers to bring the fighting to an end. He did so in January 1755, in an agreement which provided a breathing space during which the antagonists prepared for the next round. The scope of the conflict was widening, since both companies had appealed to their governments for assistance in what was becoming a struggle for political and economic supremacy in southern India. In the spring of 1755 the British Cabinet approved the despatch of a squadron of three men-o’-war under Rear-Admiral Charles Watson to the Indian Ocean. On board one ship were regular soldiers of the 39th Regiment and a detachment of artillery.
The ships and the men were a token of the British government’s willingness to support its trade against France. Their appearance in India marked a new phase in an Anglo-French arms race which had begun four years before. The Compagnie had procured over 4,000 men in four years, recruiting French, Swiss, German, émigré Irish and Polish mercenaries as well as prisoners from the Paris gaols. The East India Company was trawling British slums and lock-ups for extra men; a band which disembarked at Madras in 1752 were described by an onlooker as ‘the refuse of the vilest employment in London’. Whatever their origins, these men were transformed into units which were making a considerable impact on the Indian consciousness. A young Armenian recalled his reactions on first seeing European troops, probably Swiss, drilling in Calcutta in the early 1750s. ‘There I saw the Fort of the Europeans and the Soldiers Exercise, and the shipping and that they were dexterous and perfect in all things.’ Events to the south were proving that even small numbers of such fighting men could dominate campaigns in which, one officer noted, a platoon could have as much if not greater influence on a battle than a whole battalion in Europe.
Tactical deployment and greater firepower were not the only reasons why millions of men and women in Karnataka and the Deccan were gradually passing under British and French control. They did so because of the faults of their rulers. In their analyses of what was happening, the men-on-the-spot repeatedly stressed what they considered were the inadequacies of character shared by the Indian ruling class. ‘Honour is never a principle which governs the actions of Orientals,’ concluded Dupleix, although to judge by his actions he would have been hard pressed to define virtue. Bussy agreed, reminding his countrymen that to succeed they would have to surpass the Indians in dissembling. ‘Among a people as doublefaced as are those with whom we have to deal, to show only straightforwardness and probity is, to my thinking, only to be their dupe, and we shall inevitably be that if we do not conform to the usages of the country.’
British observers concurred, adding further shortcomings to the moral character of the Indians. ‘The governments of Indostan have no idea of national honour in the conduct of their affairs’ wrote Robert Orme, who was both eyewitness to and historian of events in the 1740s and 1750s. The fault lay in the upbringing and moral outlook of the Indian aristocracy:
The vain notions in which they have been educated inspire them with such love of outward show, and the enervating climate in which they are born render them so incapable of resisting impulses of fancy, that nothing is so common than to see them purchasing a jewel or ornament of great price, at the very time that they are in the greatest distress of money to answer the necessities of government.
Orme’s explanation of why Indian princes were unfit to rule proved to be the first paragraph in a dismal compendium in which successive British commentators detailed the waywardness and follies of an élite that was almost universally regarded as incapable of ruling efficiently or fairly. He offered a diagnosis of India’s malady which, seen from the perspective of Karnataka in the 1750s, was perfectly valid. No cure was recommended, nor was it required, since Orme’s employers did not see themselves as India’s future rulers with a mandate to unseat the fickle and self-indulgent. The Company was still solely concerned with securing conditions in which it could continue its business without interruption or coercion.
In doing this the East India Company and its French counterpart joined the ranks of the powerful predators at large in mid-eighteenth-century India. They were welcomed by their Indian allies who had quickly learned that small numbers of European and European-trained soldiers could tip the balance on the Indian battlefield. The pay-offs individual commanders were coming to expect were an enticement to the adoption of belligerent policies: what might be called the power-brokers’ fees made Dupleix and his lieutenants rich men. The British seem to have done marginally less well, although Clive was said to have taken £40,000 with him when he sailed for England in October 1753, which was enough to propel him into the ranks of the politically active gentry. After paying off £6,000 of his parents’ mortgage and buying a town house in Queen Square, Ormonde Street, he laid out £5,000 for a seat in Parliament. This sum purchased thirty of the fifty voters of the Cornish rotten borough of Mitchell, but Clive’s election was overturned by a petition to the Commons. Not that Clive would have taken his seat in the chamber, for the Company had appointed him deputy-governor of Fort St David with the promise of the governorship of Madras, and George II had given him the local rank of lieutenant-colonel. He was back in India in October 1755, aware that a war between Britain and France was imminent.
Clive’s ascent from rags to riches was a powerful incentive for other men on the spot to meddle in Indian affairs whenever the chance occurred, irrespective of whether or not their actions benefitted the Company. Of course, it could always be argued, and it was after the event, that the acquisition of land and political power meant higher returns in the long run. By establishing what amounted to protectorates over Tanjore and Karnataka, the Company was free to impose stringent conditions on internal trade which were designed to increase its profits. Within twenty years of Arcot, the Company was dictating how the weavers of southern India organised production and systematically squeezing out Indian investors and entrepreneurs. Having been delivered from the depredations of Maratha horsemen, the artisans of Karnataka found themselves at the mercy of the Company’s agents.
The nawab could not help them, even had he wished to, for he owed his throne to the Company’s army. In less than ten years, and encouraged by a knot of persuasive, self-seeking officials like Clive, the Company had discovered that a felicitous combination of war and trade was making it richer and more powerful. There was no way of knowing where this new course would lead and, equally, no way of guaranteeing that by following it the Company would continue to prosper. A few, siren voices in London predicted an eventual disaster of the kind which had overtaken the French. They were ignored in India, where the Company servants were now dreaming of the fortunes which were the rewards for audacity and shrewdness.
3
New Strength from
Conquest: Bengal,
1755 – 65
I
Bengal was the richest, most fertile and densely populated region of India. No one was sure how many people lived there. Counting Indians was an innovation of British rule, and to begin with it was undertaken in a rough and ready manner. Clive conjured up the figure of fifteen million, which was far too low. An official and well-informed guess of 1801 estimated the total population of Bengal as about forty million, over four times that of Great Britain.1 The figure may have been higher in the 1750s, for it was calculated that a fifth of Bengalis had perished in the great famine of 1769–70. Most Bengalis were ryots, peasant farmers with varying sizes of holdings and degrees of status, who lived in villages. They, together with landless labourers and artisans, occupied the lo
wer reaches of a dynamic and thrusting society. At the top were the zamindars and a growing class of Hindu bankers, merchants and entrepreneurs who were celebrated for their enterprise and shrewdness. Newcomers to India were warned to be wary of Calcutta’s banias, money agents with a keen nose for profit who could easily outwit inexperienced young Britons.2
There were three sources of power within Bengal which co-existed more or less harmoniously during the first half of the century. The power of the sword was exercised by Murshid Quli Khan and his successors. His had been a typical success story of the years of Mughal decline; an imperial governor, he transformed his province into a private domain while maintaining all the outward forms of deference to the emperor in Delhi. Creating a new state was an expensive business, and Murshid and his son, Alivardi Khan, needed the co-operation and loans of Bengal’s second power, its bankers and proto-capitalists. The third power in Bengal was the East India Company which, under the generous terms of the firman (edict) granted in 1717 by the Emperor Furrukhsiyar, enjoyed extensive commercial privileges. Most prized were the dastaks, certificates which gave the Company and private merchants operating under its umbrella exemption from all levies on goods passing from district to district. These concessions, granted by a moribund empire to a private company, were an affront to the nawabs’ sovereignty which deprived them of revenues and hurt native traders.
The Company was jealous of its rights and regarded the growing number of protests about their misuse as tiresome quibbles. In the end it did not matter how the rules were applied, for the governor and councillors in Calcutta, in common with their countrymen everywhere, were convinced that they had a God-given right to trade where and how they liked. For an eighteenth-century Briton any restriction on legitimate commerce was tyrannical, and the forcible removal of hindrances, even when they had the power of local law, was perfectly justifiable. This logic, which combined motives of profit with a conviction that the natural rights of Britons travelled with them to every quarter of the globe, had led to a war with Spain in 1742. A major clash with the Nawab of Bengal was therefore unavoidable.
Raj Page 4
