India Through the Ages Part 36

The two armies, that of Nasir-Jung backed--in truth but feebly--by the English, and that of Chanda-Sahib-c.u.m-Muzaffar-Jung backed by the cunning of a man versed in all the tortuosities of Indian policy, were now in touch with each other, but they did not come into action.

Thirteen of the French officers resigned their commissions the day before the battle; the disaffection--due to some failure to divide spoils--spread to the men, and their commander, Monsieur d'Auteuil, feeling it unwise in the circ.u.mstances to venture anything, took veritable French leave during the night, followed by Chanda-Sahib.

Muzaffar-Jung, thus left in despair, seized the bull by the horns and surrendered himself to the rightful heir, who was in truth his uncle.

There is an element of the comic opera in all these incidents which almost preclude their being taken seriously.

But here we have an _impa.s.se_. At Pondicherry all was confusion, and Dupleix driven to despair because his c.o.c.k would not fight. At Arcot, Major Lawrence trying through an interpreter to warn his c.o.c.k, the triumphant Nizam, against froggy Frenchmen, and seeking to get the reward promised for the loan of the now useless British soldiery.

In both of which attempts he failed. In the first, because the politeness of Oriental manners refused bald translation of the Englishman's home truths. In the second, because wily Oriental astuteness suggested that services having been bought must be given before being paid for, and that Major Lawrence had better serve out his time--if as nothing else--as a boon companion!

This suggestion was refused, and "after speaking his mind freely"

(through the polite interpreter!), the English commander and his troops went back in dudgeon to Fort St David.

It took the French less time than it did the English to recover from this fiasco. Dupleix, indeed, was once more deep in diplomacy ere Major Lawrence had made up his mind whether to intrigue or fight.

His decision came too late for success, his indecision too early; for having offered English support for the retaking of the PaG.o.da of Trivadi, a strongly fortified place but 15 miles west of Fort St David, he withdrew it when an advance of pay was refused. Whereupon the French stepped in--the misunderstanding was in all probability the result of their machinations--and added to their acquisitions by taking the celebrated fort of Jingi, which, situated on a vast isolated mountain of a rock, had been considered impregnable.

It was an exploit of which to be proud, and it is said that after fully realising its natural strength the French force was lost in wonder as to how it had managed to take it!

It was an exploit, also, which roused the Nizam Nasir-Jung from his dream of luxurious pleasures. A nation which could take Jingi was evidently the nation with whom to make terms. He therefore offered to negotiate. Dupleix made extravagant demands, and so lured the Nizam to take the field, for the wily diplomatist was aware that conspiracy was rife amongst the Nizam's supporters, and hoped by getting in touch with them to rid himself more effectually of a troublesome opponent than by entering into terms with him.

It took fifteen days for the unwieldly army, 300,000 strong--60,000 foot, 45,000 cavalry, 700 elephants, 360 pieces of artillery, the rest being camp followers--to march 30 miles.

Then it was stopped by the bursting of the monsoon. And so, with his enemy blocked hopelessly within 15 miles of him, treachery became possible to the Frenchman. And black treachery it was! To be brief, Dupleix negotiated with the conspirators, and also with the Nizam; so, finding himself finally in a dilemma as to which side to choose, took the opportunity of a delay in sending back a ratified treaty with the latter, to order the whole French force to attack.

The miserable Nizam at first refused to believe it possible that those with whom but the day before he had signed a treaty of peace should take arms against him; refused to believe it possible that disloyalty was the cause of half his camp standing sullen spectators of the fray.

He mounted his elephant and rode straight to rouse them. It being early dawn, he feared lest he might not be recognised, and rose in his howdah in order to give a clearer view of his person.

Too clear, for he fell in an instant, pierced through the heart by two bullets fired by one of his favourites.

Muzaffar-Jung, thus set free once more, resumed the Nizams.h.i.+p of the Dekkan, and all went merry as a marriage bell. Both he, the Pathan n.o.bles who had formed the bulk of the conspirators, and Dupleix, had their share of the two and a half millions of treasure said to have been taken from Nasir-Jung; and much of it was spent in various elaborate festivities, notably in the official installation of Muzaffar; he, in his turn, nominating Dupleix as official Governor for the Great Moghul in all countries south of the Kistna. All the revenues of these countries were to pa.s.s through him, and no coins save those minted by the French at Pondicherry were to be current coin of the realm.

It was a tremendous victory for France. The English, who had hitherto been fairly content to exist in India on sufferance, heard their enemy's boast, that ere long the Moghul himself would tremble at the name of Dupleix, with absolute stupefaction. So stunned were they that they did not even object to the commander of their forces choosing this most inopportune moment to return on leave to England.

Fortunately, however, for them, thieves are apt to fall out. The Pathan n.o.bles, discontented with their share of the plunder, once more became conspirators, with the result that Muzaffar-Jung, the creature of the French, was killed.

Fortunately, also, for the honour of England, a man called Robert Clive had been born in Shrops.h.i.+re six-and-twenty years before, and after several years of uncongenial employment as a clerk, had in 1747 received an ensign's commission, from which he had risen in 1751 to the rank of Captain.

And now, when the power of the French was in its zenith, he appeared, young, arrogant, determined to try a sword's conclusions with that past-master of diplomacy, Dupleix.

But before we pa.s.s on to the most honourable, the most exciting chapter in the history of British India, a look round must be given to see what had been going on in the far-away north, which lay almost out of touch with Trichinopoly, Arcot, Pondicherry, Madras, the Carnatic, Jingi, Masulipatam, all those places on which the fingers of France and England had been laid more or less tentatively.

Mahomed-Shah had died after having successfully resisted the invasion of the Durrani or Afghan prince, Ahmed-Khan, who, fired by Nadir-Shah's example, tried in 1748 to imitate his exploit. He was badly beaten at Sirhind, close to the old battlefield of Panipat.

Before this Ali-Verdi-Khan, Governor of Bengal, had revolted, and become independent; but in his turn had suffered reverse at the hands of the Mahrattas, and had to yield up the province of Orissa.

The latter race had been much exercised over the succession to the throne, for the puppet Saho, who, combined first with Baji-rao and afterwards with Bala-ji, had exercised sovereignty for so long, had no children. The right of adoption, therefore, was his, and, his wife's influence being paramount on personal points, he was inclined to choose the Rajah of Kolapur. This, however, did not suit Bala-ji. He therefore induced the old queen, Tara-Bhal, to trump up a tale of a posthumous son of her son, whose birth had been concealed from fear of danger to the child. Saho, almost imbecile by this time, was deluded into believing the tale of a collateral heir, and ere dying, secretly signed an instrument giving the regency to Bala-ji, on condition of his supporting the claims of Tara-Bhai's supposed grandson.

But the ghost of a grandmother thus raised proved a curse to the Peishwa, for Tara-Bhai, old as she was, did not lack energy or ambition, and at the time of Muzaffar-Jung's death in 1751, she had taken the opportunity of Bala-ji's absence in the south to meet and crush the combined advance of the French under General Bussy and the puppet they had instantly set up in Muzaffar's place, to proclaim her own story a pure fiction, put the pretended heir into chains, and a.s.sert herself Queen of the Mahrattas.

Truly the impossibility at this time of putting reliance on any one's word, the fluctuations of faith, the unforeseen, unexpected complications arising from the general fluidity of morals, makes history read like undigested melodrama.

Such, then, was India when England, all too tardily, found a champion in Robert Clive.

ROBERT CLIVE

A.D. 1751 TO A.D. 1757

Never was the strange susceptibility of India to the influence of personal vitality better exemplified than in the case of Robert Clive.

When, in 1751, he first emerged--a good head and shoulders taller than the general ruck of Anglo-Indians--from the troubled turmoil of conflicting interests, conflicting policies which characterised India in those days, Hindostan was on the point of yielding herself to France; when, in 1767, he finally left the land where he had laboured so long and so well, England was paramount over half the peninsula.

Never in the whole history of Britain was better work done for her prestige, her honour, _by one man_; and yet that one man died miserably from opium, administered wilfully by the sword-hand which had never failed his country; administered as the only escape from disgrace.

It will always be a question whether Clive was or was not guilty of the charges preferred against him. Those who really know the Indian mind, who fully realise the depth of the degeneracy into which that mind had fallen amongst the effete n.o.bility of the eighteenth century, may well hesitate before denying or affirming that guilt, knowing, as they must, how easy a thing is false testimony, understanding how skilfully an act, innocent enough in itself, may be garbled into positive crime.

Either way, this much may be said. The benefits he had conferred on his country were sufficient surely to have ensured him more sympathetic treatment at the hands of that country than he actually received.

But this is to antic.i.p.ate.

Clive was born--but what does it matter when, where, and how, a man of deeds comes into the world? All that is necessary is to say what he did. Clive, then, was a writer, or clerk, in the East Indian Company's service. It was not, apparently, a congenial employment. Quiet, reserved, somewhat stubborn, he led a very solitary life, knowing, he writes in one of his home letters, scarcely "any one family in the place." A friend tells a tale of him, characteristic, yet hardly sufficiently authenticated for history. He found young Clive sitting dejectedly at a table, on which lay a pistol. "Fire that thing out of the window, will you?" said the lad, and watched. "I suppose I must be good for something," he remarked despondently, when the pistol went off, "for I snapped it twice at my own head, and it missed fire both times."

Whether true or not true, the lad of whom such a story could even have been told must have been something out of the common.

He was rather a tall English lad, silent, with a long nose and a pleasant smile. He was barely one-and-twenty when Dupleix took Madras, and for the first time he found himself a soldier. He returned to his writers.h.i.+p, however, for a time, but such a profession was manifestly impossible to his temperament--a temperament admirably ill.u.s.trated by the following story. He accused an officer of cheating at cards. A duel ensued, in which Clive, with first shot, missed; whereupon his adversary, holding his pistol to Clive's head, bade him beg his life.

This he did instantly with perfect coolness, but when asked also to retract his accusation, replied as calmly: "Fire, and be d.a.m.ned to you! I said you cheated, and you did. I'll never pay you."

The adversary, struck dumb by his--no doubt--righteous stubbornness, thereupon lowered his weapon.

Such was the young man who at six-and-twenty, in the absence on leave of Major Lawrence, set off as a captain to the relief of Trichinopoly with six hundred men. He was completely outcla.s.sed both in numbers and pecuniary resources, and feeling himself to be so, he returned to Fort St David and boldly proposed a complete _volte face_. The French were thoroughly engaged aiding their ally at Trichinopoly. If he and his small force made a detour to Arcot, the capital, they might find it unprepared. They did; Clive marched in, took possession of the fort before the very eyes of one hundred thousand astonished spectators, and finding over 50,000 worth of goods in the treasury, gave them back to their owners, and issued orders that not a thing in the town was to be touched; the result of such unusual consideration being that, when he finally had to defend his capture, not a soul in the town raised a hand against the strange young _sahib_ who seemed to have no fear, and certainly had no greed.

But young Clive had a Herculean task before him. With a mere handful of men--three hundred and twenty in all--he had to defend a ruinous, ill-constructed fort one mile in circ.u.mference--ditch choked, parapets too narrow for artillery--from the determined onslaught of ten thousand men. And he did so defend it. Despite failures due to inexperience, rebuffs due to rashness, despite hair's-breadth personal escapes, due to reckless, almost criminal courage, he won through to the end. There is something impish and boyish about the record of these six weeks' siege. How, more out of sheer bravado than anything else, the garrison crowned a ruined tower on the ramparts with earth, hoisted thereto an enormous old seventy-two-pounder cannon which had belonged to Aurungzebe! How they turned it on the palace which rose high above the intervening houses, and letting drive with thirty-two pounds of their best powder, sent the ball right through the palace, greatly to the alarm of the enemy's staff, which was quartered there!

How once a day they fired off the old cannon, until on the fourth day it burst and nearly killed the gunners!

All this, and the thrilling story of the mason who--luckily for the garrison--knew of the secret aqueduct constructed so as to drain the fort of water, and stopped it up ere it could be used, would make a fine chapter for a boy's book of adventure. Here it is enough to record that on the 14th November, after a desperate and futile a.s.sault, the enemy--French allies and all--withdrew, and Clive found himself free to follow on their heels to Vellore, where he succeeded in giving those of them who were sufficiently brave to stand, a most satisfactory beating; in consequence of which numbers of the beaten sepoys, with the quick Oriental eye for vitality, deserted their colours. Clive enlisted six hundred of the best armed, and returned to Madras, where he was received with acclaim, for victory was then a new sensation to the Anglo-Indian. A month or two afterwards, however, he was out again on the war-path, giving the French-supported army of Chanda-Sahib a good drubbing at Cauvery-pak. Whilst out, he received an urgent summons to go back to the Presidency town. Major Lawrence was returning from leave, and would resume command.

Despite the urgency, he found time, nevertheless, on his way back to go round by a certain town which Dupleix, in the first pride of victory, had founded under the name of Dupleix-Fattehabad, to commemorate--what surely had been better forgotten--his terrible act of treachery towards Nasir-Jung in the matter of the ratified but delayed treaty which cost the latter his life. And here, with the same reckless hardihood which had characterised the whole campaign, he paused--though in the midst of an enemy's country--to batter to pieces the pretentious flamboyant column on which Dupleix had recorded his conquest in French, Persian, Mahratti, Hindi.

One can picture the scene, and one's heart warms to the English boy who watched with glee the hacking and hewing, while the natives stood by, their sympathy going forth inevitably to the strong young arm.

Three days afterwards Clive gave up his command, and here his first campaign ends. It was very straightforward, very clear; but what followed was complicated--very!

Trichinopoly was still besieged: the French backing Chanda-Sahib, who claimed it as Nawab of the Carnatic; the English backing Mahomed-Ali, who held it as Nawab of Arcot. To the support of the latter Major Lawrence led his mercenaries, and for a time the siege was raised. By this time, however, the Directors in London were becoming restive over hostilities which interfered with the commerce of the Company. In order to bring the struggle for supremacy to a head, Clive proposed a division of forces, south and north. Whether he was actuated in making this bold proposal by any hope of getting a command over the heads of his seniors or not, certain it is that after agreeing to the proposal, Major Lawrence found it impossible to keep to seniority. The natives flatly refused to go north unless Clive led them.

Here, again, the personal equation--the only thing that has ever counted in India--stepped in. It was a genuine tribute to Clive's possession of that greatest attribute of a good general--_fortunae_. It heartened him up, and he instantly began a second campaign of success, driving Dupleix to despair, since after every petty victory some of the beaten sepoys, following fortune, invariably deserted to the English side. Clive's army, in fact, was a s...o...b..ll. It increased in size as it went, and after the big fight at Samiaveram, was joined by no less than two thousand horse and fifteen hundred sepoys. But the young man, for all his gloomy face, his silence, his stubbornness, had a curiously sympathetic personality to the natives. When Seringham was taken, and a thousand Rajputs shut themselves up in the celebrated paG.o.da swearing death ere it should be defiled, Clive "did not think it necessary to disturb them," but at Covelong he drove the frightened recruits back to battle at the point of the sword. After taking Chingleput, the campaign came to an abrupt conclusion. Clive, falling sick, had leave to go to England. This was in 1752.