Chapter XXVI: Part III: The Modern Age (2)

First of all it had for the moment checked Mahratta aggrandisement. The appearance of this unknown, hitherto almost unheard-of foe, who traversed with such ease the country he had hoped to annex, and did the things he had meant to do, seemed to paralyse Bâji-Rao. His first impulse was to aid in a general defence of India. "Our domestic quarrels," he wrote, "are now insignificant; there is but one enemy in Hindustan. The whole power of the Dekkan, Hindu and Mahomedan alike, must assemble for resistance."

And even when Nâdir-Shâh had retreated without further progress southward, Bâji-Rao, free-booter, as all the Mahrattas were at heart, must have felt himself frustrated. What use was there in reaching a city desolate utterly, still infected by the stench of unburied bodies; a city whose treasury doors stood wide open, empty, deserted; a city, briefly, which an Afghân had pillaged? So he and his Sâho retired southwards.

As for the effects which Nâdir's sudden swoop on the interior of the plum-cake had on the nibbling mice upon its circumference, there is little to be said. It must have been a surprise to the civilised communities which were so rapidly coming into existence at such centres as Calcutta, Madras, Bombay; centres in which life went elegantly, and people began to talk of the latest news by mail from England. Still, the mere brute-force of the invasion cannot have shocked them much, for Europe itself was a prey at this time to wars and rumours of wars. The 1715 rebellion was over in England; the 1745 had not yet begun. In France affairs were working up towards the Revolution. Spain and Germany were alike, either at the beginning or the end of disastrous struggles.

Yet the mere fact which must have filtered through to the seacoast--_that thirty millions worth of solid plunder had just been filched away from the treasury of India by foreigners_--cannot have been pleasing news. The East India Company, however, seems to have made no great efforts at aggrandisement during the years between the special granting to it of lands by Farokhshir and 1746, when it formally entered into grips with the French East Indian Company, which about this time began that dispute for supremacy in India which virtually ended with the taking of Trichinoply in 1761.

In truth we have very little information indeed regarding the doings of John Company during this period. All we know is that British imports into India fell from £617,000 in 1724 to £157,000 in 1741, which, taken with a corresponding decrease in dividends, would seem to show some depression, some check to trade.

One thing is certain. The Constitution of the Company was not satisfactory. An attempt had been made to avoid a monopoly of large shareholders by ruling that, no matter what the share held might be, it should only, whether £500 or £50,000, carry one vote for the election of the Court of Directors. But this ruling could be, and was, easily evaded. All that had to be done was to split the £50,000 into a hundred £500 shares, registered in the names of confidential agents, who--in consideration of an honorarium, no doubt--voted according to direction. It was not very straightforward, of course; on the other hand, the original ruling was silly in the extreme, since it prevented those who had a real interest in the Company from exercising their due share of influence.

Unfortunately, this faggot-voting brought with it a corrupt atmosphere. Appointments under the Company were a common bribe, and as the Court of Directors had to be reappointed every year, there was endless opportunity for jobbery.

So, after a time, opposition to the monopoly of the trade began once more to take form. Proposals for yet a new company were floated. Parliament once more took up the matter; which was finally settled by the existing company offering £200,000 to Government, and a reduction of 1 per cent. on the rate of interest payable on the previous loan of some three-and-a-half millions (that is to say, a yearly income of £35,000), as payment for the extension of their monopoly till 1766. This offer was accepted, and in 1744 the term of monopoly was still further extended until 1780, in consideration of a further loan to Government of £1,000,000 sterling at the low rate of 3 per cent. Coming as it did in the middle of a very expensive war, the temptation of this pecuniary assistance must have been potent; but there can be but little doubt that, publicly at any rate, the trade of India suffered considerably from the exclusion of private enterprise.

Certain it is that while the English East India Company found themselves forced to reduce their dividends to 7 per cent, the Dutch Company was dividing 25.

Altogether, then, it is not surprising that, until the French, by assuming the aggressive, forced the East India Company to bestir itself, it did nothing of importance in the way of progress.

THE GAME OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH

A.D. 1742 TO A.D. 1748

The eye of France had been on India for a century and a half, for it was in 1601 that a fleet of French merchant ships set out from St Malo for Hindustan, but failed of their destination.

The first French East India Company was formed in 1604, the second in 1611, a third in 1615; a fourth was founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1642, yet a fifth in 1664, and finally a sixth, made up by the co-ordination of various older ventures, began in 1719 to trade under the name of "Compagnies des Indes."

There was thus no lack of organisation; of action, there had been, up to 1742, comparatively little. They had secured a factory at Surat, they captured Trincomalee from the Dutch, and they had occupied Pondicherry, which they still hold. Aurungzebe had ceded Chandanagore to them, and they had also obtained Mahé and Karikal, which they bought from the Râjah of Tanjore.

This, then, was the position of France in India when, in the year 1742, the office of Governor was bestowed on one Joseph Dupleix. He had spent his life in India, had amassed a huge private fortune by private trade, but at the same time had done his duty by the company of which his father had been a director.

He was thus saturated, as it were, with the methods and manners of the East, and in addition he had the advantage of a clever wife, who, though European by birth, had been born and bred in India.

Incited, it is believed, by her, he evolved a plan by which he hoped to gain supremacy for France. Competition in fair trade with both the English and the Dutch had failed, but he hoped to gain that by diplomacy which had been denied by commerce. The Moghul dynasty was tottering to its fall. On all sides the petty governors of provinces were aspiring to feeble power, and the balance of parties was often so nearly equal, that a very little support thrown into the scale would determine failure or success. Here Dupleix saw his opportunity, and he set deliberately to work, using Madame Dupleix as his go-between, to make friends for France in this welter of conflicting interests. The work was going on secretly and surely, when in 1744 the war of the Austrian Succession broke out in Europe between England and France.

Dupleix was evidently unwilling that this secret work of his should be interrupted by any outbreak of hostilities in the East, and some little time previous to the open declaration of war, both the French and English Companies had taken steps to provide for peace at any price. But a new factor had arisen on the French side in the person of Admiral Labourdonnais, the Governor of the Isle of France and the Isle of Bourbon.

His had been an adventurous life, and he had often been in and out of favour with those who had employed him. His government of the two contiguous islands was a case in point. He had found a plentiful crop of abuses, he had rooted them out, and in consequence of this, when he returned on private affairs to France, was pursued with unscrupulous enmity and bitter detraction.

In endeavouring to right himself he gave to the Ministers of State and the directors of his Company a full exposition of his views on the Eastern question. It commended itself to the authorities, and he found himself setting sail for the Isle of France in April 1741, backed by a fleet which, with care and training, should be able to secure to his country supremacy in the Eastern seas.

But disappointment awaited him. Long before the declaration of war which he expected, the French Company, who thought it had been made to bear more than its fair share of the cost of fitting out the fleet, sent for their ships, and Labourdonnais was left at a disadvantage. A British squadron was now cruising about the Bay of Bengal, taking the place which he had hoped to fill, and making many French prizes. But he was not a man of discouragements, and the situation having been saved on the Coromandel Coast by the diplomacy of Dupleix, who induced the Nawâb of Arcot to claim Pondicherry as his territory and so save it from occupation by the English, he managed somehow to scrape together sufficient ships and men to try conclusions.

Fortune played a stroke in his favour by the inopportune death of the English captain, by which the command devolved on one who erred on the side of prudence, and who, after the two squadrons had been engaged at long distances until nightfall off the coast, thought it wiser to cut and run under cover of darkness, in consequence of a leak springing in one of his largest vessels.

Labourdonnais, who had suffered far more, and who, in truth, had been anxiously cogitating his best move during the night, thus found himself, as the grey dawn showed an empty sea, a complete victor, and full of relief and pride set sail for Pondicherry. But here a cool reception awaited him, for Dupleix had no notion of having his aims achieved by any one but himself. So the commander by land and the commander by sea were mutually obstructive, and continued to be so; a course which eventually ruined both, destroyed French hopes in India, and for the present saved those of England from almost certain annihilation.

For the British squadron was nowhere. After a month of shelter in the harbour of Trincomalee, it reappeared, only to disappear once more.

Labourdonnais therefore put back to Pondicherry, and prepared seriously to take Madras; which he did, without the least trouble, in September 1746. It was, in truth, incapable of defence.

The French admiral brought eleven ships, two thousand nine hundred European soldiery, eight hundred natives, and adequate artillery against a small fort manned by two hundred men. For the Black Town and the White Town, together with the contiguous five miles of sea-coast, in which were gathered over two hundred and fifty thousand souls, lay absolutely unprotected, at the mercy of all and sundry.

It is said that the English relied for security on the Nawâb of Arcot, who had promised to claim Madras as he had claimed Pondicherry; but, doubtless, Dupleix had been beforehand with them.

This much it is pleasant to record, that the siege, which lasted no less than seven days, was the most bloodless on record. The death-roll was only one Frenchman and five English.

The terms of capitulation were severe. All goods, stores, merchandise, etc., passed to France; all English were prisoners-of-war. A ransom was suggested, but Labourdonnais, while intimating that he was prepared to receive the proposal reasonably, stipulated for previous surrender. Indeed, throughout the whole affair he appears to have behaved honourably and liberally. Not so Dupleix, who, when the subsequent negotiations had commenced, roughly interfered, denied the power of Labourdonnais to dictate terms, claimed Madras as standing in his territory, and generally brought about a dead-lock, during which three more French ships-of-war, with over one thousand three hundred men on board, arrived at Pondicherry.

With this addition to his fleet Labourdonnais could have swept the seas, and Calcutta and Bombay must have shared the fate of Madras; but--alas, for France!--her sons were quarrelling amongst themselves.

And before they could settle their differences the weather intervened. Truly, Great Britain scores something of tenderness from the breezes that blow, by being "set in the steely seas," in the path of the north and the west and the east and the south winds! They saved her once from the Spanish Armada, and now the monsoon rolled up along the coast of Coromandel, and broke in the Madras roads, foundered a French ship of the line, and drove five others dismasted, disabled, out to sea.

It was a crushing blow, one from which France never recovered, and by which poor Labourdonnais, who had consented to be tied by the leg simply from a sense of honour, a determination to stand by his word at all hazards, met with early and disappointed death; for the French Government, filled up with the able lies of Dupleix, sent him to the Bastille, where he lingered for three years, dying soon after his contemptuous and unsympathetic release of poverty and a broken heart.

Dupleix, however, flourished like the proverbial green bay tree. He repudiated ransoms and restorations alike, and seemed likely to remain in possession, when the Nawâb of Arcot intervened, asserting--and no doubt with truth--that the French governor, in order to prevent aid being sent to the English, had promised to make over Madras to him as a reward for quiescence. The intervention was followed by an undisciplined army of ten thousand men. And here, however much the character of Dupleix may arouse dislike, credit must be given to him for showing indubitably the inherent strength of his claim, that European methods should be the weightiest factor in Eastern politics. He met this horde of ten thousand with a body of four hundred half-disciplined native troops--barely half-disciplined--and he literally wiped his enemy out. Henceforward a new element entered into the Eastern problem, for it was abundantly demonstrated that to conquer India it was not necessary to import a whole army. There was that of valour, that of sheer soldiership, amongst the natives themselves, to make them, when properly led, the finest troops in the world. It is hardly too much to say that India practically changed rulers in 1746, when the Nawâb of Arcot was repulsed from Madras.

Out of this repulse (necessary in order to enable Dupleix--despite the promise without which Labourdonnais had refused to budge--to carry through his treacherous intention of repudiating the negotiations, refusing ransom, and holding Madras for the French) arose much. The Nawâb, disgusted, broke with Dupleix and assisted the English at Fort St David, a smaller factory some miles further down the coast. Here the appearance of the undisciplined troops just as the French, imagining themselves secure of victory, were refreshing themselves in a garden, produced such a scare that the victors were across the river again, and on their way back to Pondicherry before they could be rallied.

Dupleix, greatly enraged at his failure, and knowing to a nicety how to deal with natives, now commenced to make the Nawâb of Arcot's life a burden to him by reason of petty raids, until, wearied out, he once more threw the weight of his support into the French scale.

It cannot have been a clean business; it certainly was not an edifying spectacle to see two civilised European communities vieing with one another in their efforts to secure an Oriental potentate, but this much may be said in English extenuation--the French began it.

The case of the English along the Coast of Coromandel now seemed quite desperate. They had lost their only ally, and though an attack by boat on Cuddalore had been repulsed--once more by the aid of Neptune, who always seems favourable to Britain, and who on this occasion swamped half the enemy in the Coromandel Coast, and sent them dripping, half-drowned, with wet powder and soaked magazines, back to sea--they could not hope to avert the renewed assault on Fort St David, which took place in 1747.

But this game of French and English was a series of surprises, a perfect melodrama of dramatic coincidences; for no sooner were the French once more comfortably ensconced in the old garden than--Hey presto!--sails appeared to sea-ward, and in less than no time--hardly long enough for Monsieur's hurried escape--there was a British fleet at anchor in the roads!

It reads like some tale of adventure in which a "God-out-of-a-machine" always appears in the nick of time to save the hero. But so it was, though it must be confessed that beyond a display of _force majeure_ the British fleet did nothing. In truth a more incapable fleet never floated. It seems to have spent a whole year in sailing about the Bay of Bengal looking for the French fleet, and when it caught a glimpse of the enemy, promptly changing its _rôle_ from hound to hare, and running away itself.

Meanwhile, on land one Major Lawrence--this is the first time that this honoured name appears over the horizon of Indian history--a distinguished King's officer, had come out to take over charge of the Company's forces. At first he certainly distinguished himself, for he began by discovering a deep-laid plot, in which Madame Dupleix was prime mover, to tamper with the fidelity of the few hundred sepoys which the English, following the example of the French, were bringing into discipline. Banishment and death having disposed of this conspiracy, Admiral Griffin and the British fleet were given a chance of more honourable warfare; but, unfortunately, at the time the French vessels showed close in to the coast the admiral and all his officers happened to be ashore enjoying themselves, and so once more honest battle degenerated into the looking for a needle in a bundle of hay; in the midst of which the French vessels achieved their object of landing £200,000 in specie, and four hundred soldiers at Pondicherry.

Major Lawrence, however, almost neutralised this failure by a clever repulse of the French at Cuddalore, which lay but 3 miles north of Fort St David. Hearing that a large force was advancing, he ordered all the guns and stores from Cuddalore to be dismantled and taken in to the former fort. Native spies, naturally, brought the news of this to the enemy, who consequently advanced carelessly, applied their scaling ladders to the walls, and were surprised by perfect platoons of musketry and a shower of grape. The guns removed by day had been restored by night, and the garrison largely reinforced. The result was headlong flight.

Once again it reads like a shilling shocker; one is tempted, almost, to take the whole story as the figment of a super-excited brain.

All this time neither France nor England had--and small wonder--taken this game of French and English on the Coromandel Coast at all seriously; but at long last, in 1748, both the Government and the Company of the latter woke up to the necessity for doing something. The result being such a fleet as no Western nation had hitherto put into Eastern waters. Thirty ships in all, thirteen of them being ships of the line, and none of them less than 500 tons burden.

With these, close on four thousand European troops, three hundred Africans, two thousand half-disciplined sepoys, and the support of the Nawâb of Arcot (who had once more changed sides), Fort St David rightly felt itself strong enough, not only to recover Madras, but also to take Pondicherry.

But here, alas! begins one of the most fateful tales of sheer ineptitude to be found in the whole history of English warfare. Delay, crass ignorance, useless persistence, and exaggerated importance, marked the preliminary siege of Arrian-aupan, a small fort which might with ease have been left alone. For the season was already far advanced, and the object at which it was all-important to strike was, palpably, Pondicherry.

September, however, had well begun ere the attacking force found itself within 1,500 yards of the town, and instantly started, with unheard-of caution, to throw up parallels. Wherefore, save from ignorance, God knows, since in those days 880 yards was the limit for such diggings. On they laboured with praiseworthy persistence until, after a month's work, they reached the point at which they ought to have begun, and found that their toil was useless! Between them and the city lay an impassable morass.

The British fleet, meanwhile, getting as near to their range as strong flanking batteries manned with over a hundred guns would allow, had been pounding away quite uselessly at fair Pondicherry, which lay smiling and peaceful, immaculate as any virgin town behind the white line of surf.

What was now to be done? To begin again was hopeless, to persist useless, so after losing over one-third of its European force from sickness, and expending Heaven only knows how many rounds of ammunition, England retired, having inflicted on France the loss by the fire of her ships of one old Mahomedan woman, who was killed by a spent shot in the street, and by sickness and other casualties some two hundred soldiers.

No wonder Dupleix sang "Te Deums" until he was hoarse! No wonder he wrote bombastic, boastful, letters round to every Nawâb and Râjah, including the Great Moghul, proclaiming that the French were the fighters, and that those who were wise would side with them.

There can be no doubt whatever that this pantomimic siege of Pondicherry lost the English prestige, which it took many years of subsequent victories to regain.

For by the irony of fate, no immediate opportunity of revenge for reparation of their honour was given them.

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle terminated the long war between France and England, and one of the provisions of that treaty was the restoration to each power of all possessions taken during the hostilities.

Madras, therefore, was formally receded to England, and the combatants on the Coromandel Coast were left eyeing one another, looking for some new cause of conflict.

But the game of French and English was over.

PLOTS AND COUNTERPLOTS

A.D. 1748 TO A.D. 1751

When the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ended open warfare between the French and the English, both naturally turned their eyes more keenly upon India.

What they saw there was stimulating to those who felt within themselves the power of conquest. On all sides were petty wars and rumours of wars. The horrors of Nâdir-Shâh's invasion were being forgotten, but the country was not coming back to its pristine quiet. There was a strange new factor in India now: the factor of a new knowledge of alien races, by whom it was possible to be helped, or who could in their turn give help.

But this, still, was only about and a little beyond the sea-board. Up-country matters went on much as ever. Mahomed-Shâh's majesty crept out of its hiding-place again, and made shift with a pinchbeck peacock throne, a pretence of power.

Bâji-cum-Sâho, the Mahratta, however, almost ere he recovered from his alarm at the Persian hordes, had died, leaving his son, Bâla-ji, as Peishwa in his stead; leaving him also some very pretty quarrels to settle. One with the semi-pirates of Angria, which, involving the Portuguese, ended in the latter being ousted from India in 1739 by the Mahrattas, who, however, admitted to the loss of five thousand men in the siege of Bassein alone.

But Bâla-ji was a strong man, fully equal to the position in which he found himself; and after driving his most formidable private enemy and claimant to the Prime Ministership, Râghu-ji, back to his task of besieging Trichinopoly, he turned his attention to aggression. He began by renewing the long-deferred claim on the court at Delhi, and was granted it, on condition that he aided the Governor Ali-Verdi-Khân to repulse the invasion of Râghu-ji; who, having succeeded in his siege, had made an independent raid into Bengal. This opportunity of killing two birds with one stone was naturally welcome to Bâla-ji, who drove out the intruders without difficulty, and received his reward.

But, so far as Bengal was concerned, it was merely a postponement of an evil day, for Râghu-ji returned to his prey, and finally obtained the cession of a large part of Orissa, and a tribute from Bengal itself.

Thus in 1748 the only ascending power was that of the Mahrattas. On all other sides France and England were spectators of a general scramble for territory, a general assertion of independence on the part of petty chiefs.

And the question naturally came swiftly--"Why should we remain inactive? Why should we not extend our sphere of influence by giving, perhaps even _selling_, our aid?"

The question had already been answered by France. Dupleix had dipped deep into Indian politics, and, by so doing, had undoubtedly strengthened the position of the French. The temptation to follow suit was almost overwhelming, and so in 1749 England drew the sword which was impatiently resting in its scabbard, and became a mercenary in the pay of one Sâhu-ji who claimed the Râjahship of Tanjore. The ostensible bribe offered was an unimportant fort of Devi-kottah, and a slip of country along the coast. The real cause of the coalition being the fact that the large English army, brought eastward during the late war, was eating its head off in idleness.

The whole affair of the Tanjore succession was absolutely trivial, yet almost too complicated for abbreviated detail. It is sufficient to say that one Pratap Singh had reigned for years, that England had recognised him, negotiated with him, and courted his assistance against the French.

Policy, however, changes with the times, and it was now thought advisable, without any further provocation, to assist in dethroning him! No doubt there were excellent reasons for this _volte face_, only at the present they are not in evidence.

This first venture on mercenary lines was not a brilliant passage in the history of British arms. In truth, England in the East did not at that time possess any man fit to carry on similar work to that which Dupleix was doing for France; for Lieutenant Clive, though he had given proof of high courage during the pantomimic siege of Pondicherry, had not yet raised his head above those of his compeers. Indeed, but for a chance he might never have so raised it, since at the taking of Devi-kottah he narrowly escaped death; being one of the four survivors in a rash attempt to cross the river Kolarun on a raft.

So this Tanjore campaign, which began in a tempest[4] that killed all the baggage-animals and severely crippled the whole force, ended ignominiously in another _volte face_. For, finding their _protégé_, Sâhu-ji, had no local support for his claim, the English forces, on condition of his receiving a pension of four thousand rupees, re-transferred their friendship to the original King Pratâp, who, however, was made to ratify the bribes promised by the pretender, and also to pay the cost of the war! The latter being certainly a seething of the kid in its mother's milk.

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[Footnote 4: It was in this storm that the admiral's ship, _Namur_, went down, with seven hundred and fifty men.]

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Meanwhile, France had been busy with more important matters.

To understand what was happening, it is necessary to go back to old Asaf-Jâh, who had begun his career under Aurungzebe, and who only died in 1748 at the extraordinary age of one hundred and four.

A cunning old fox, brave to the death after the manner of foxes when in a tight place, he had, under the title of Nizâm-ul-mulk--a title still held by the rulers of the Dekkan--kept his grip on that country in almost absolute independence of Delhi.

Now, at his death, innumerable points cropped up for settlement. The Carnatic was a fief of the Dekkan, and in the Carnatic were two semi-independent kingdoms, Tanjore and Trichinopoly. The successions of all these were disputed, especially that of the Carnatic, which was held by that very Nawâb of Arcot who had bandied about his allegiance between the French and English. A most immoral proceeding, no doubt, but at a time when civilised and Christian men were palpably only playing for their own hand, it is not to be wondered at if less cultivated, more pagan peoples followed suit. There seems, anyhow, no reason--except the advantage to be gained from having a real _creature_--why Dupleix should have thrown him over and supported the claims of Chanda-Sâhib. But he did; chiefly because Chanda-Sâhib, the only member of a former ruler's family who had sufficient talent for the rise in fortune, had been brought up in the refuge of Pondicherry, and promised important concessions should he succeed. This decision on the part of Dupleix put the English in a quandary. They could not sit still and see France succeed, and yet the chances of success on the other side were small. So they temporised by sending one hundred and twenty Europeans to help Trichinopoly, by which, of course, they committed themselves as much as if they had sent twelve hundred.

They themselves, however, did not seem to think so, for in spite of this absolute challenge to France they refused the English admiral's offer to remain in Eastern waters. So suicidal did this appear to Dupleix that for some time he treated the departure as a mere feint.

So both parties settled down with their "legitimate heir," neither caring one straw for the justice of the claim, since both were equally bad.

Whatever else may be said, this much is certain, that the _protégé_ of the French was a better puppet than the _protégé_ of the English. Furthermore, he drew into the French net no less a person than Muzaffar-Jung, a grandson of old Asaf-Jâh, who was a claimant for the Dekkan. Truly, therefore, with a Nizam of the Dekkan, and a Nawâb of the Carnatic, both owing their thrones to French interference, Dupleix had a right to expect much for his country.

Their interference, also, was successful. There was a pitched battle close to Arcot, at which the Nawâb was killed (at the most unusual age of one hundred and seven), and only one of his sons escaped with the wreck of his army to Trichinopoly.

Dupleix, it is said, urged the allies to press on after him, but the Oriental mind, as a rule, is satisfied with the present. Chanda-Sâhib and Muzaffar-Jung amused themselves with playing the parts of Nizâm and Nawâb to their hearts' content, and spending themselves and their resources in luxurious pleasures, until the rightful claimant of the former _rôle_ appeared on the horizon with an army composed largely of mercenary Mahrattas. A big army, a good army; Dupleix saw victory in it, and he instantly began with his usual unscrupulous diplomacy to attempt negotiations.

In this, however, for once, the English were beforehand with him. They had, as we know, moved by vague fear of the growing French ascendency, sent a few men to support Trichinopoly against possible attacks from Chanda-Sâhib-cum-Muzaffar-Jung, and now, taking heart of grace, Major Lawrence and four hundred troops joined the camp of the rightful Nizâm.

The two armies, that of Nâsir-Jung backed--in truth but feebly--by the English, and that of Chanda-Sâhib-cum-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 circumstances to venture anything, took veritable French leave during the night, followed by Chanda-Sâhib. 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 _impasse_. At Pondicherry all was confusion, and Dupleix driven to despair because his cock would not fight. At Arcot, Major Lawrence trying through an interpreter to warn his cock, the triumphant Nizâm, 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 Pagoda of Trivâdi, 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 Nizâm Nâsir-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 Nizâm to take the field, for the wily diplomatist was aware that conspiracy was rife amongst the Nizâm'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 Nizâm; 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 Nizâm 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 Nizâmship of the Dekkan, and all went merry as a marriage bell. Both he, the Pathân nobles 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 Nâsir-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 pass 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 Pathân nobles, 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 Shropshire 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 pass 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, Masulipatâm, all those places on which the fingers of France and England had been laid more or less tentatively.

Mahomed-Shâh had died after having successfully resisted the invasion of the Durrâni or Afghân prince, Ahmed-Khân, who, fired by Nâdir-Shâh's example, tried in 1748 to imitate his exploit. He was badly beaten at Sirhind, close to the old battlefield of Pânipat. Before this Ali-Verdi-Khân, 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 Sâho, who, combined first with Bâji-rao and afterwards with Bâla-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 Râjah of Kolapur. This, however, did not suit Bâla-ji. He therefore induced the old queen, Tara-Bhâl, to trump up a tale of a posthumous son of her son, whose birth had been concealed from fear of danger to the child. Sâho, 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 Bâla-ji, on condition of his supporting the claims of Tara-Bhâi's supposed grandson.

But the ghost of a grandmother thus raised proved a curse to the Peishwa, for Tara-Bhâi, 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 Bâla-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 assert 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 nobility 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 anticipate.

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 writership, however, for a time, but such a profession was manifestly impossible to his temperament--a temperament admirably illustrated 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 damned 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 outclassed 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 circumference--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 assault, 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-Sâhib 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 Nâsir-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-Sâhib, who claimed it as Nawâb of the Carnatic; the English backing Mahomed-Ali, who held it as Nawâb 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--_fortunæ_. 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 snowball. It increased in size as it went, and after the big fight at Samiavêram, 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 Seringhâm was taken, and a thousand Râjputs shut themselves up in the celebrated pagoda 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.

Major Lawrence, meanwhile, in the south, had been fairly successful. The siege of Trichinopoly raised, the French, who had done all the artillery work, retreated to Pondicherry.

But complications arose. Mahomed-Ali, Nawâb of Arcot, showed indisposition to press his advantage, and to his great chagrin Major Lawrence discovered that Trichinopoly itself had been promised to the Mysore king, one of Mahomed-Ali's native allies. The Nawâb himself was ready to repudiate his promise; the English, it is to be feared, did not favour straightforward fulfilment. The result was a hollow compromise, which in its results showed that honesty would have been the best policy. For the next two years, therefore, Trichinopoly became the scene of constant warfare, and such was the stress of battle that raged round the unfortunate town, that in November 1753 not a tree was left standing near it, and the British detachment and convoy which finally relieved it was forced to go six or seven miles to get a stick of firewood.

The story of the final and futile assault of the French is a thrilling one, especially the incident of the night-attack frustrated by the falling into a disused well of a soldier, whose musket going off, alarmed the garrison, thus rendering of no avail a previous wholesale tampering with the guard. For the French had no hesitation in using underhand means; in this, indeed, lay the strength of Dupleix. On this occasion, anyhow, they suffered for it, since, pinned between the outer ramparts and an inner one, four hundred out of six hundred Frenchmen were either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

The year 1740 brought a mutual fatigue of warfare both to the French and the English East India Company. They called a truce to assert that they had never really been at war, the hostile interlude being merely the amusements of mercenaries.

But the whole affair was comic. The Council-of-Negotiation which met at a neutral little Dutch settlement was as unreal as the patents produced on both sides in support of the claims of their puppets. There were seven on the French side for the murdered Muzaffar-Jung's successor, Sâlabut, including one from the Great Moghul. The English, too, had patents for their puppet Mahomed-Ali, also including one from the Great Moghul. Now it is possible that both these contradictory patents were genuine--anything was possible in the India of 1754--but the English one was not produced, and the French one had a wrong seal!

So the affair ended in added exasperation.

But in truth France and England's attention was now awakening to the unceasing hostilities in India. International conferences were held in London, where the Secretary of State, in order to be prepared for refusal of his terms, fitted out a fleet for Eastern waters. The menace proved successful. France, never greatly enamoured of her Eastern Company, gave away the game by sending out one Monsieur Godeheu to take over the Governorship from Dupleix.

It was a bolt out of the blue. Whatever his faults may have been, the latter had spent his life for, and risked his whole fortune in, the Company. He never recovered the blow, but went home, sought bare justice by a lawsuit, and died ruined, broken-hearted, ere his case was decided. So England has no monopoly in ingratitude to her public servants.