India Under British Rule. Wheeler James Talboys
against him, and opened up a secret correspondence with Clive. Englishmen, Mohammedans, and Hindus became entangled in a web of conspiracy and craft, from which it was difficult to escape with an unsullied reputation. Eventually, the Nawab sent an army to Plassy, on the route to Calcutta, as if to overawe the British settlement. The army was commanded by Mir Jafir, the head of the conspiracy for dethroning the Nawab. Shortly afterwards, the Nawab himself followed Mir Jafir to Plassy, and the whole force was estimated at 50,000 men and forty pieces of cannon.
Battle of Plassy, June, 1757.
Clive advanced from Calcutta to Plassy with 3,000 men and nine pieces of cannon. The battle of Plassy was fought on the 23rd of June, 1757, just a year and three days after the Black Hole tragedy. It was more of a British cannonade than an action between two armies. Clive was expecting to be joined every moment by Mir Jafir. The Asiatic plotter had sworn to be faithful to both parties, and was mortally afraid of both the Nawab and the British. He dared not desert the Nawab, and he dared not fight the British. For hours he did nothing. At last, towards the close of the day, he moved his forces from the field, and made off towards Murshedabad. Clive advanced to charge the Nawab's camp, but the Nawab saw that he was deserted and betrayed, and fled in abject terror. The days of the fugitive were numbered. He hid himself for a while with a favourite wife and his choicest jewels, but was then taken prisoner and brutally murdered by a son of Mir Jafir. Such was the end of the once notorious Suraj-ad-daula, better known to British soldiers and sailors as "Sir Roger Dowler."
Overflowing riches.
Colonel Clive marched on to Murshedabad, and installed Mir Jafir on the throne as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. Clive, and Clive alone, was the lord paramount of the hour, the hero of Plassy, the invincible warrior. The money and jewels in the treasury at Murshedabad were lavished by Mir Jafir on Colonel Clive and his party. The British officers of the army and fleet received large donations. One million sterling was given to the East India Company, another million sterling to the inhabitants of Calcutta—European and Asiatic. A hundred boats loaded with silver went down the river from Murshedabad to Calcutta, followed by the curses of the grandees; whilst the sight of the boats approaching Calcutta was hailed with the joy of men who had escaped shipwreck. "For once," says a contemporary, "and only for once, the people of Calcutta were all friends."
Terrible responsibilities.
§2. The battle of Plassy was a British triumph, but it entailed enormous responsibilities. Colonel Clive had raised up a Nawab to be absolute ruler of territories larger than Great Britain and Ireland, and far more populous. Bengal, including the delta of the Ganges, was one of the most fertile regions in the world, whilst the inhabitants were most submissive and easily governed. For centuries the Bengalis had been oppressed by foreigners—Turk, Afghan, Abyssinian and Mogul. The revenues, however, had been collected by Hindu officials, as being at once more exacting in their demands, and more easily stripped of their ill-gotten gains.
Wretched rule of Mir Jafir.
Nawab Mir Jafir was most subservient to the British and most anxious to please them, but was otherwise as dissolute and worthless as any Turkish pasha. In his younger days, when the Mahrattas were harrying Bengal, Mir Jafir might have been a good soldier, but since then he had degenerated into a worn-out voluptuary, spending all the money he could get on jewels and dancing-girls, whilst his own troops were in mutiny for want of pay, and his British supporters and protectors were demanding further supplies for the payment of their own forces. To make matters worse, the Nawab was removing the old Hindu officials and placing his Mohammedan kinsmen in their room.
Delhi affairs: flight of the Prince Imperial.
Suddenly, a new vista opened out to Clive through the territory of Oudh, on the north-west, to the remote capital of the Great Mogul at Delhi. The Great Mogul was a mere pageant in the hands of the Vizier, who exercised what remained of the imperial authority. The Prince Imperial, the son and heir of the Great Mogul, was afraid of being murdered by the Vizier, and fled away into Oudh, and threw himself on the protection of the Nawab.
Invasion of the Nawab of Oudh.
The Nawab of Oudh had long desired to get possession of the Bengal provinces, and thought to secure them by making the Prince Imperial a cat's paw. He proclaimed that the Prince Imperial had been invested by his father with the government of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. He then sent the Prince forward with a large force to enforce the proclamation, whilst he himself remained behind in Oudh and awaited events.7 To make matters worse, the Hindu officials in the Bengal provinces, who had been dispossessed, or were expecting to be dispossessed, were preparing to join the invaders.
Clive's difficulty.
Mir Jafir was in a panic of fear at the appearance of the Prince Imperial, and proposed to pay him a sum of money to go away. Clive would not listen to the suggestion. He ignored the Prince Imperial and the Great Mogul, and soon routed the invading army. The Prince Imperial then became a suppliant to the British, and implored Clive for help; but Clive had been requested by the Vizier at Delhi to arrest the fugitive, and would not commit himself. He, however, sent a bag of 500 mohurs, about 800l. sterling, to relieve the immediate necessities of the Prince Imperial, and the money was gladly received by the impoverished fugitive.
Wanted, a British army.
Meanwhile, Clive was at his wits' end for money. The Bengal provinces could be held against any enemy in India by a standing army of Europeans and sepoys. Such an army could be maintained for half a million sterling per annum, and the public revenue amounted to three or four millions; but the Nawab refused to disband his own rabble soldiery, and pretended that he could not pay the Europeans.
Solution.
At this crisis Clive received a secret and startling proposal from the Vizier at Delhi, that he should accept the post of Dewan to the Great Mogul for Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. In the palmy days of the Mogul empire, every province was governed by two officials, the Nawab and the Dewan. The Nawab kept the peace and administered justice; the Dewan kept the public purse, received the revenues, paid all salaries, and sent the surplus as tribute to the Great Mogul. The later Nawabs had become their own Dewans, and spent the revenue as they pleased, without sending any tribute to the Great Mogul. Had Clive closed with the offer, it would have involved a mortal struggle with Mir Jafir, for it would have deprived the Nawab of all power over the public purse. But it would have removed every financial difficulty, as the Vizier would have been satisfied with a yearly tribute of half a million sterling, or even less, whilst Clive would have had the whole remaining surplus at his own disposal.
Clive's offer to Pitt, 1759.
Clive would not accept the post of Dewan, either for himself or for the East India Company. But he wrote privately to the British premier, the first William Pitt, and proposed that the British Crown should act as Dewan to the Great Mogul. Under such an arrangement, the Crown might have taken over the Bengal revenues, sent half, or a quarter of a million a year to Delhi, spent another half million on a standing army, and devoted another half million to the salaries of the Nawab and his officials; and then might have secured a surplus of two millions a year towards the payment of the national debt. William Pitt, however, was already alarmed at the growing power of the Crown, and he declined taking over the proposed income lest it should endanger the liberties of the British nation.
Turmoils in the north-west.
In 1760 Colonel Clive returned to England, and in 1761 the war with France was over. India might now have been at peace, but the north-west was in a turmoil. The Great Mogul was murdered by his Vizier. The Afghans had slaughtered 200,000 Mahrattas on the fatal field of Paniput, and established their ascendency at Delhi. The fugitive Prince Imperial was proclaimed Padishah, or Emperor, by the Nawab of Oudh, who assumed the title of Nawab Vizier; and the Padishah and his Nawab Vizier invaded Behar and threatened Patna.
Change of Nawabs.
§3. The British at Calcutta were now in sore peril, and there was no Clive to guide them. They deposed Mir Jafir on their own authority, and set up his son-in-law, Mir Kasim, as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. The new Nawab
The three provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa are known to Europeans by the one name of Bengal. Bengal proper includes the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra. Behar is the frontier province towards Oudh, having its capital at Patna. Orissa lies to the south of Behar and Bengal proper, but Cuttack and the hilly country to the south and west had been ceded to the Mahrattas. The Orissa of the period comprises little more than Midnapore; but the high-sounding title was still retained of Nawab of Bengal, Behar and Orissa. After the Mahratta wars of 1803, the British took possession of Cuttack and remaining portions of Orissa, in order to hold the sea-board against invasion.