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Newcastle had set his heart on returning two members for St. Michael, one of
those wretched Cornish boroughs which were swept away by the Reform Act of 1832.
He was opposed by Lord Sandwich, whose influence had long been paramount there:
and Fox exerted himself strenuously in Sandwich's behalf. Clive, who had been
introduced to Fox, and very kindly received by him, was brought forward on the
Sandwich interest, and was returned. But a petition was presented against the
return, and was backed by the whole influence of the Duke of Newcastle.
The case was heard, according to the usage of that time, before a committee of
the whole House. Questions respecting elections were then considered merely as
party questions. Judicial impartiality was not even affected. Sir Robert Walpole
was in the habit of saying openly that, in election battles, there ought to be
no quarter. On the present occasion the excitement was great. The matter really
at issue was, not whether Clive had been properly or improperly returned, but
whether Newcastle or Fox was to be master of the new House of Commons, and
consequently first minister. The contest was long and obstinate, and success
seemed to lean sometimes to one side and sometimes to the other. Fox put forth
all his rare powers of debate, beat half the lawyers in the House at their own
weapons, and carried division after division against the whole influence of the
Treasury. The committee decided in Clive's favor. But when the resolution was
reported to the House, things took a different course. The remnant of the Tory
Opposition, contemptible as it was, had yet sufficient weight to turn the scale
between the nicely balanced parties of Newcastle and Fox. Newcastle the Tories
could only despise. Fox they hated, as the boldest and most subtle politician
and the ablest debater among the Whigs, as the steady friend of Walpole, as the
devoted adherent of the Duke of Cumberland. After wavering till the last moment,
they determined to vote in a body with the Prime Minister's friends. The
consequence was that the House, by a small majority, rescinded the decision of
the committee, and Clive was unseated.
Ejected from Parliament, and straitened in his means, he naturally began to look
again towards India. The Company and the Government were eager to avail
themselves of his services. A treaty favorable to England had indeed been
concluded in the Carnatic. Dupleix had been superseded, and had returned with
the wreck of his immense fortune to Europe, where calumny and chicanery soon
hunted him to his grave. But many signs indicated that a war between France and
Great Britain was at hand; and it was therefore thought desirable to send an
able commander to the Company's settlements in India. The Directors appointed
Clive governor of Fort St. David. The King gave him the commission of a
lieutenant-colonel in the British army, and in 1755 he again sailed for Asia.
The first service on which he was employed after his return to the East was the
reduction of the stronghold of Gheriah. This fortress, built on a craggy
promontory, and almost surrounded by the ocean, was the den of a pirate named
Angria, whose barks had long been the terror of the Arabian Gulf. Admiral
Watson, who commanded the English squadron in the Eastern seas, burned Angria's
fleet, while Clive attacked the fastness by land. The place soon fell, and a
booty of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling was divided among the
conquerors.
After this exploit, Clive proceeded to his government of Fort St. David. Before
he had been there two months, he received intelligence which called forth all
the energy of his bold and active mind.
Of the provinces which had been subject to the house of Tamerlane, the
wealthiest was Bengal. No part of India possessed such natural advantages both
for agriculture and for commerce. The Ganges, rushing through a hundred channels
to the sea, has formed a vast plain of rich mould which, even under the tropical
sky, rivals the verdure of an English April. The rice-fields yield an increase
such as is elsewhere unknown. Spices, sugar, vegetable oils, are produced with
marvelous exuberance. The rivers afford an inexhaustible supply of fish. The
desolate islands along the sea-coast, overgrown by noxious vegetation, and
swarming with deer and tigers, supply the cultivated districts with abundance of
salt. The great stream which fertilizes the soil is, at the same time, the chief
highway of Eastern commerce. On its banks, and on those of its tributary waters,
are the wealthiest marts, the most splendid capitals, and the most sacred
shrines of India. The tyranny of man had for ages struggled in vain against the
overflowing bounty of nature. In spite of the Muscleman despot and of the
Mahratta freebooter, Bengal was known through the East as the garden of Eden, as
the rich kingdom. Its population multiplied exceedingly. Distant provinces were
nourished from the overflowing of its granaries - and the noble ladies of London
and Paris were clothed in the delicate produce of its looms, The race by whom
this rich tract was peopled, enervated by a soft climate and accustomed to
peaceful employments, bore the same relation to other Asiatics which the
Asiatics generally bear to the bold and energetic children of Europe. The
Castilians have a proverb, that in Valencia the earth is water and the men
women; and the description is at least equally applicable to the vast plain of
the Lower Ganges. Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly. His favorite
pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exertion; and, though voluble in
dispute, and singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom engages in
a personal conflict, and scarcely ever enlists as a soldier. We doubt whether
there be a hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India
Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by nature
and by habit for a foreign yoke.
The great commercial companies of Europe had long possessed factories in Bengal.
The French were settled, as they still are, at Chandernagore on the Hoogley.
Higher up the stream the Dutch held Chinsurah. Nearer to the sea, the English
had built Fort William. A church and ample warehouses rose in the vicinity. A
row of spacious houses, belonging to the chief factors of the East India
Company, lined the banks of the river; and in the neighborhood had sprung up a
large and busy native town, where some Hindoo merchants of great opulence had
fixed their abode. But the tract now covered by the palaces of Chowringhee
contained only a few miserable huts thatched with straw. A jungle, abandoned to
waterfowl and alligators, covered the site of the present Citadel, and the
Course, which is now daily crowded at sunset with the gayest equipages of
Calcutta. For the ground on which the settlement stood, the English, like other
great landholders, paid rent to the Government; and they were, like other great
landholders, permitted to exercise a certain jurisdiction within their domain.
The great province of Bengal, together with Orissa and Bahar, had long been
governed by a viceroy, whom the English called Aliverdy Khan, and who, like the
other viceroys of the Mogul, had become virtually independent. He died in 1756,
and the sovereignty descended to his grandson, a youth under twenty years of
age, who bore the name of Surajah Dowlah. Oriental despots are perhaps the worst
class of human beings; and this unhappy boy was one of the worst specimens of
his class. His understanding was naturally feeble, and his temper naturally
unamiable. His education had been such as would have enervated even a vigorous
intellect, and perverted even a generous disposition. He was unreasonable,
because nobody ever dared to reason with him, and selfish, because he had never
been made to feel himself dependent on the goodwill of others. Early debauchery
had unnerved his body and his mind. He indulged immoderately in the use of
ardent spirits, which inflamed his weak brain almost to madness. His chosen
companions were flatterers sprung from the dregs of the people, and recommended
by nothing but buffoonery and, servility. It is said that he had arrived at the
last stage of human depravity, when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake,
when the sight of pain as pain, where no advantage is to be gained, no offence
punished, no danger averted, is an agreeable excitement. It had early been his
amusement to torture beasts and birds; and, when he grew up, he enjoyed with
still keener relish the misery of his fellow-creatures.
From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English. It was his whim to do so; and
his whims were never opposed. He had also formed a very exaggerated notion of
the wealth which might be obtained by plundering them; and his feeble and
uncultivated mind was incapable of perceiving that the riches of Calcutta, had
they been even greater than he imagined, would not compensate him for what he
must lose, if the European trade, of which Bengal was a chief seat, should be
driven by his violence to some other quarter. Pretexts for a quarrel were
readily found. The English, in expectation of a war with France, had begun to
fortify their settlement without special permission from the Nabob. A rich
native, whom he longed to plunder, had taken refuge at Calcutta, and had not
been delivered up. On such grounds as these Surajah Dowlah marched with a great
army against Fort William.
The servants of the Company at Madras had been forced by Dupleix to become
statesmen and soldiers. Those in Bengal were still mere traders, and were
terrified and bewildered by the approaching danger. The governor, who had heard
much of Surajah Dowlah's cruelty, was frightened out of his wits, jumped into a
boat, and took refuge in the nearest ship. The military commandant thought that
he could not do better than follow so good an example. The fort was taken after
a feeble resistance; and great numbers of the English fell into the hands of the
conquerors. The Nabob seated himself with regal pomp in the principal hall of
the factory, and ordered Mr. Holwell, the first in rank among the prisoners, to
be brought before him. His Highness talked about the insolence of the English,
and grumbled at the smallness of the treasure which he had found, but promised
to spare their lives, and retired to rest.
Then was committed that great crime, memorable for its singular atrocity,
memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English
captives were left to the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to
secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the
fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor, that
dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was
only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the
summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be
rendered tolerable to natives of England by lofty halls and by the constant
waving of fans. The number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six. When
they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were
joking; and, being in high spirits on account of the promise of the Nabob to
spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They
soon discovered their mistake. They expostulated; they entreated; but in vain.
The guards threatened to cut down all who hesitated. The captives were driven
into the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly shut and
locked upon them.
Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which Ugolino told in the sea
of everlasting ice, after he had wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his
murderer, approaches the horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of
that night. They cried for mercy. They strove to burst the door. Holwell who,
even in that extremity, retained some presence of mind, offered large bribes to
the gaolers. But the answer was that nothing could be done without the Nabob's
orders, that the Nabob was asleep, and that he would be angry if anybody woke
him. Then the prisoners went mad with despair. They trampled each other down,
fought for the places at the windows, fought for the pittance of water with
which the cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, prayed,
blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among them. The gaolers in the meantime
held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of
their victims. At length the tumult died away in low gaspings and moanings. The
day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be
opened. But it was some time before the soldiers could make a lane for the
survivors, by piling up on each side the heaps of corpses on which the burning
climate had already begun to do its loathsome work. When at length a passage was
made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their own mothers would not have
known, staggered one by one out of the charnel-house. A pit was instantly dug.
The dead bodies, a hundred and twenty-three in number, were flung into it
promiscuously and covered up.
But these things--which, after the lapse of more than eighty years, cannot be
told or read without horror--awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of
the savage Nabob. He inflicted no punishment on the murderers. He showed no
tenderness to the survivors. Some of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be
got, were suffered to depart; but those from whom it was thought that anything
could be extorted were treated with execrable cruelty. Holwell, unable to walk,
was carried before the tyrant, who reproached him, threatened him, and sent him
up the country in irons, together with some other gentlemen who were suspected
of knowing more than they chose to tell about the treasures of the Company.
These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings of that great agony, were
lodged in miserable sheds, and fed only with grain and water, till at length the
intercessions of the female relations of the Nabob procured their release. One
Englishwoman had survived that night. She was placed in the harem of the Prince
at Moorshedabad.
Surajah Dowlah, in the meantime, sent letters to his nominal sovereign at Delhi,
describing the late conquest in the most pompous language. He placed a garrison
in Fort William, forbade Englishmen to dwell in the neighborhood, and directed
that, in memory of his great actions, Calcutta should thenceforward be called
Alinagore, that is to say, the Port of God.
In August the news of the fall of Calcutta reached Madras, and excited the
fiercest and bitterest resentment. The cry of the whole settlement was for
vengeance. Within forty-eight hours after the arrival of the intelligence it was
determined that an expedition should be sent to the Hoogley, and that Clive
should be at the head of the land forces. The naval armament was under the
command of Admiral Watson. Nine hundred English infantry, fine troops and full
of spirit, and fifteen hundred sepoys, composed the army which sailed to punish
a Prince who had more subjects than Lewis the Fifteenth or the Empress Maria
Theresa. In October the expedition sailed; but it had to make its way against
adverse winds and did not reach Bengal till December.
The Nabob was reveling in fancied security at Moorshedabad. He was so profoundly
ignorant of the state of foreign countries that he often used to say that there
were not ten thousand men in all Europe; and it had never occurred to him as
possible that the English would dare to invade his dominions. But, though
undisturbed by any fear of their military power, he began to miss them greatly.
His revenues fell off; and his ministers succeeded in making him understand that
a ruler may sometimes find it more profitable to protect traders in the open
enjoyment of their gains than to put them to the torture for the purpose of
discovering hidden chests of gold and jewels. He was already disposed to permit
the Company to resume its mercantile operations in his country, when he received
the news that an English armament was in the Hoogley. He instantly ordered all
his troops to assemble at Moorshedabad, and marched towards Calcutta.
Clive had commenced operations with his usual vigor. He took Budgebudge, routed
the garrison of Fort William, recovered Calcutta, stormed and sacked Hoogley.
The Nabob, already disposed to make some concessions to the English, was
confirmed in his pacific disposition by these proofs of their power and spirit.
He accordingly made overtures to the chiefs of the invading armament, and
offered to restore the factory, and to give compensation to those whom he had
despoiled.
Clive's profession was war; and he felt that there was something discreditable
in an accommodation with Surajah Dowlah. But his power was limited. A committee,
chiefly composed of servants of the Company who had fled from Calcutta, had the
principal direction of affairs; and these persons were eager to be restored to
their posts and compensated for their losses. The government of Madras, apprised
that war had commenced in Europe, and apprehensive of an attack from the French,
became impatient for the return of the armament. The promises of the Nabob were
large, the chances of a contest doubtful; and Clive consented to treat, though
he expressed his regret that things should not be concluded in so glorious a
manner as he could have wished.
With this negotiation commences a new chapter in the life of Clive. Hitherto he
had been merely a soldier carrying into effect, with eminent ability and valor,
the plans of others. Henceforth he is to be chiefly regarded as a statesman; and
his military movements are to be considered as subordinate to his political
designs. That in his new capacity he displayed great ability, and obtained great
success, is unquestionable. But it is also unquestionable that the transactions
in which he now began to take a part have left a stain on his moral character.
We can by no means agree with Sir John Malcolm, who is obstinately resolved to
see nothing but honor and integrity in the conduct of his hero. But we can as
little agree with Mr. Mill, who has gone so far as to say that Clive was a man
"to whom deception, when it suited his purpose, never cost a pang." Clive seems
to us to have been constitutionally the very opposite of a knave, bold even to
temerity, sincere even to indiscretion, hearty in friendship, open in enmity.
Neither in his private life, nor in those parts of his public life in which he
had to do with his countrymen, do we find any signs of a propensity to cunning.
On the contrary, in all the disputes in which he was engaged as an Englishman
against Englishmen, from his boxing-matches at school to those stormy
altercations at the India House and in Parliament amidst which his later years
were passed, his very faults were those of a high and magnanimous spirit. The
truth seems to have been that he considered Oriental politics as a game in which
nothing was unfair. He knew that the standard of morality among the natives of
India differed widely from that established in England. He knew that he had to
deal with men destitute of what in Europe is called honor, with men who would
give any promise without hesitation, and break any promise without shame, with
men who would unscrupulously employ corruption, perjury, forgery, to compass
their ends. His letters show that the great difference between Asiatic and
European morality was constantly in his thoughts. He seems to have imagined,
most erroneously in our opinion, that he could effect nothing against such
adversaries, if he was content to be bound by ties from which they were free, if
he went on telling truth, and hearing none, if he fulfilled, to his own hurt,
all his engagements with confederates who never kept an engagement that was not
to their advantage. Accordingly this man, in the other parts of his life an
honorable English gentleman and a soldier, was no sooner matched against an
Indian intriguer, than he became himself an Indian intriguer, and descended,
without scruple, to falsehood, to hypocritical caresses, to the substitution of
documents, and to the counterfeiting of hands.
The negotiations between the English and the Nabob were carried on chiefly by
two agents, Mr. Watts, a servant of the Company, and a Bengalee of the name of
Omichund. This Omichund had been one of the wealthiest native merchants resident
at Calcutta, and had sustained great losses in consequence of the Nabob's
expedition against that place. In the course of his commercial transactions, he
had seen much of the English, and was peculiarly qualified to serve as a medium
of communication between them and a native court. He possessed great influence
with his own race, and had in large measure the Hindoo talents, quick
observation, tact, dexterity, perseverance, and the Hindoo vices, servility,
greediness, and treachery.
The Nabob behaved with all the faithlessness of an Indian statesman, and with
all the levity of a boy whose mind had been enfeebled by power and
self-indulgence. He promised, retracted, hesitated, evaded. At one time he
advanced with his army in a threatening manner towards Calcutta; but when he saw
the resolute front which the English presented, he fell back in alarm, and
consented to make peace with them on their own terms. The treaty was no sooner
concluded than he formed new designs against them. He intrigued with the French
authorities at Chandernagore. He invited Bussy to march from the Deccan to the
Hoogley, and to drive the English out of Bengal. All this was well known to
Clive and Watson. They determined accordingly to strike a decisive blow, and to
attack Chandernagore, before the force there could be strengthened by new
arrivals, either from the south of India, or from Europe. Watson directed the
expedition by water, Clive by land. The success of the combined movements was
rapid and complete. The fort, the garrison, the artillery, the military stores,
all fell into the hands of the English. Near five hundred European troops were
among the prisoners.
The Nabob had feared and hated the English, even while he was still able to
oppose to them their French rivals. The French were now vanquished; and he began
to regard the English with still greater fear and still greater hatred. His weak
and unprincipled mind oscillated between servility and insolence. One day he
sent a large sum to Calcutta, as part of the compensation due for the wrongs
which he had committed, The next day he sent a present of jewels to Bussy,
exhorting that distinguished officer to hasten to protect Bengal "against Clive,
the daring in war, on whom," says his Highness, "may all bad fortune attend." He
ordered his army to march against the English. He countermanded his orders. He
tore Clive's letters. He then sent answers in the most florid language of
compliment. He ordered Watts out of his presence, and threatened to impale him.
He again sent for Watts, and begged pardon for the insult. In the meantime, his
wretched maladministration, his folly, his dissolute manners, and his love of
the lowest company, had disgusted all classes of his subjects, soldiers,
traders, civil functionaries, the proud and ostentatious Mohammedans, the timid,
supple, and parsimonious Hindus. A formidable confederacy was formed against
him, in which were included Roydullub, the minister of finance, Meer Jaffier,
the principal commander of the troops, and Jugget Seit, the richest banker in
India. The plot was confided to the English agents, and a communication was
opened between the malcontents at Moorshedabad and the committee at Calcutta.
In the committee there was much hesitation; but Clive's voice was given in favor
of the conspirators, and his vigor and firmness bore down all opposition. It was
determined that the English should lend their powerful assistance to depose
Surajah Dowlah, and to place Meer Jaffier on the throne of Bengal. In return,
Meer Jaffier promised ample compensation to the Company and its servants, and a
liberal donative to the army, the navy, and the committee. The odious vices of
Surajah Dowlah, the wrongs which the English had suffered at his hands, the
dangers to which our trade must have been exposed, had he continued to reign,
appear to us fully to justify the resolution of deposing him. But nothing can
justify the dissimulation which Clive stooped to practice. He wrote to Surajah
Dowlah in terms so affectionate that they for a time lulled that weak prince
into perfect security. The same courier who carried this "soothing letter," as
Clive calls it, to the Nabob, carried to Mr. Watts a letter in the following
terms: "Tell Meer Jaffier to fear nothing. I will join him with five thousand
men who never turned their backs. Assure him I will march nigh and day to his
assistance, and stand by him as long as I have a man left."
It was impossible that a plot which had so many ramifications should long remain
entirely concealed. Enough reached the ear of the Nabob to arouse his
suspicions. But he was soon quieted by the fictions and artifices which the
inventive genius of Omichund produced with miraculous readiness. All was going
well; the plot was nearly ripe; when Clive learned that Omichund was likely to
play false. The artful Bengalee had been promised a liberal compensation for all
that he had lost at Calcutta. But this would not satisfy him. His services had
been great. He held the thread of the whole intrigue. By one word breathed in
the ear of Surajah Dowlah, he could undo all that he had done. The lives of
Watts, of Meer Jaffier of all the conspirators, were at his mercy; and he
determined to take advantage of his situation and to make his own terms. He
demanded three hundred thousand pounds sterling as the price of his secrecy and
of his assistance. The committee, incensed by the treachery and appalled by the
danger, knew not what course to take. But Clive was more than Omichund's match
in Omichund's own arts. The man, he said, was a villain. Any artifice which
would defeat such knavery was justifiable. The best course would be to promise
what was asked. Omichund would soon be at their mercy; and then they might
punish him by withholding from him, not only the bribe which he now demanded,
but also the compensation which all the other sufferers of Calcutta were to
receive.
His advice was taken. But how was the wary and sagacious Hindoo to be deceived?
He had demanded that an article touching his claims should be inserted in the
treaty between Meer Jaffier and the English, and he would not be satisfied
unless he saw it with his own eyes. Clive had an expedient ready. Two treaties
were drawn up, one on white paper, the other on red, the former real, the latter
fictitious. In the former Omichund's name was not mentioned; the latter, which
was to be shown to him, contained a stipulation in his favor.
But another difficulty arose. Admiral Watson had scruples about signing the red
treaty. Omichund's vigilance and acuteness were such that the absence of so
important a name would probably awaken his suspicions. But Clive was not a man
to do anything by halves. We almost blush to write it He forged Admiral Watson's
name.
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