India Through the Ages Part 38

"Clive and Scrafton went towards Omichand, who was waiting in full a.s.surance of hearing the glad tidings.... Scrafton said to him in the Indostan language: 'Omichand! the red paper is a trick--you are to have nothing.' The words overpowered him like a blast of sulphur; he sank back fainting."

He did not recover the shock, but died a complete imbecile within the year.

No! Whatever way we look at this incident it offends eye and taste.

For it was so needless. If Omichand was the double-dyed scoundrel he is said to have been, what more easy than to tell him when all was over: "Yes! the 200,000 is yours, but you shall not have it."

Clive, at any rate, was strong enough for that.

The incident prevents the remembrance of Pla.s.sey being a pure pleasure. It was victory complete so far as it went, and by the treaty with Mir-Jaffar Clive's hope "that the Company's estate in these parts shall be settled in a better and more lasting condition than before"

was fully justified; for not only was Calcutta given to it freehold, but also the land to the south of the town, as a _zemindari_ subject to the payment of revenue.

England had a real hold on Indian soil at last, and Clive had given it to her.

ROBERT CLIVE

A.D. 1757 TO A.D. 1767

It was in the year 1757, just one hundred years before the Mutiny, that the battle of Pla.s.sey was fought, and that by the enthronement of a Nawab who owed everything to English arms the East India Company became practically lords paramount in Bengal, Behar, and Orissa.

It was in the same year that Upper India was once more disturbed by the inroad of Ahmed-Shah, the Durrani king of Kandahar. Mahomed-Shah, the Moghul emperor, had once repulsed him, and Ahmed-Shah, the Afghan's namesake, son and successor of the Great Moghul, had, for the six years of his reign, watched the north-western frontier nervously.

But he died in 1754 without signs of the dread invasion.

It came, however, in Alamgir the Second's time, through no fault of that distressful puppet, but owing to the arrogance of Ghazi-ud-din, Grand Vizier, and eldest son of the old fox Asaf-Jah. Heredity is strong. In his lifetime there was not a political pie in all India into which the latter's wily old finger did not dip, and now his descendants carried on the same game. Salabut-Jung, his son, was French nominee for the Nizamship; Muzaffar-Jung, grandson, for the Nawabship of the Carnatic. n.a.z.ir-Jung, who perished miserably through the treachery of Dupleix, had been another candidate, and at the effete court of Delhi, Ghazi-ud-din was virtually king. He chose to insult the widow of an Afghan governor of Lah.o.r.e, and Ahmed-Shah, Durrani, marched to avenge it.

The vengeance was deep and bitter. Delhi was laid waste; the horrors of Nadir-Shah being repeated and excelled, for the Durrani had not the Persian's hold upon his troops. He also penetrated further down-country than did Nadir, and harried the Gangetic plain as far as Muttra. The news of his raid, indeed, was one of the many factors in the problem of action or inaction which Clive had had to decide. But the heat drove the hardy northmen back to their hills, and Upper India reverted once more to its old peaceful life, Delhi to dreams. It was a drugged city in those days, winking sleepily in the sunlight, enduring ravishment patiently, returning when the stress was over to watch its pageant king sitting on his pinchbeck peac.o.c.k throne, pretending to be all-powerful, looking out haughtily, with opium-dimmed eyes, upon a subject world, that in reality cared not one jot for the so-called descendants of the Great Moghul.

In Bengal the English had been king-makers without one reference to the sovereign power. In the very Punjab itself, the Mahrattas, invited to his aid by Ghazi-ud-din, came and mastered the length and breadth of the land. In truth, their star was in its zenith. Even in the Dekkan, despite the help of a French force under Monsieur Bussy-by far the ablest commander France ever sent to the East--Salabut-Jung could with difficulty keep in the field against them.

And France was beginning to find her hands full. War had been declared in Europe between her and England, and in 1758 the Comte de Lally, a man of great reputation, was sent out avowedly with the intention of breaking the English power in the East.

A bit of a braggadocio was Lally, and all unversed in Oriental likes and dislikes. He began ill by ousting Bussy, in whom the French allies believed utterly, much as the English allies believed in Clive. The secret of this belief may be evolved from the tale of the taking of Bobbili. It was an old fort held by an old family of Rajputs, and Bussy called on it to yield, a.s.saulted it for three days, and finally, on the third night, sounded "cease firing," and waited for the morning to deliver his final blow.

Not a sound disturbed the silence of the night. The primrose dawn showed pale, the old fort rising stern against it. But the gates were open. Bussy entered with caution. The sentries at their posts were dead, the streets were empty, but in the arcades men lay sleeping their last sleep.

The palace doorkeepers were on duty--dead! As he and his staff hurried through the narrow pa.s.sages, they could see through dark archways women lying huddled up in each other's arms--dead! The Hall of Audience was reached at last; and there, each in his place, the courtiers had drawn their last breath. But the chief was not on the throne; that was occupied by a year-old boy-baby, the beloved heir, playing unconcernedly with the heron's plume of his dead father, who, with his sword through his heart, lay with his head at the feet of his little son. Beside him was the only other living soul in Bobbili, the oldest inhabitant of the town.

Youth and age! The lesson was not unlearnt by Bussy, and Bobbili remains a chieftainship to this day.

Lally, however, was of different mettle. To him, surrounded by well-born, fashionable French officers, all things Eastern were beneath contempt. What was a Brahmin that he should not do what he was told to do, even though the order involved his being yoked cart-fellow with a sweeper?

It was not conducive to anything but discipline; and discipline in India is limited, like all other things, by caste.

Small wonder, then, that, opposed to such a leader as Captain, afterwards Sir Eyre Coote (for Clive could not leave Bengal), the French fortunes gradually failed, until in 1761 all hold on India was lost by the taking of Pondicherry. Poor Lally! He had pitted himself against Orientalism, and he failed miserably. Yet, once again, he did not deserve to be dragged to execution on a dung-cart for having been "insolent to His Majesty King Louis XVth's other officers" (which was a true count), "and for treason to His Majesty himself" (which was false). Of how many reputations has not India unjustly been the grave?

Truly one can echo Lally's last words: "Tell my judges that G.o.d has given me grace to pardon them: but if I were to see them again, that grace might go."

It is a wonderfully human speech. One can forgive him much for it, but one cannot forgive his judges as he did; deep down, their meanness, their lack of wide outlook, rankles.

While Eyre Coote, however, was bringing the French power to its end for ever, Clive was consolidating the British hold in Bengal; and still under the stress of utterly uncongenial coadjutors.

"I cannot help feeling," he writes to the Select Committee, "that had the expedition miscarried you would have laid the whole blame upon me." And this was true.

The influx into Calcutta of close on 800,000, paid according to treaty from Suraj-ud-daula's treasure chest--which after all only contained, revenues counted, something under 7,000,000--seems to have roused rapacity on all sides. It is worthy of note, however, that Clive's part in the squabble which ensued is invariably on the side of justice. When Admiral Watson claimed his share of the loot as an actual, though not a formal member of the Select Committee, Clive at once saw the reasonableness of the claim, and set an example--which was not followed--of handing over his share of the additional portion which had to be made up. He also fought strenuously, and overcame, an attempt on the part of the military to exclude the navy from any share in the plunder. Indeed, his reply to the "Remonstrance and Protest"

sent him by the soldiers is worthy of quotation.

"How comes it," he asks, "that a promise of money from the Nawab _entirely negotiated by me_ can be deemed by you a matter of right and property?... It is now in my power to return to the Nawab the money already advanced, and leave it to his option whether he will perform his promise or not. You have stormed no town and found no money there; neither did you find it on the plain of Pla.s.sey. In short, gentlemen, it pains me to remind you that what you are to receive is entirely owing to the care I took of your interests."

So, after pointing out that, but for this care, the Company would only have awarded them at the outside six months' pay, he finishes by upbraiding them with their disrespect and ingrat.i.tude, and placing the officers who brought him the remonstrance under arrest.

Now this letter, frank and straightforward, enables us to see the position as Clive saw it. The army was purely a mercenary army. From the day on which the English had sided with the Nawab of Arcot it always had been mercenary. The natives had paid their allies. The question as to the advisability of this did not come in; the fact remained. Therefore, on the supposition that Suraj-ud-daula's wealth was enormous, enormous fees had been asked.

Blame, therefore, could only be given for rapacity, not for the actual taking of any fee. And the advantage to the Company of what had been accomplished was so incalculable that no complaint from _it_ was possible.

It had been an easy task to place Mir-Jaffar on the throne, but it required all Clive's will-power to induce him to do as he was bid. The spoliation of Suraj-ud-daula's treasury had left the former in comparative poverty, and he resented being made by Clive to fulfil his engagements under the treaty. Still, he could not afford to quarrel with one who maintained the peace by crushing rebellion, apparently, by his mere presence.

Just, however, as he was hesitating over an attempt at independence, news came that the Wazir of Oude was marching upon Bengal, and at the same time an envoy of the Mahrattas appeared, demanding 240,000 arrears of tribute. Fear threw him again into Clive's arms, who, however, had by this time come to see that in choosing Mir-Jaffar as Nawab, he had chosen one who would always be a thorn in the side of good government.

"He has no talent," he writes, "for gaining the love and confidence of his officers. His mismanagement of the country ... might have proved fatal ... no less than three rebellions were on foot at one time."

Still, by unceasing efforts, Clive is able to report in 1758 that the Nawab seems now "so well fixed in his government as to be able, with a small degree of prudence, to maintain himself quietly in it." Under better management, money was flowing in, and the general outlook seemed bright. In the same year Clive was by popular acclaim appointed Governor of Bengal.

The Directors in London had unaccountably overlooked him, possibly because he ought really to have returned to Madras, but the Council in India felt that, without his personal influence with Mir-Jaffar, their position was critical. The whole English position was, in truth, at this time dubious. The French had been at this period successful on the Coromandel Coast, and the prince-royal of Delhi, having quarrelled with his father, had left the court, and was on his way with a large army to claim the viceroyalty of Bengal. Now, open defiance of the claims of the Great Moghul family was rank sacrilege. Mir-Jaffar, with a half-eye to ridding himself somehow of British influence, professed horror. Clive's thumb, however, was over him, and escape impossible.

The prince-royal was curtly told that, as rebel to his father, he had no authority, and when the Wazir of Oude arrived in support of the claim, both he and the prince were as curtly and decidedly beaten.

Mir-Jaffar was now full of grat.i.tude, and determined to give Clive (who, as a recognised official of the Court, ought to have had one) a _jaghir_, or grant of land for services done. No high official of any native ruler is without one. But Mir-Jaffar was cunning. The _zemindari_, or land subject to revenue, which, under pressure, he had given to the Company was, he saw, really a screw which might be used against him at any time by refusal to pay the just dues.

He therefore hit on the happy idea of killing two birds with one stone. He would give the quit-rent of this to Clive, and leave him and his Company to fight it out between themselves! It really was very ingenious, very acute, as the opposition the plan aroused in the Council clearly proved. It is, in fact, amusing to read the many arguments advanced against it; all of which are in reality founded on the Company's inward determination to use the quit-rent as a set-off against the Nawab.

He, however, had a perfect right to do as he did, and Clive himself is not to be blamed for sticking to a bargain which gave him some hold of his enemies and detractors. And yet when, after annihilating a Dutch expedition, and forcing on the promoters as conditions of peace that they should never again introduce or enlist troops or raise fortifications in India, Clive announced his intention of going to England on leave, the best part of Calcutta was on its knees to him begging him to reconsider his resolution.

Without him Mir-Jaffar was a broken reed.

And the Nawab himself was as urgent in appeal. Without Clive's help, how could he hope to keep the constant encroachments of the Company's servants within bounds?

But Clive was obdurate. He was clear-sighted, and he saw beyond the present. He saw, as he himself writes, that what the future might bring "was too extensive for a mere mercantile company," and he was eager to get home to impress England with his belief, and induce her to stretch out her right hand and take the rich heritage which might be hers. Whether in strict morality she had a right to do this is another matter. Clive thought she had, and in determining the point there can be no doubt whatever that (as he himself writes, "with a thorough knowledge of this country's Government, and of the genius of its people, acquired by two years' experience") one of the chief factors which weighed with him was his conviction that the people themselves "would rejoice in so happy an exchange as that of a mild for a despotic Government."

And that the British Government would be mild was by every evidence part of Clive's faith in himself and in his country. The natives loved him. Nowhere in all his history is there one hint of cruelty in his treatment of them, unless (as in the case of Omichand) hot anger at treachery rose up in him.

"He was the greatest villain upon earth--I would do it again a hundred times over."