Rulers of India: Lord Clive Part 7

[Footnote 1: One anecdote will demonstrate the extent of the 'lofty moral nature' attributed by Clive to Mr. Vansittart. After Clive had been a year or so in England he wrote to Vansittart requesting him to select for him and despatch to him an elephant, as he wished to present one to the King. Vansittart chose and despatched the elephant for presentation to his Majesty, not as a gift from Clive, but as from himself.]

His capacity for rule was put to the test very soon after he had a.s.sumed the reins of office. Those reins had not, as I have said, been handed to him by Clive. He had taken them from Mr. Holwell at the very end of July (1760). In the interval an event had occurred which had changed the general position in Bengal. Five months after Clive had quitted Calcutta (July 2, 1760) Miran, the only son of the Subahdar, Mir Jafar, was struck dead by lightning. The reader may recollect the pa.s.sage in his letter to Mr. Pitt, wherein Clive referred to this young man. He had described him as 'so cruel, worthless a young fellow, and so apparently an enemy to the English, that it will be almost unsafe trusting him with the succession.' If another successor, with an unquestionable t.i.tle, had been immediately available, the death of Miran would have been no calamity. But there was no such successor. The next son in order of succession had seen but thirteen summers. Outside of that boy and his younger brothers were many claimants, not one of them with an indefeasible t.i.tle. Mir Jafar himself {151}was older even than his years. It devolved then, with the tacit consent of the n.o.bles, on the Council at Calcutta, to nominate the successor to Miran. Such was the state of affairs when Mr. Vansittart arrived, and took his seat as President of the Council.

It happened that there were in Bengal at this time two officers who had rendered conspicuous service to the State, Majors Calliaud and Knox. During the very month in which Clive had quitted Calcutta, these officers had marched with such English troops and sipahis as were available, to a.s.sist in the repelling of an invasion made by the t.i.tular King of Delhi, prompted, it was believed, by Miran, and had repulsed, with great loss to the enemy, an attempt made to storm the city of Patna. Vansittart, who knew Calliaud well alike as a friend and as a man trusted by Clive, summoned him to attend the Council upon the deliberations of which the future of Bengal depended. The discussions were long and somewhat heated. The party in the Council which represented most accurately the opinions of Clive, as rendered in his letter to Mr. Pitt, already referred to,[2] was of opinion that whilst Mir Jafar should be allowed to reign during the remainder of his life, opportunity should be taken of his death to transfer the direct {152}administration to the English. If this opportunity had been taken to carry out some such policy it is probable that the evils which followed would have been avoided.

[Footnote 2: Clive's letter had been written during the life of Miran. After detailing his character and the growing infirmities of Mir Jafar, he had added: 'so small a body as 2000 Europeans will secure us against any apprehensions from either the one or the other; and, in case of their daring to be troublesome, enable the Company to take the sovereignty upon themselves.']

The discussions were still proceeding when there arrived an envoy from the Subahdar, his son-in-law, Mir Muhammad Kasim, a man of ability, tact, great persuasive powers, no scruple, and, in a certain sense, a patriot. Mir Kasim had coveted the succession vacant by the death of Miran. He had divined the plans of the English; he hated them as the enemies of the race of conquerors who had ruled Bengal and its people for centuries. He despised them as venal: and he had resolved to use them for his own advantage. He had brought with him a bag full of promises, and, though nominally the representative of Mir Jafar, had come resolved to work for his own interests.

Admitted into the secret deliberations of the Council, Mir Kasim soon realized that, with the single exception of Major Calliaud, he could buy them all. Even the scrupulousness of Mr. Vansittart vanished before his golden arguments. He bought them. For certain specified sums of money to be paid by him to each member of Council,[3] these official Englishmen covenanted to dethrone their ally of Pla.s.sey, Mir Jafar, and to seat on the _masnad_ his son-in-law, Mir Kasim. Three days after the signature of the treaty Mir {153}Kasim set out to make his preparations for the coming event, and two days afterwards Mr.

Vansittart started for Murshidabad to break the news to Mir Jafar.

His very first official act had been a violation of the principle prescribed to him by Clive as the one the non-indulgence in which would secure the English from all danger.

[Footnote 3: He included even Major Calliaud, but without the consent, and after the departure from India, of that officer.]

The events which followed must be stated very briefly. Vansittart obtained from Mir Jafar his resignation. The one condition stipulated by the old man was that thenceforth he should reside, under the protection of the English, at Calcutta, or in its immediate vicinity.

For that city he started the following morning (September 19). Mir Kasim proceeded to Patna to complete the arrangements which had followed the repulse of the invasion of Bihar by the troops of Shah Alim, and was there formally installed by Shah Alim himself as Subahdar of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa.

Mir Kasim possessed all the capacities of a ruler. He knew thoroughly the evils under which the three provinces were groaning, and he proceeded with all the energy of a nature which never tired to reform them. He moved his capital to Mungir, a town with a fortress, on the right bank of the Ganges, commanding Northern and Eastern Bihar, and nearly midway between Calcutta and Benares. He then proceeded to reform his infantry on the English system, enlisting in his service two well-known soldiers of mixed or Armenian descent, Samru and {154}Markar, to command brigades of their own, and to aid in the training of the other soldiers. So far he achieved success. But when he proceeded to alleviate the misery of his people, he found that the fatal gift of the salt monopoly enabled the English to thwart all his efforts. For not only did the English use the authority they possessed to the great impoverishment of the soil, but they gave to their friends and dependents licences exempting from the payment of duty in such profusion, that the people of Bengal and Bihar suffered to an extent such as, in the present day, can with difficulty be credited. Never, on the one side, was there so insatiable a determination to become rich, no matter what misery might be thereby caused to others; never, on the other, a more honest endeavour, by sacrifices of any kind, to escape the ruin caused by such cruel exactions.

At last, when he had exhausted appeal after appeal to the Calcutta authorities, Mir Kasim recognized that his only chance of escape from the pressure too hard to be borne, was to appeal to the G.o.d of Battles. He was ready; the English, he believed, were not. He had excellent fighting material; generals who would not betray him. On the other hand, he knew that Clive and Calliaud had quitted India, and he did not believe that either had his equal amongst the men on the spot. Accordingly, just after he had received a demand from Calcutta, compliance with which would have completed the ruin then {155}impending, he took the bold step of abolishing all transit duties, and of establishing free-trade throughout his territories.

Antic.i.p.ating the consequences of this bold act, he notified to his generals to be prepared for any movement the English might make.

Here, in the s.p.a.ce allotted,[4] it must suffice to state that the English, amazed that such a worm as the Subahdar of the three provinces should dare to question their commands, sent two of their number to remonstrate with him. But, whilst they were negotiating, another Englishman, one of their own clique, a civil officer named Ellis, furious at the idea of stooping to negotiate, made preparations to seize the important city of Patna. At the head of a small force he did surprise (June 25, 1763) that city during the hours before daybreak, but the garrison of the citadel and of a large stone building refused to admit him. Little caring for this, he permitted his men to disperse to plunder. Meanwhile the commander of the Subahdar's troops, Mir Mehdi Khan, had started for Mungir to represent to his master the turn events had taken. On his way thither, a few miles from the city, he encountered the troops in his master's service commanded by Markar, the Armenian. Markar, as in duty bound, at once marched on Patna, found the English still plundering, drove them out of the city, and forced them to take refuge in a factory outside of it. {156}There he besieged them, and thence he forced them to retreat (June 29). Meanwhile the Subahdar had despatched his other brigade, under Samru, to Baksar, to cut off the retreat of the English, whilst he urged Markar to follow them up.

Markar followed, caught, and attacked them between the two places--the 1st of July--and completely defeated them. The English, of whom there were 300, aided by 2,500 natives, fought with their usual courage; but they were badly led, were discouraged, and were completely beaten. Those who did not fall on the field were taken prisoners, re-conveyed to Patna, and were there eventually put to death.

[Footnote 4: For a detailed account of the events preceding and following this action on the part of Mir Kasim, the reader is referred to the author's _Decisive Battles of India_, New Edition, pp. 133-174.]

Such was the mode in which the war began. Had not the English possessed, though they knew it not until experience had taught them, a commander not inferior to any of the men who had done so much for the glory of their country in the East, it is probable that Mir Kasim, who, according to a contemporary writer,[5] 'was trained to arms,' and who 'united the gallantry of the soldier with the sagacity of the statesman,' would have driven them to their ships.

[Footnote 5: The author of an admirable book, written at the time, ent.i.tled, _Transactions in India from 1756 to 1783_.]

From such a fate they were saved by the skill, the devotion, the supreme military talents of Major John Adams. This officer, placed in command, defeated Mir Kasim's army, after a very b.l.o.o.d.y battle, at Katwa (July 19); again, a few days later, after a most stubborn resistance, at Gheria. But neither {157}of these battles was decisive of the war. When, however, the month following, Adams stormed the immensely strong position of Undwa Nala, defended by 40,000 men, and captured 100 pieces of cannon, Mir Kasim recognized that the war was over. He made no attempt to defend either Rajmahal, Mungir, or Patna.

On the fall of the latter city (November 6) he fled to Oudh to take refuge there with the Nawab-Wazir, and to instigate him to espouse his cause.

It is only necessary to add that he succeeded in persuading that prince to attempt the venture. He attempted it, however, only to repent his audacity, for, after much manoeuvring, the English, led by Munro, afterwards Sir Hector--who, after an interval of the incapable Carnac, had succeeded Adams, killed by the climate and the fatigues of the campaign--inflicted a crushing defeat upon him on the plains of Baksar (October 23, 1764); then Munro, pursuing his victorious course, occupied successively Benares, Chanar, and Allahabad. In March, 1765, the English overran Oudh, occupying Lucknow and Faizabad; then went on to beat the enemy at Karra, and again at Kalpi on the Jumna. Then the Nawab-Wazir, 'a hopeless wanderer,' threw himself on the mercy of the conquerors. These behaved to him with conspicuous generosity, repaid by his successors in late years. The English frontier was, however, not the less advanced, practically, as far as Allahabad. Such was the military position when Clive returned to Calcutta as Governor in May, 1765.

{158}Meanwhile the English, on the outbreak of the war with Mir Kasim, had restored Mir Jafar, receiving the usual gratuities for themselves and stipulating for exemptions from all duties except two and a half per cent. on salt. As for Mir Kasim, it is only necessary to add that he died some years later at Delhi in extreme poverty.

With all his faults he was a patriot.

{159}

CHAPTER XIII THE PURIFYING OF BENGAL

When Clive quitted England for Bengal (June 4, 1764) he knew only that the war with Mir Kasim was raging, and that Mir Jafar had been reinstated in his position. It was not until he reached Madras, the 10th of April following, that he learned that Mir Kasim had been finally defeated, that his followers had submitted, that Mir Jafar was dead, and that the Nawab-Wazir of Oudh had thrown himself on the clemency of the English. In the interval of twenty-three days which elapsed before his arrival in Calcutta (May 3), he had time, in consultation with the two members of the Select Committee who accompanied him, Messrs. Sykes and Sumner, to deliberate regarding the course of action which it would behove him to adopt on his arrival there.[1]

[Footnote 1: The other two were General Carnac and Mr. Verelst.]

One of his first acts on arrival was to remodel the army. He placed General Carnac at its head, divided the European infantry into three battalions, gave regimental commands to two officers who had accompanied him from England, and regulated all the {160}superior appointments in a manner the best adapted, in his opinion, to secure efficiency.

He dealt likewise with the Civil Service. Nothing had impressed Clive more than the evil effects of the predominance of venality and corruption during the rule which had followed his first departure, and he was resolved to put them down with a strong hand. He found, on his landing, a subject which gave him the opportunity he desired for showing publicly the bent of the line of conduct he intended to pursue.

Four months before his return, Mir Jafar, worn out by anxiety and trouble, had pa.s.sed away. His position had become degraded, even in his own eyes. From having been, as he was on the morrow of Pla.s.sey, the lord of three rich provinces, he had become, to use the words of a contemporary Englishman,[2] 'a banker for the Company's servants, who could draw upon him as often and to as great an amount as they pleased.'

[Footnote 2: Mr. Scrafton. See Scrafton's _Letters_.]

We have seen how the members of Council had benefited pecuniarily by the elevation of Mir Jafar to the _masnad_ in 1757; by that of his successor in 1763; by Mir Jafar's re-elevation the same year. The opportunity of again selecting a successor was not to be pa.s.sed over without their once again plunging their hands in the treasury of Murshidabad. They found that there were two candidates for the vacant office, the son of Miran, and therefore grandson of Mir Jafar, and the eldest surviving son of that {161}Nawab. The decision arrived at by the Council, then reduced by vacancies to eight members, was to sell the succession to the candidate who should bid the highest price for it. They decided in favour of the son of Mir Jafar, for, although illegitimate, he was of an age at which he could act on his own authority; the other was a minor, whose revenues would have to be accounted for. In return for their complaisance, it was agreed that they should receive a sum of money, to be divided as they might arrange, close upon ten lakhs of rupees; in addition, there was to be paid another sum, just over ten lakhs, for secret services rendered by one of their number, Mr. Gideon Johnstone, and by a Muhammadan, Muhammad Riza Khan, who also, in pursuance of the arrangement, was nominated Deputy-Nawab. This shameful bargain was signed, sealed, and delivered on the 25th of February, little more than two months before Lord Clive landed.

An order from the India Office, which reached Calcutta just thirteen days before the death of Mir Jafar, and which prohibited--by a new covenant, to be signed by all the Civil Servants in India--the acceptance by such servants of presents of any kind from the natives of India, greatly strengthened the hands of Clive in dealing with this transaction. Finding that in the Council itself he would be subjected to much cavilling, he at once superseded its action by declaring (May 7) that the Select Committee[3] had been const.i.tuted.

He then, with that Committee, {162}a.s.sumed the whole powers of the Government, took an oath of secrecy, and had a similar oath administered to the only two of his colleagues who were present. He then set himself to examine all the matters connected with the succession to the office of Subahdar of the three provinces.

[Footnote 3: See Chapter XI.]

He had to deal with men whom a long course of corruption had rendered absolutely shameless. Charged by Clive with having violated the orders of their masters in accepting presents after such acceptance had been prohibited, they replied that they had taken Clive himself as their model, and referred to his dealings with Mir Jafar in 1757, and afterwards at Patna, when he accepted the famous jagir. The reply naturally was that such presents were then permitted, whereas now they were forbidden. Clive added, among other reasoning, that then there was a terrible crisis; that for the English and Mir Jafar it was then victory or destruction, whereas now there was no crisis; the times were peaceful, the succession required no interference. He again charged the members of Council with having put up the Subahdar for sale to the highest bidder, in order that they might put the price of it into their own pockets, and with having used indecent haste to complete the transaction before his arrival.

Clive could at the moment do no more than expose these men, now practically powerless. He forced them, however, to sign the new covenants. But his treatment of them rankled in their minds. They {163}became his bitterest enemies, and from that time forward used all the means at their disposal to hara.s.s, annoy, and thwart him.

When, finally, he drove them from the seats they had disgraced, in the manner presently to be related, they carried their bitterness, their reckless audacity, and their slanderous tongues to England, there to vent their spleen on the great founder of British India.

Having silenced these corrupt men, Clive turned his attention to the best means of regulating, on fair terms, commercial interests between the native and the foreigner. He soon recognized that the task of Hercules when he was set to cleanse the stables of King Augeas was light in comparison with the task he had undertaken. In the first place he was greatly hampered by the permission which the Court of Directors had granted to their Civil Servants to engage in private trade. So poorly paid were they, indeed, that private trade, or a compensation for it, had become necessary to them to enable them to live decently. The proposed compensation was afterwards adopted of fixing their salaries on a scale which would take away all temptation to indulge in other methods of obtaining money. Vainly did Clive press upon the Court the adoption of this alternative. Amongst our countrymen there is one cla.s.s whose business it is to rule; but there are often other cla.s.ses which aspire to that privilege, and which seize the opportunity afforded them to exercise power, but whose members possess neither the education, the enlightenment, nor the turn {164}of mind to do so with success. Of this latter cla.s.s were the men who had become the Directors of the East India Company. These men possessed no prescience; they were quite unable to make a correct forecast; they could consider only the present, and that dimly. They could not realize that the world was not standing still, and they would have denounced that man as a madman who should have told them that the splendid daring of Clive had made them the inheritors of the Mughal empire. Seeing only as far as the tips of their noses, these men declined to increase the salaries of their servants or to prohibit private trade.

Hercules could bend to his process of cleansing the stables of the King of Elis, the rivers Alpheus and Peneus. Clive could not bend the Court of Directors. The consequence was that his labour was great, his success incomplete. The utmost he could do, and did do, was to issue an order abrogating the privilege, used by the Civil Servants to the ruin of the children of the soil, to grant pa.s.ses for the transit of merchandize free of duty; restricting such privilege to certain authorities named and defined. Upon the private trade of the civilians he imposed restrictions which minimized as far as was possible, short of its abolition, the evils resulting from permission to trade, bringing it in fact to a great extent under the control of the Government. In both these respects his reforms were wider, and went deeper, than those which Mir Kasim had vainly asked from Mr.

Vansittart and his Council.

With regard to the salt monopoly, Clive had made {165}investigations which proved that the trade in that commodity had been conducted in a manner which, whilst securing enormous profits for the few, had pressed very hardly on the many. He endeavoured to reduce this evil by placing the trade on a settled basis which, whilst it would secure to the natives a supply of the article at a rate not in excess of that which the poor man could afford, would secure to the servants of the Company fixed incomes on a graduated scale. His scheme, he knew, was far from being perfect, but it was the best he could devise in the face of the refusal of the India Office to increase salaries, and certainly it was a vast improvement on the system it superseded.

Whilst it secured to the Company's servants in all departments an adequate, even a handsome, income, it reduced the price of salt to the natives to an amount from ten to fifteen per cent. below the average price to them of the preceding twenty years.

This accomplished, Clive proceeded to reconst.i.tute the Calcutta Council. According to the latest orders then in existence this Council was composed of a president and sixteen members: but the fact of a man being a member of Council did not prevent him from accepting an agency in other parts of the Company's territories. The result was that many of the members held at the same time executive and supervising offices. They controlled, as councillors, the actions which they had performed as agents. There had been in consequence great laxity, much wrongdoing, complete failure of justice. Clive remedied {166}this evil by ruling that a member of Council should be that and nothing more. He encountered great opposition, even amongst the members of the Select Committee, but he carried through his scheme.

Of this Select Committee it may here be stated that Clive used its members solely as a consultative committee. Those members had their duties, not always in Calcutta. Thus, whilst Carnac was with the army, Sykes acted at Murshidabad as the Governor's agent; Verelst supervised the districts of Burdwan and Mednipur: Mr. Sumner alone remained with Clive. This gentleman had been nominated to succeed Clive in case of his death or resignation. But it had become evident to Clive long before the period at which we have arrived that he was in every way unfitted for such an office. Infirm of purpose, sympathizing to a great extent with the corrupt party, wanting in energy, Sumner had given Clive but a slack support. This was the case especially in the matter of the reform of the Council just narrated.

Pursuing his inquiries Clive soon discovered that the administration of the civil districts and divisions by the Company's officers had been as faulty and corrupt as it well could be. The case, after examination and report, was tersely put by the Court of Directors in their summary of the state of Bengal on his arrival there. They described the three provinces, Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, as 'a _subah_'[4] disarmed, with {167}a revenue of almost two millions sterling, at the mercy of our servants, who had adopted an unheard-of ruinous principle, of an interest distinct from that of the Company.

This principle showed itself in laying their hands upon everything they did not deem the Company's property. To reform the abuses so described Clive invoked the a.s.sistance of those who ought to have been immediately concerned in the introduction of juster administration. He invited the young Nawab and his councillors to Calcutta, and held with them long conferences. The disclosures which followed more than confirmed the worst fears he had entertained regarding the all but universal corruption of the members of the Civil Service. It was in consequence of these disclosures that he compelled the retirement from the Council, as he had found it composed on his arrival, of five of its members, and suspended the remaining three. He filled up the vacancies thus caused by indenting on Madras for a sufficient number of civilians to raise the total number of councillors to twelve.

[Footnote 4: The word 'Subah' is used here to mean one of the large divisions of the Mughal empire.]

These sweeping reforms produced their natural effect. Clive became hated. The civilians and their friends and accomplices acted according as their natures were dominated by fear or by love of revenge. Of the former, one, greatly inculpated, the chief agent of Patna, committed suicide. Of the latter, many formed amongst themselves an a.s.sociation, of which the following were some of the princ.i.p.al articles:--'all visits to the Governor were forbidden; no {168}invitations from him or from the members of the Select Committee were to be accepted; the gentlemen coming from Madras were to be treated with neglect and contempt; every member who should deviate from these rules would be denounced and avoided.' At a later period their hostility indicated itself in a more serious manner.

Of the young Subahdar Clive formed but a poor opinion. He seemed to him a nullity. The one man of ability about him, the minister Muhammad Riza Khan, the chief of those who had been bribed to raise him to the _masnad_, was absolutely without scruple. Clive was most unwilling to trust the political education of the Subahdar to such a man, or to others about him who possessed his unscrupulousness but did not share his ability. But it was difficult to discover a better man; and Clive had ultimately to be content with the endeavour to lessen his influence by a.s.sociating with him Raja Dulab Ram--the general who had conspired with Mir Jafar before Pla.s.sey--and with the head of the great banking-house of the Set family. But the influence of Riza was too deeply founded to be lightly shaken.

The introduction of the reforms I have noted caused a great strain on the const.i.tution of the ill.u.s.trious man whose iron will carried them through. He had to fight against a faction of interested men, a.s.sailed by abuse, thwarted by opposition, and opposed secretly by at least one of the colleagues sent to support him. He was absolutely alone in the contest. {169}But his brave heart and his resolute will carried him through. It was far more trying than fighting a battle, or planning and carrying through a campaign. In those cases there is always the excitement of constant action; the daily, often hourly, survey of the positions; the _certaminis gaudia_ so eloquently described by Attila; 'the holiday,' as that great conqueror called it, 'of the battle-field.' In the daily examinations of deeds which call a blush to the cheek, and of devising measures to repress them in the future, Clive found none of these excitements. But though the work was dreary and heartrending, though, by reason of the opposition he encountered, it called into action all his mental vigour, all his intelligence, all his determination, it was terribly exhausting. It wore him out. Well might Sir John Malcolm write that it may be questioned 'whether any of Clive's many and great achievements called forth more of that active energy and calm firmness for which he was distinguished than was evinced in effecting the reform of the Civil Service of Bengal.'

There accompanied, moreover, in all his civil contests, another mental trial. From causes which have been stated none of the reforms, he constantly felt, could be stamped as 'thorough.' They were none of them complete. He did much; he broke down corruption; he laid the foundation for a permanent and perfect reform; he checked an enormous evil; he infused a healthier tone into the younger members of the service; he aided largely towards {170}the rehabilitation of the British name, then sunk deep in the mire. But the want of intuition, of foresight, of the Court of Directors rendered it impossible for him to do more. That ultimate aim was to come after him; his principles were to triumph; his hara.s.sing work had not been done in vain. It was by adopting in their entirety the principles of Lord Clive that the Civil Service of India became one of the n.o.blest services the world has ever seen; pure in its honour; devoted in the performance of its duties; conspicuous for its integrity and ability.

It has produced men whose names would have given l.u.s.tre to any administration in the world, and it continues to produce them still.

The work of a great man lives after him. There is not a member of the Civil Service of India who does not realize that for them Clive did not live in vain.