3. Sweeping With the Broom of Plunder
[x]
Siraj ud-Daula led his troops down to Calcutta at far greater speed than anyone imagined possible. Mughal armies were usually notoriously slowmoving, often managing no more than three miles a day; but Siraj urged his forces forward, making some 130 miles in ten days despite the drenching tropical heat of a Bengali June.
Governor Drake believed for several days after the fall of the Kasimbazar factory that the new Nawab was merely bluffing and would never dare to attack Fort William. So poor was his intelligence that he continued to think this even as Siraj’s forces were nearing his outer defences. Before the Company’s Council at Calcutta had managed even to discuss any coherent defence strategy, the first of Siraj’s troops were sighted on 13 June approaching the northern suburbs near Dumdum, and advancing steadily towards the Maratha Ditch.
Drake was not just incompetent, he was also deeply unpopular. According to William Tooke, one of the Calcutta civilians who volunteered to join the town militia, Drake was such a divisive figure that it was practically impossible for him to organise a coherent defence: ‘Mr Drake’s conduct of late years had without doubt been very blameable,’ he wrote, carrying on ‘that indiscreet (not to say any worse) affair with his sister, is a circumstance that can never be forgiven him; for the crime was not only itself bad, but after that, every man of character and good sense shunned and avoided him, which was the cause of his running after and keeping very indifferent company, and of committing a thousand little meannesses and low actions, far unbecoming any man, much more a Governour.’1
Nor was Drake’s military commander, Colonel Minchin, any more reassuring. As one survivor later wrote, ‘Touching the military capacity of our commandant, I am a stranger. I can only say we were either unhappy in his keeping it to himself if he had any, as neither I, nor I believe anyone else, was witness to any part of his conduct that spoke or bore the appearance of his being the commanding military officer.’2
Watts estimated that Siraj was marching on Calcutta with a force of around 70,000. Against these Drake could field 265 uniformed Company troops and an armed but untrained militia of 250 civilians, a grand total of 515 men in arms.3 Of these ‘there were about 100 Armenians who were entirely useless, and then there was a number among the militia boys and slaves who were not capable of holding a musket, so that in fact our garrison did not consist of more than 250 fighting men, officers included’.4 In such a situation, grovelling apologies and negotiations would probably have been the wisest strategy. Instead, Drake began, belatedly, to build a series of batteries guarding the principal crossing places over the Maratha Ditch.
The idea of demolishing some of the buildings encroaching upon and overlooking the Fort was mooted, but quickly rejected. According to the account of Captain Grant, the Adjutant General, ‘Such was the levity of the times that severe measures were not esteemed necessary’:
Our Intelligence of the Nabob’s Motions, and numbers, was always very uncertain, and we could never be thoroughly persuaded that he would advance against our Batterys. The most we imagined was that he would form a Blockade and Cut off our Provision until we came to an accommodation …
So little credit was then given, and even to the very last day, that the Nabob would venture to attack us, that it occasion’d a general grumbling to leave any of the European Houses without [the outer perimeter of the defences]. And should it be proposed by any Person to demolish as many Houses as would be necessary to make the Fort defensible, his opinion would have been thought Ridiculous, even had there been sufficient time to execute such a work or powder sufficient to blow them up.5
The ‘levity of the times’ began to dissipate when Siraj ud-Daula arrived in person on 16 June and directed his heavy artillery to begin firing into the town. The first two attempts by Mughal forces to cross the Ditch were driven off with heavy casualties. But by evening, twenty of the defenders were dead and ‘just before dark, the whole body [of the Mughal advance guard had] inclined southward, and successfully crossed the Ditch that surrounds the Black Town, the extent of it being so great, and passable in all parts, that it was impossible to do anything to interrupt them’.6
The following day, the Black Town was comprehensively looted: ‘vast numbers entered our bounds, plundering and setting fire to every house, and by the evening the whole town was surrounded … Several thousands this night got into the great bazaar where they murdered every person they met and plundered and set fire to all the houses.’7 The garrison did not make the slightest effort to protect the Black Town or offer shelter in the fort to the terrified inhabitants. No wonder, then, that by the second day all the Indian support staff had defected, leaving the garrison without lascars to pull the guns, coolies to carry shot and powder, carpenters to build batteries and repair the gun carriages, or even cooks to feed the militia.
On the morning of the 18th, the Mughal advance was repulsed in tough house-to-house street fighting to the north of the Fort, but Siraj’s troops were still making steady progress advancing forward in the east. There, at 3 p.m., Company forces were impelled to retreat from their stronghold at the gaol, with heavy losses: ‘the small party bravely defended it for six hours, till most of the men being wounded, were obliged to retire.’ By the evening, the Mughals had also broken through the Company lines near the Great Tank. The northern and south-west batteries were now both in danger of being cut off and so were quickly abandoned. All Company forces were now compelled to withdraw to the inner line of defence, the Fort itself: ‘The next thing considered of was a disposition for the Defence of the Fort, which was all that was left us now to maintain,’ wrote Captain Grant.
Few expected that the Batterys would have been so suddenly quitted, and most people foresaw that the fall of them would be attended with fatal consequences. For the Enemy’s getting possession of the houses contiguous to the Fort and the Church would command the Bastions and Ramparts, so that it would be impossible to stand at the Guns, exposed to the small arms of such a multitude as would occupy those, especially as the parapets of the [Fort’s] bastions were very low, and the embrasures so wide that they hardly afforded any shelter. We had sandbags, which might in some measure supply this defect, but we were so abandon’d by all sorts of labourers that we could not get them carried upon the ramparts. And our Military and Militia were so harassed for want of rest and refreshment, that it was at first impossible to get them to do anything.8
A late-night Council of War established that there was a maximum of three days’ ammunition left, and that the soldiers were already exhausted and in many cases drunk: ‘Half our men in liquor, no supplies of provisions or water sent out, the drum beat to arms three different times on alarm of the enemy being under the walls, but hardly a man could be got up onto the ramparts.’9
‘Now for the first time we began to look upon ourselves in a dangerous way,’ wrote David Renny of the militia.
We were in a very distressed condition … It is almost impossible to conceive the confusion there was in the Fort there being at least two thousand women and children, nor was there any method to prevent these coming in as the military and militia declared they would not fight unless their families were admitted in the factory. The Enemy began now to fire warmly upon the Fort from all quarters. Our garrison began to murmur for want of provisions having not a single cook in the Fort, notwithstanding there had been several lodged there on purpose to dress their provisions. The whole Garrison was quite fatigued having been under arms great part of the preceding night. Many of the military and militia having got liquor begun to be very mutinous and under no command, having drawn bayonets on several of their officers.
It was now thought necessary to send our ladies on board some of the ships, which was accordingly done. About 12 o’clock [midnight] news was brought us that the Enemy were going to storm the Fort there being ladders preparing close under the range of godowns [warehouses] to the southward. Immediately every person repaired to the curtain [wall] where we heard them at work. Orders were now given to beat to arms but none of the Armenians or Portuguese appeared, having hid themselves in different parts of the Fort. We threw some hand Grenades down amongst the Enemy, which soon dislodged them.10
The following day, the 19th, resistance began to give way to outright panic. The Nawab’s principal general, Mir Jafar Ali Khan, pressed forward with his assault and by noon, when it became known there was only two days’ supply of ammunition left, the majority of the Council argued in favour of abandoning the Fort altogether and retreating to the ships anchored in the river. By 2 p.m., while the Council were still debating their plans for withdrawal, a cannonball burst through the Council Chamber and the meeting broke up ‘with the utmost clamour, confusion, tumult and perplexity’.11 Morale had now hit rock bottom and despairing drunkenness had broken out everywhere. Soon after lunchtime, there began a chaotic evacuation.
As flights of fire arrows poured into the Fort and onto the shore, one ship, the Dodally, headed upriver without orders, to avoid catching fire. The other vessels began to do the same. Thinking the ships were departing without them, the waiting women and children took fright, ran out of the Fort and stampeded down to the shore in an attempt to board and save themselves. All the boats were filled to overcapacity and several capsized.
At that point, ‘many of the gentlemen on shore, who perhaps never dreamt of leaving the factory before everybody else did, immediately jumped into such boats as were at the factory and rowed to the ships. Among those who left the factory in this unaccountable manner were the Governor Mr Drake … [and] Commandant Minchin … This ill-judged circumstance occasioned all the uproar and misfortune which followed.’12 Within an hour, all the ships had weighed anchor and began drifting slowly downstream towards the jungles of the Sunderbans, and the coast beyond.
‘Finding that matters went hard with him,’ wrote Ghulam Hussain Khan, ‘Mr Drake abandoned everything and fled, without so much as giving notice to his countrymen.’
He took shelter on board of a ship, and with a small number of friends and principal persons, he disappeared at once. Those who remained, finding themselves abandoned by their chief, concluded their case must be desperate, yet preferring death to life, they fought it out, until their powder and ball failing at last, they bravely drank up the bitter cup of death; some others, seized by the claws of destiny, were made prisoners.13
The remaining garrison hoped to escape on the Prince George, which was still anchored a little upriver. But early the following morning, the ship ran aground at low tide, and could not be budged. ‘Finding all Retreat cut off, the remaining defenders shut the Gates and were resolved to sell their lives as dear as they could, and fought like mad men.’14
Under the command of the Dublin-born John Zephaniah Holwell, the roughly 150 remaining members of the garrison who had failed to make their escape continued the resistance for one more morning. But the Mughal troops attacked fiercely and, just as Captain Grant had predicted, Mir Jafar sent his sharpshooters with their long-barrelled jezails onto the flat parapet of the church tower and the houses overlooking the ramparts, ‘which being loftier than the walls, and commanding all the bastions, galled us so badly with shot that no man could stand them, they killing or wounding all that appeared in sight, wounding most of our Officers, several of whom after dyed of wounds. The surviving officers were obliged to exert themselves, pistol in hand, to keep the soldiers to their quarters.’15
By mid-afternoon, many more of the defenders were dead, and those that lived were ‘exhausted of strength and vigour’. With only a hundred fighters left on the ramparts, ‘about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the Enemy called out to us not to fire, in consequence to which Holwell shewed a flag of truce, and gave orders for the garrison not to fire’.
Upon which the Enemy in vast numbers came under our walls, and at once began to set fire to the windows and Gates of the Fort which were stopt up with bales of cotton and cloth, and began to break open the Fort Gate, scaling our walls on all sides. This put us in the utmost confusion, some opening the back gate and running into the river, others to take possession of a boat that lay ashore half afloat and half dry. It was so full in an instant that she could not be got off.16
Inside the Fort, Siraj’s forces were now beginning to loot: ‘The factory was in a few minutes filled with the enemy,’ recalled John Cook, ‘who without loss of time began plundering everything they could set their hands on; we were rifled of our watches, buckles, buttons &c but no farther violence used to our persons. The bales of broadcloth, chests of coral, plate and treasure laying in the apartments of the gentlemen who resided in the factory were broke open, and the Moors were wholly taken up in plundering.’17
That evening, having ‘swept the town of Calcutta with the broom of plunder’, Siraj ud-Daula was brought in his litter to visit his new possession.18 He held a durbar in the centre of the Fort where he announced that Calcutta was to be renamed Alinagar, after Imam Ali – appropriately for a prominent city in a Shia-ruled province. He then appointed one of his Hindu courtiers, Raja Manikchand, to be the Fort Keeper of Alinagar and ordered the demolition of Government House, whose beauty he admired, but considered it worthy to be ‘the dwelling of Princes rather than merchants’, apparently mistaking it for the private property of the detested Drake.19 ‘Siraj ud-Daula seemed astonished to find so small a garrison,’ remembered one of the prisoners, ‘and immediately enquired for Mr Drake, with whom he appeared much incensed. Mr Holwell was carried to him with his hands bound, and upon complaining of that usage, the Nabob gave orders for loosing his hands and assured him upon the faith of a soldier that not a hair of our heads should be hurt.’20 He then offered thanksgiving prayers for his success in battle, and was carried out to his tents.
So far, the surrendered garrison had been treated unusually well by Mughal standards: there had been no immediate enslavement, no summary executions, no impaling, no beheading and no torture, all of which would have been, in the Mughal scheme of things, quite routine punishments for rebellious subjects. It was only after Siraj had left that things began to fall apart.
Many in the Company’s garrison were still blind drunk, and in the early evening one intoxicated soldier who was being stripped of his goods became incensed and promptly pulled out a pistol and shot his Mughal plunderer dead. Immediately the tone changed. All the survivors were herded into a tiny punishment cell, eighteen feet long by fourteen feet ten inches wide, with only one small window, little air and less water. The cell was known as the Black Hole. There, according to the Mughal chronicler Yusuf Ali Khan, the officers ‘confined nearly 100 Firangis who fell victim to the claws of fate on that day in a small room. As luck would have it, in the room where the Firangis were kept confined, all of them got suffocated and died.’21
The numbers are unclear, and much debated: Holwell, who wrote a highly coloured account of the Black Hole in 1758, and began the mythologising of the event, wrote that one woman and 145 Company men were shoved inside, of whom 123 died.22 This was clearly an exaggeration. The most painstaking recent survey of the evidence concludes 64 people entered the Black Hole and that 21 survived. Among the young men who did not come out was the nineteen-year-old Stair Dalrymple from North Berwick, who only two years earlier had been complaining of Calcutta’s cost of living and dreaming of becoming Governor.
Whatever the accurate figures, the event generated howls of righteous indignation for several generations among the British in India and 150 years later was still being taught in British schools as demonstrative of the essential barbarity of Indians and illustrative of why British rule was supposedly both necessary and justified. But at the time, the Black Hole was barely remarked upon in contemporary sources, and several detailed accounts, including that of Ghulam Hussain Khan, do not mention it at all. The Company had just lost its most lucrative trading station, and that, rather than the fate of its feckless garrison, was what really worried the Company authorities.23
[x]
The full scale of the disaster represented by the fall of Calcutta became apparent in the weeks that followed.
Everyone soon realised that it changed almost everything: William Lindsay wrote to the future historian of the Company, Robert Orme, that it was ‘a scene of destruction and dissolution … and makes me tremble when I think of the consequences that it will be attended with, not only to every private Gentlemen in India but to the English nation in General. I hardly think all the force we have in India will be sufficient to resettle us here into any footing of security, we now being almost as much in want of everything as when we first settled here.’24
It was not just a loss of lives and prestige, the trauma and the humiliation that horrified the Company authorities, it was above all an economic body blow for the EIC, which could only send its share price into a possibly terminal decline: ‘I would mention what the Company has lost by this melancholy affair,’ wrote Captain Renny. ‘But it is impossible, for though the present loss is immense, yet it will be still more in the consequences, if not immediately resettled.’
The cargoes now expected from England will remain unsold, the ships remain at a great expense of demurrage, the same will be repeated next season. The articles of saltpetre and raw silk which we cannot well be without must now be bought at a high price from the Dutch, French, Prussians and Danes, so must Dacca muslins … to the great loss of the revenue.
The different parts of India will also severely feel the loss of Calcutta, for if I am not mistaken the Coast of Coromandel and Malabar, the Gulf of Persia and Red Sea, nay even Manila, China and Coast of Affrica were obliged to Bengal for taking off their cotton, pepper, drugs, fruits, chank, cowrees, tin too &c: as on the other hand they were supplied from Bengal with what they could not well be without, such as raw silk and its various manufactures, opium, vast quantities of cotton cloth, rice, ginger, turmerick, long pepper &c. and all sorts of other goods.25
News of the fall of Kasimbazar, and a first request for military assistance, reached Madras on 14 July. It was a full month later, on 16 August, that the news of Siraj ud-Daula’s successful attack on Fort William finally arrived. In normal circumstances, Madras would probably have sent a delegation to Murshidabad, negotiations would have taken place, apologies and assurances would have been issued, an indemnity would have been paid and trading would have carried on as before, to the benefit of both sides. But on this occasion, due not to good planning so much as chance, there was another option.
For, as fate would have it, Robert Clive and his three regiments of Royal Artillery had just arrived on the Coromandel Coast at Fort St David, south of Madras, aboard Admiral Watson’s flotilla of fully armed and battle-ready men-of-war. The force was intended to take on the French, not the Nawab of Bengal, and in the discussions that followed several members of Madras Council argued that the fleet should stay in the Coromandel and continue to guard against the French flotilla believed sent from Port Lorient. This was expected any day, along with news of the outbreak of war, and a strong case was made by several Council members that, having lost one major trading station, it would be an act of extreme carelessness on the part of the Company to risk losing a second.
Moreover, Admiral Watson, as a loyal servant of the Crown, initially saw his role to defend British national interests against the French, not to defend the Company’s economic interests from local potentates. But Clive was not going to miss his big chance, especially as he had just lost substantial sums invested both directly in Bengal and indirectly in Company stock. He forcefully, and ultimately successfully, argued for a more aggressive course of action, eventually winning over the other Council members, and persuading Watson to come with him, along with all four of his battleships and a frigate. Watson’s one insistence was to wait until the onset of the monsoon in early October, after which the French were less likely to risk sailing into open waters, and he would have several months’ grace in which to re-establish British interests in Bengal without leaving the Coromandel criminally undefended.26
Within a few weeks, a triumphant Clive was able to write to his father: ‘This expedition, if attended by success, may enable me to do great things. It is by far the grandest of my undertakings. I go with great forces and great authority.’ His masters in Leadenhall Street he addressed in a rather more measured and less egotistical manner: ‘Honourable Gentlemen,’ he wrote. ‘From many hands you will hear of the capture of Calcutta by the Moors, and the chains of misfortunes which have happened to the Company in particular and to the nation in general.’
Every breast seems filled with grief, horror and resentment … Upon this melancholy occasion, the Governour and Council thought proper to summon me to this place. As soon as an expedition was resolved upon, I offered my services which at last was accepted, and I am on the point of embarking on board His Majesty’s squadron with a fine body of Europeans, full of spirit and resentment for the insults and barbarities inflicted on so many British subjects. I flatter myself that this expedition will not end with the retaking of Calcutta only, and that the Company’s estate in these parts will be settled in a better and more lasting condition than ever.27
The Select Committee at Madras also shared Clive’s ambitions: ‘The mere retaking of Calcutta should, we think, be by no means the end of the undertaking,’ they wrote to the directors in London in early October. ‘Not only should [the EIC’s Bengal] settlements and factories be restored, but all their privileges established in full, and ample reparation made for the loss they have lately sustained; otherwise we are of the opinion it would have been better that nothing had been attempted, than to have added the heavy charge of this armament to their former loss, without securing their colonies and trade from future insults and exactions.’28
Two months were filled with detailed planning, refitting ships, loading cannon and preparing stores. The relief force consisting of 785 European troops, 940 sepoys and 300 marines, a greater naval and military force than had ever before been gathered together by the British in India, eventually set sail on 13 October. But the same strong monsoon winds that Watson knew would prevent the French from venturing out of port came close to sinking the entire expedition. As it was, the fleet was immediately scattered. Some ships were blown as far south as Sri Lanka, and even Watson’s flagship, the Kent, took six weeks to reach the point where Clive was able to see the waters of the Bay of Bengal take on the distinctive colour of Ganges silt.29
It was not until 9 December that the first ships of the task force, taking advantage of low tides, turned into the Hughli. By this stage half of Clive’s soldiers had already succumbed to various diseases, including an outbreak of scurvy. Six days later, the Kent dropped anchor at Fulta, where the survivors of the Calcutta debacle had taken shelter on the edge of a malarial swamp, and where just under half of the ragged refugees had already died of fever and were now buried in the alluvial Sunderbans silt.30
Two more of Watson’s ships turned up soon after; while waiting for the remaining two, the Marlborough and Cumberland, which carried the bulk of the expedition’s artillery and troops, Clive wrote to Raja Manikchand, the new Fort Keeper of Alinagar-Calcutta. He announced that he had come with a force of unprecedented size – ‘a larger military force than has ever appeared in Bengal’ and that ‘we are come to demand satisfaction’. But Clive’s threats had little effect. As Ghulam Hussain Khan commented, ‘the British were then known in Bengal only as merchants’, and no one at court ‘had any idea of the abilities of that nation in war, nor any idea of their many resources in a day of reverse’.31
With no reply forthcoming, and disease weakening his ranks by the day, on 27 December Clive’s expedition cast anchor and sailed slowly upriver, still two ships short. They glided silently past coconut groves and through tangled mangrove swamps thick with lotus leaves and full of huge bats and tigers. As they approached the first serious obstacle, the Fort of Budge Budge, whose heavy guns commanded a bend in the river, they disembarked the sepoys, who had a tough march of sixteen hours, wading sometimes breast-high through water, at other times stumbling through jungle or marshy paddy.32
Towards sunset, as they drew near the Fort, Raja Manikchand sprung an ambush, appearing suddenly out of the jungle, attacking from an unexpected direction and achieving complete surprise. The confused skirmish lasted an hour, with high casualties on both sides. Clive was rattled, and was on the verge of ordering a retreat. But the rapid file firing of the army’s new Brown Bess muskets, supported by field artillery, worked its dark magic. As Clive’s nephew Edward Maskelyne recorded, the Mughals ‘were much alarmed at the smartness of our fire, and startled at the appearance of the cannon which they thought it impossible for us to have transported over the ground we had marched the preceding night. Their loss is computed at 200 killed and wounded, 4 Jemidars and 1 elephant killed, and their commander [Raja Manikchand] shot thro the turban.’33
When Manikchand retired, Watson’s ships were free to unleash broadsides on the Fort, which quickly silenced the Mughal guns. As the troops were being unloaded to begin the ground attack, ‘one Strahan, a common sailor, belonging to the Kent’, having drunk too much rum, staggered up the bank, waded over the moat and ‘took into his head to scale a breach that had been made by the cannon of the ships’. Here he was confronted by the garrison, ‘at whom he flourished his cutlass, and fired his pistol. Then having given out three loud huzzas, he cried out, “The place is mine.”’ His comrades rushed to save him and the garrison quickly melted into the night.34
The fleet then proceeded further up the river, and two more of Siraj’s forts were abandoned without a fight.
As dawn broke on 2 January 1757, the squadron came within sight of Fort William. The marines were landed and a single broadside unleashed on the defences. There was a brief exchange of fire, leaving nine men dead, before Manikchand again withdrew: ‘The senseless governor of the place,’ wrote Ghulam Hussain Khan, ‘intimidated by so much boldness, and not finding in himself courage enough to stand an engagement, thought it prudent to decline a nearer approach, and he fled with all his might. The English general [Clive], seeing the enemy disappearing, took possession of the factory and the fort, raised everywhere his victorious standards, and sent the refugee gentlemen, everyone to his ancient abode, and everyone to his own home.’35
People waved. One man hung a Union Jack from a tree;36 but as the sun rose, the full scale of the devastation became apparent: Government House, St Anne’s church and the grand mansions lining the river were all burned-out shells, rising jagged from the loot-littered riverfront like blackened, shattered teeth from a diseased gum. The wharves were derelict; inside the mansions, the gorgeous Georgian furniture, family paintings and even harpsichords had been burned as firewood where they stood in the middle of what had once been drawing rooms. A small mosque had been erected in the eastern curtain wall of the fort.37
Nevertheless, by eight o’clock on the morning of 2 January 1757, this shattered and half-ruined Calcutta was back in the hands of the Company.
[x]
On 3 January, Clive declared war on Siraj ud-Daula in the name of the Company; Watson did the same in the name of the Crown. It was the first time that the EIC had ever formally declared war on an Indian prince: ‘The chess board of time presented a new game,’ noted Ghulam Husain Salim’s account, Riyazu-s-salatin.38
Characteristically, Clive went straight onto the offensive. On 9 January, while the inhabitants repaired their homes, and the engineers began to rebuild the fortifications of Fort William, finally demolishing all the buildings which overlooked its walls, Clive and Watson set off in the Kent to attack Siraj ud- Daula’s principal port, Hughli Bandar, to exact a violent revenge for the destruction of Calcutta. On arrival, they raked the ghats of Hughli with grapeshot, then landed the grenadiers at four o’clock in the evening, seizing the area around the fort. At 2 a.m., under a full moon, they scaled the fortifications with siege ladders. Once inside, they made ‘themselves masters of the place, in less than an hour, with little or no loss, effecting a prodigious slaughter’ of the sleeping garrison. Then they set about looting and burning the port ‘the better to distress the enemy, the more to alarm the province, and to work upon Siraj’s governing passion, Fear. Orders were given for burning the houses, and for destroying, particularly, all the magazines on both sides of the river.’39 Then looting parties fanned out, seizing weapons and burning several villages and their granaries as they went. By evening, they were back behind the walls of Fort William.
Two weeks later, on the 23rd, having gathered together another enormous army 60,000-strong, Siraj ud-Daula again descended on Calcutta. As before, he moved at speed. On 4 February, Clive was surprised by the news that Siraj and his forces were already camping in a pleasure garden on the northern outskirts of Calcutta, just to the north of the walls. Two senior Company negotiators were sent at his invitation to speak with him, but Siraj treated them ‘with such a Mixture of Haughtiness and Contempt, as gave little Hopes of their making any great progress in their Business’.40 The men were invited to return the following day ‘to parley’, but did not do so, anticipating a trap. Instead, Clive again fell back on his favourite tactic from his Carnatic days: a surprise night attack.
Acting with his usual decisiveness, Clive ‘went immediately on board Admiral Watson’s ship, and represented to him the necessity of attacking the Nabob without delay; and desired the assistance of four or five hundred sailors, to carry the ammunition and draw the artillery; which he [Watson] assented to. The sailors were landed about one o’clock in the morning. About two, the troops were under arms, and about four they marched to the attack of the Nabob’s camp.’41
The new day, 5 February 1757, dawned with a thick, early morning winter fog billowing off the river. Silently, ‘we marched with 470 rank & file, 800 sepoys, 6 field pieces, 1 Howitzer & 70 of the train, besides a body of seamen, half of whom were employed in drawing the guns, whilst the other half bore arms,’ wrote Edward Maskelyne in his journal.
At day break, we arrived close to the Nabobs camp before we were challenged, when we received a brisk fire, which was returned by our advance sepoys. The enemy retreated, and we pursued our march through their camp undisturbed till reaching the center of it. Here a body of 300 horses appeared in the fog within 10 yards of the battalion and we gave them two [volleys of] fire by platoons and such havock was made amongst them, that by all accounts not above 13 escaped. After this their whole army began to surround us in great bodies which obliged us to keep them at a distance by a constant fire of musquetry and artillery. We were full 2 hours in marching thro their camp, several charges being made on our rear by the horses; tho not with equal courage to their first.42
By 11 a.m., Clive’s force had returned dispirited to the city, having lost nearly 150 men, including both Clive’s aide-de-camp and his secretary, both of whom were killed by his side: ‘It was the warmest service I ever yet was engaged in,’ Clive wrote to this father, ‘and the attack failed in its main object’ – capturing or killing the Nawab.43 Clive was unsure whether the manoeuvre had been a success or a failure, but suspected the latter. Their guides had got lost in the fog and they had narrowly failed to attack the royal enclosure, shooting wildly into the gloom, unclear if they were hitting or missing their targets. They had also lost two cannon, which they had to leave behind, stuck in the mud of the Nawab’s camp. What they had no idea of was the terror they inspired in Siraj ud-Daula, who only narrowly escaped with his life. Around 1,500 of his Murshidabad infantry were not so lucky, nor were 600 cavalry and four elephants. Ghulam Hussain Khan related how the attack looked from the Mughal point of view: ‘They put out their boats about two in the morning,’ he wrote, ‘and rowed towards the extremity of the enemy camp, where they remained waiting during the latter part of the night.’
At about the dawn of day they landed at the back of the army, and entered the camp, where they leisurely commenced a hot fire, which being repeated by those in the boats, rendered musket balls as common as hail stones, so that vast numbers of men and horses, which happened to be exposed to it, were slain and wounded. Dost Mohammad Khan, who was not only the principal commander, but a man of great personal valour, and one of those most attached to Siraj ud- Daula, was wounded and disabled. Numbers of other officers underwent the same fate; and it is reported that the design was no less than to lay hold of Siraj himself, and to carry him away.
Luckily for him there fell such a foul fog and mist, of the kind called in Hindian a cohessa, and it occasioned such a darkness, that the two men [Clive and Siraj], though ever so close, could not distinguish each other. This darkness made them mistake their way, and missed Siraj ud-Daula’s private enclosure, so that this Prince narrowly escaped. It was observed of the English that they marched steadily, with order and deliberation, as if it had been a review day, firing endlessly on every side, until they arrived at the front of the camp, from whence they returned leisurely to their posts and fortified houses, without suffering the loss of a single man.44
Quite unknown to Clive at the time, his night attack was in fact a decisive turning point. Terrified by the unexpected nature of the assault, Siraj struck camp and retreated ten miles that morning. The following day he sent an ambassador with proposals for peace. Even before the night attack, he had been aware of the damage done to the Bengal economy by the destruction of Calcutta, and he was prepared to be a little generous. But on 9 February he signed the Treaty of Alinagar, which granted almost all the Company’s main demands, restoring all the existing English privileges and freeing all English goods of taxes, as well as allowing the Company to keep their fortifications and establish a mint. His only insistence was that Drake be removed – ‘Tell Roger Drake’ not to ‘disturb our affairs’ – something the Company was more than happy to grant.45
The following day, Siraj ud-Daula began his march back to Murshidabad, leaving Clive and Watson astonished at their own success. Clive was ready to return to Madras, having fulfilled all his war aims with minimum cost and casualties: as he wrote to his father on 23 February: ‘I expect to return very shortly to the coast, as all is over here.’46
For his part, however, Watson reported to the Crown, not the Company, and for him things had just become a great deal more complicated.47 A few days earlier, he had been officially notified of the outbreak of what future generations would call the Seven Years War. Around the world, from Quebec to the Senegal River, from Ohio to Hanover, Minorca to Cuba, hostilities were now finally breaking out between Britain and France in every imperial theatre. Watson’s instructions arrived in a packet from London, with an official copy of the declaration of war and a letter from the Admiralty directing ‘all officers under the King to distress the enemy as far as it is in their power’.48
Watson was unequivocal about what he now needed to do: attack the French, wherever they were to be found. And in the case of Bengal, that meant starting by attacking the French colony of Chandernagar, twenty miles upstream.
[x]
Relations between the authorities in Chandernagar and Calcutta had always been surprisingly cordial: after the fall of Calcutta, the French in Chandernagar had been generously hospitable to the Company refugees as they fled Siraj ud-Daula, reserving their anger only for Drake and his Council: ‘Their shameful flight covers all Europeans with a disgrace which they will never wipe out in this count,’ wrote the French Governor, M. Renault. ‘Everyone curses, detests, abhors them … In short, whatever one may say, these gentlemen, especially Mr Drake, will never free themselves from such infamy, and Mr Drake will never deprive his nation of the right to hang him and all his Council.’49
Given this, the French were quick to reach out to their British counterparts after the recapture of the city, seeking a local neutrality in case of the outbreak of war. Calcutta responded warmly, and negotiations began. It was Watson who broke them off on 6 March, just hours before the treaty of neutrality was to be signed. According to Jean Law, the Admiral took the stand ‘that the Chandernagar authorities were not empowered to make treaties, and therefore he had declined to sign the draft. The truth, however, was that on the very day fixed for the signing, the Admiral was informed that his two lost and long-awaited ships had arrived at the mouth of the Ganges, and it was this news that made him change his mind. The English army now set off to march towards Chandernagar, while the missing ships prepared to sail up the Ganges.’50
On 8 March, Clive began his march at the head of a small army which had now swelled to 2,700. He took his time, taking three days to cover the twenty miles separating the two rival trading stations. Two days later, the Nawab wrote Clive a letter which the latter took as giving Siraj’s assent for an attack on the French. This was in return for an EIC promise of military assistance should Bengal be attacked by the Afghan monarch Ahmed Shah Durrani, who had just seized Delhi on the first of what were to be seventeen annual raids on north India, and who was said to be planning a looting expedition eastwards. By the 12th, Clive had encamped two miles from Chandernagar and called upon the French to surrender. The French declined to do so.
Chandernagar had, like Calcutta, recently outgrown all its rival settlements to become the prime French trading post in the East. Also like Calcutta, it was vulnerable to attack, less from the land, for its Fort d’Orléans, built on the principles of Sébastien de Vauban, was a much more impressive fortification than Fort William; but its defences against assaults from the river were far less formidable. Renault was aware of this, and as soon as war broke out he sank four ships and ran a boom and several chains around them to block the British warships from coming close to the vulnerable eastern face of his fort.
Early on the morning of 23 March, Clive stormed and took the principal French battery commanding the river. From that point on, Admiral Watson took over and it was to sea power, not Clive’s land forces, that most casualties fell. The French, who had only 700 men to defend their fort, fought bravely in their burning, disintegrating buildings, with no possibility of relief.
It was again Clive’s nephew who left the best record of the taking of Chandernagar in his journal: ‘The Kent & Tyger were all this time getting up the river,’ wrote Edward Maskelyne, ‘in the passage of which they were greatly retarded by the French having sunk four ships in the channel.’
This difficulty was at last removed [once the chains and booms had been cut away] & the two ships drew near the fort, but before they got within musquet shot, the French from 16 guns made great havoc. When the broadsides began to fire the enemy soon quitted their guns for they lost 150 officers in two hours, & the faces of two bastions were in the meantime brought to the ground, so that the Monsieurs hung out a flag & surrendered at discretion.
[Before they did so] the quarter-deck of the Kent was cleared of every man but the Admiral [Watson] & pilot, Captain Speke, and all the officers being killed or wounded, as were about 150 men in both ships. The Tyger suffered vastly in seamen & the Kent both in officers & sailors. Captain Speke has his leg sadly mauled & his son Billy has lost one of his with part of his thigh by the same shot. That charming young fellow Perreau was shot through the head, and Second Lieutenant Hayes lost his thigh and is since dead.
As we [land forces] were under cover of houses we suffered little, though we greatly incommoded the enemy in reverse by our shot and shells. It must be owned considering all things that the Messieurs made a good defence, though the Fort held out only 2 hours after the ships came before it.
‘Perhaps you will hear of few instances where two ships have met with greater damage than the Kent and Tyger in this engagement,’ wrote one of the surviving sailors. ‘We have never yet obtained a victory at so dear a rate.’51
The destruction within the Fort was every bit as severe as that on deck. By sunset, all five of the French 24-pounder guns had been blasted off their mounts, ‘the walls of d’Orléans were in ruins, the gunners almost all killed, and the men were being shot down by musketeers from the roofs of neighbouring houses and the tops of the masts and rigging of the ships. In a single day’s fighting, the French lost two Captains and two hundred men killed and wounded.’52
The capture of Chandernagar was a body blow to the entire French presence in India. As Jean Law noted, ‘with the fall of Chandernagar, the gate to the entire country was thrown open to the English, a gate that opened onto the road of glory and riches. By the same event, the principal place of commerce of the French Company, the sole port where our ships could shelter, was now closed for a long time. A flourishing colony was destroyed and many honest people in French India were ruined. Indeed, I saw myself ruined.’53