They were birds of a feather these two: both small, slippery,

absolutely untrustworthy; both playing consistently for their own

hands. At one time, however, Siva-ji seems to have been inclined to

yield to Aurungzebe, and honest, liberal treatment might have turned

the rebel freebooter into a staunch adherent; but it was not in

Aurungzebe to trust any one. So, mistaking his man utterly, he

received the little Mahratta cavalierly, and when he stormed and raged

and positively swooned with vexation, made him virtually a prisoner.

Almost alone in Delhi with his five-year-old son Samba-ji, Siva-ji was

too wily to precipitate matters by any display of annoyance; but he

laid his plans. His first move was to beg leave for his small escort

to leave Delhi, the climate of which he said was insalubrious. To this

Aurungzebe gave glad consent; it seemed to leave Siva-ji still more at

his mercy. The latter next took to his bed on plea of sickness. This

afforded him an opportunity of, first, being able to use the Hindu

physicians, who were allowed to attend him, as spies and go-betweens;

second, of sending sweetmeats and other offerings to various _fakirs_,

Hindu and Mahomedan, with a request for their prayers. And as he grew

more and more sick, the hampers and baskets containing the offerings

grew larger and larger, until one day--hey presto!--little Siva-ji and

his little son occupied the place of the sweetmeats. It was hours

before the guards discovered that the sick-bed was occupied by a

dummy, and by that time Siva-ji was in Muttra amongst his disguised

followers. He himself adopted that of a wandering _jogi_, and, smeared

all over with ashes, arrived in due time quite jauntily in his old

haunts.

Aurungzebe took his defeat in good part. For the time he was occupied

with Shahjahan's death, and with embassies from Arabia and Abyssinia.

Then Little Tibet had just been brought under his sway, and in Bengal

the kingdom of Arrakan, which held the rich rice-fields of Chittagong,

had been added to the crown.

It was some years, therefore, before Aurungzebe pitted himself once

more against the Mahratta.

Then once again he found the impracticability of subduing an enemy

which, at the first attack, reduced itself to a horde of units, each

one animated by individual love of fight, love of plunder. It was

guerilla war with a vengeance, so after a time the emperor was not

sorry to have his attention drawn from it to the northwest frontier.

On his return from this unsuccessful expedition, he settled down for a

time to govern his kingdom, which he did in a way that irritated and

exasperated both Hindus and Mahomedans. The former almost rose in

revolt at the reimposition of the poll tax on infidels; the latter,

especially in the court, objected to the prohibition of all

amusements. Amongst other prohibitions was the curious one of

forbidding history to be written, or court annals to be kept; the

result being that no real record of the last forty years of this reign

is extant.

As time went on, he bore more and more hardly on the Hindus, until

discontent spread on all sides, and in the Dekkan every one was at

heart a partisan of Siva-ji.

Finally, an attempt on Aurungzebe's part to get into his power the

infant children of Rajah Jai-Singh of Amber, whom he had caused to be

poisoned in his distant viceroyalty of Kabul, joined to the iniquity

of the _jizya_, or infidel tax, set the whole of Rajputana in a flame.

In this connection the letter sent to the Emperor by Rana Raj-Singh of

Chittore may be quoted in part, as an example of the dignified

remonstrances which preceded the appeal to the sword.

"How can the dignity of the sovereign be preserved who employs his

power in exacting heavy tribute from a people thus miserably

reduced?... If your Majesty places any faith in those books, by

distinction called divine, you will there be instructed that God is

the god of all mankind, not the god of Mahomedans alone. The pagan and

the Mussulman are equally in His presence ... to vilify the religion

or customs of other men is to set at naught the pleasure of the

Almighty ... In fine, the tribute you demand from Hindus is repugnant

to justice; it is equally foreign to good policy, as it must

impoverish the country."

The appeal, needless to say, was fruitless; but after a long and

mutually disastrous war a sort of peace was patched up between the

Rajputs and the Moghuls, leaving Aurungzebe free to attempt yet once

again to repress the irrepressible Siva-ji, who by this time had been

crowned King of the Mahrattas, and had become a still more ardent

Hindu, minutely scrupulous to ceremonial and caste.

Thus the two great rival powers in India were bigoted Hinduism,

bigoted Islamism. A far cry, indeed, from dead Akbar's Dream of

tolerant Unity.

So the struggle recommenced. But Siva-ji was more elusive than ever.

He fought by sea as well as by land, and the first record of a naval

war in India is that which he waged along the shores of Western India.

Only the English settlement at Surat defied him. They put their

factory into what state of defence was possible, garrisoned it with

their crews, and met the marauding Mahrattas with a sally which

effectually drove them off. For which valiant defence of their own,

Aurungzebe exempted the English for ever from a portion of the customs

duty paid by other nations, and remitted the transit charges.

Siva-ji thus indirectly did a good turn to English commerce.

Years passed, bringing advantage to the Mahratta side, when, in 1680,

death suddenly intervened and carried off the clever, astute little

Siva-ji in the fifty-third year of his age.

A bit of a genius was Siva-ji, quick to seize on the mistakes of his

adversary, and far-seeing enough to appeal to natural spirit and

religious enthusiasm in his adherents. Thus, though his death was a

great blow, it did not crush the rising fortunes of the Mahrattas,

despite the fact that Samba-ji, his heir, had shown no capability for

kingship during his youth, and on his accession gave himself up to

cruelty and passion. Still the war dragged on; defeat was indeed

impossible to an army which had no cohesion, and which now, in

consequence of the failure of regular pay under Samba-ji's career of

idle luxury, degenerated into plundering hordes of mere freebooters.

It was at this juncture that Aurungzebe himself, possibly suspicious

of his generals, always distrustful of everything that did not

actually come under his eyes, and pass through his hands, marched

southwards. In a way, it was a fatal mistake; for he brought with him

all his intolerant authority, his infatuation for his faith. Hitherto

his officers, seeing the evil effects of levying the infidel tax

strictly in this land of infidels, had let it slide; now affairs took

a very different turn. But at first the imperial troops were fairly

successful, though by the time they had marched through the Ghat

country they were crippled by sickness, outwearied by the difficulty

of the roads, harassed by the continual depredations of Samba-ji's

guerillas both by sea and land. To add to difficulty, the latter

concluded a sort of a defensive alliance with the King of Golconda;

whereupon the emperor, tired of hunting a Will-o'-the-Wisp through

mists and swamps, seized on a stationary enemy. Golconda reduced to

terms, Bijapur next came under displeasure. A very small state, its

capital was an extremely large town, the circumference of the walls

being more than 6 miles. Garrisoned by a very small force it soon

fell, and Aurungzebe was carried in a portable throne through the

breach into the deserted city. It remains now much as it was then--a

city, not of ruins, but of desertion. The walls, still entire, are

surmounted by the cupolas and minarets of the public buildings within,

so that from outside Bijapur shows bravely; but within all is

desolation. The wide Mosque, the splendid palace, the great domed tomb

of the kings, are alike deserted, the home only of bats and hyenas.

Yet still, centering the desertion, stands the old brass cannon,

weighing 41 tons, which "Rumi the European" cast in 1585.

While this was going on, be-drugged, dissolute Samba-ji watched the

proceedings inertly, ineptly. The Mahratta historians accuse Kalusha

the Brahman, his favourite, the pandar to all his vices, of having

enchanted the young man; but the enchantment was mere sensuality,

self-indulgence.

His time for enjoyment, nevertheless, ran short. Golconda and Bijapur

taken, Aurungzebe, triumphant--after, as usual, alienating the people

by his religious intolerance--added to religious hatred by capturing

the person of Samba-ji while drunk and incapable in his favourite

palace of pleasure, and thereinafter, having paraded him through the

camp in disgrace, ordering him to prison. Whereupon Samba-ji, roused

at last to sense, openly reviled the emperor, his prophet, his faith,

in language so strong that it was considered necessary to cut his

tongue out as a punishment for blasphemy, before beheading him and his

favourite, the vile Kalusha.

Anything more injudicious could not well be conceived. Despised as

Samba-ji had been whilst alive by the better class of Mahrattas, he

was now a martyr. From this time, the fortunes of Aurungzebe, and with

them the Empire of the Moghuls, began to fall; and for the few

remaining years of his life, the emperor, now growing old, must have

felt himself and his power on the downward grade. His indefatigable

perseverance, his laborious energy, are almost pitiful. Over eighty

years of age, he rested not at all, and despite our reprobation, the

heart softens towards the tired old man as we see him, seemingly

careless of the greater enemy along his sea-board, leading his armies

through trackless forests and flooded valleys, enduring hardships that

would have tried youth, in pursuit of the irrepressible, irresponsible

Mahrattas. An old man, small, slender, stooping, with a long nose, a

frosted beard, and a perpetual smile.

That smile was worn outside; but within? Within was weariness and fear

even for this life. The remembrance of his father's fate at his hands

seems never to have left him; every action of his during the later

years of his reign showing his fear lest a like fate should be his. So

he held every tiny thread of the great warp and woof of Government in

his own hands. Only thus could he feel secure.

In such a system abuse is inevitable. No single eye can supervise a

wide empire, and so corruption grew apace, and with corruption,

inefficiency. The noblemen, waxing effeminate, wore wadded coats under

their chain armour; their horses, laden with ornamentations, housed

with velvet, were purely processional, and utterly unfit for war. The

common soldiers, aping their superiors, followed suit, and became so

slothful that they could neither keep watch nor picket, and discipline

disappeared utterly.

Yet all the time, while Aurungzebe, old, enfeebled in health,

outwearied himself in precautions, in providence, the greatest enemy

to the Moghul dynasty was advancing, apparently unnoticed, in rapid

strides. For the West had finally set its face towards the East.

Commerce had already joined hands over the empire. In 1667 Britain,

France, Holland, and Denmark, signed a treaty of common cause at Breda

that was practically a league against the Pagan and the Portuguese. A

few years previously the island and town of Bombay had been ceded to

England as part of the dower of Catherine of Braganza, and had become

thereby so much an integral part of Great Britain that every native in

it, every child born there, had the right to claim every privilege of

a British subject.

Fort St George, the nucleus of Madras, was finally established, and

the group of factories around it formed into a presidency. Job

Charnock had founded Calcutta, and Hugli was soon to be merged in it.

Then a new note had come into the dealings of the English with the

accession of James II. A large shareholder, he promised the East India

Company military support, and henceforward the "native powers were to

be given to understand that the Company would treat with them as an

independent power, and, if necessary, compell redress by force of

arms." In consequence of this the President, Sir John Child, was

appointed "Captain-General and Admiral of all forces by sea and land."

Poor Sir John Child! He was the first instance of a cat's-paw in the

East (there have been many since!), and when the tortuous policy of

the Company towards the Great Moghul failed, and they found it

impossible to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare, by making

war in Bengal, and wearing a mask of friendship in Bombay, he went to

the wall promptly in obedience to Aurungzebe's "irreversible order"

that "Mr Child, who did the disgrace, should be turned out and

expelled."

But there was more disgrace than the making of a scapegoat out of one

man in store for the old original East India Company. How much of the

dirt flung at it in the next ten years or so deserves to stick? Who

can tell? Or who can say how much of the moil and turmoil which arose

around it was due to honest John Bull's honest love of clean hands,

and how much to the itching of his palm? When gold is in dispute,

motives are hard to dissever, impossible to pigeonhole. And in those

days the Pagoda Tree was in full bearing, the gold lay on Tom

Tiddler's ground ready to be picked up. So, at least, it must have

seemed to England.

A terrible temptation to all sorts of sins. And so we have allegations

of bribery, Parliamentary enquiries, scandalous disclosures,

petitions, answers at length, impeachment of the Duke of Leeds,

convenient disappearance of the Duke's servant, final hint by the

disturbed king--William of Orange--that disclosures and exposures were

out of season, as he was under the necessity of "putting an end to

this session in a few days."

So at last we get at Act 9, William III., c. 44, for "raising a sum

not exceeding 2,000,000 upon a fund for payment of annuities after the

rate of L8 per annum, and _for settling the trade to the East

Indies_."

Thus the new company, started by solemn act of legislature, was left

eyeing the old one. At first there seemed likelihood of their fighting

it out like the Kilkenny cats. But in the pursuit of gold the main

chance is a potent factor for peace. And so, while Aurungzebe, near

his life's limit, was still, in his ninth decade of years, wearily

pursuing the Mahratta, Earl Godolphin, Lord High Treasurer of Great

Britain, as referee, succeeded in reconciling the conflicting claims

of commerce, and--to make his award binding on both parties--inserted

a special clause in an Act of Parliament, by which the old London East

India Company and the new English East India Company were for ever

amalgamated under the title of the "United Company of Merchants of

England trading to the East Indies."

By this arrangement there passed to one control in India alone, the

ports and islands of Bombay, the factories of Surat, Sivalli, Broach,

of Amadad, Agra, Lucknow, and on the Malabar Coast, the forts of

Karwar, Tellicherri, Anjengo, besides the factory at Calicut. Rounding

Cape Cormorin, the coast of Coromandel held Orissa, Chingi, Fort St

George, the city of Madras and its dependencies; Fort St David, the

factories of Cuddalore, Porto-Novo, Pettipoli, Masulipatam,

Madapollam, Vizagapatam. Going northward to Bengal there was Fort

William or Calcutta, with its large territory, Balasore, Cossimbazaar,

Dacca, Hugli, Malda, Rajmahal, and Patna.

From which long list may be seen how steady had been the nibbling at

India's coral strand during the last fifty years. The grant of

Calcutta, with leave thereupon to erect fortifications, was

practically the beginning of the end. This was almost the last act of

Aurungzebe's reign. Shortly after, he lay dying, a man of eighty-nine,

still in full possession of his faculties.

There is something very terrible about the death-bed of this man, who

for fifty long years had held, without aid of any sort, the reins of

Government. He had no friends; he could not trust any one sufficient

for friendship. His one lukewarm affection seems to have been for his

intriguing sister Roshanrai, the woman who had sate beside his sick-bed

guarding the Great Seal. For others he had literally no heart.

So in his death he was quite alone. Except for his remorse.

"Old age has arrived.... I came a stranger into this world, and a

stranger I depart. I know nothing of myself; what I am, and for what I

am destined. The instant which has passed in power, hath left only

sorrow behind it. I have not been the guardian and protector of the

Empire. My valuable time has been passed vainly. I had a guide given

me in my own dwelling" (conscience), "but his glorious light was

unseen by my dim sight. I brought nothing into this world, and, except

the infirmities of man, take nothing out. I have a dread for my

salvation and with what torments I may be punished.... Regarding my

actions fear will not quit me; but when I am gone, reflection will not

remain. Come, then, what come may, I have launched my vessel to the

waves. Farewell, Farewell--Farewell!"

So he wrote from his death-bed to his second son, and to his youngest

thus:--

"Son nearest to my heart! The agonies of death come upon me fast.

Wherever I look I see nothing but the Divinity. I am going! Whatever

good or evil I have done it was done for _you_."

He was a great letter-writer. Three huge volumes of his epistles are

still extant; but even in these last solemn ones the absolute truth

was not in them; for under his pillow when he died a paper was

found--a sort of will, in which he appoints his eldest son Emperor,

bids his second be content with Agra and Bengal, while to the one

"nearest his heart," the doubtful kingship of Bijapur and Golconda was

gifted. Aurungzebe was diplomatic to the last.

[Map: India to A.D. 1707]

PART III

THE MODERN AGE

INDIA IN THE BEGINNING OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

A.D. 1707

Before making our _volte face_, and in future chronicling the history

of India from the Western standpoint, it will be well to see what this

India was which England set herself deliberately to annex.

So far as the East India Company was concerned, the vast peninsula was

at this time what a huge slice of iced plum-cake upon a plate must be

to a hungry mouse. That is to say, nice enough for outside nibblings,

but with unexplored possibilities of plums within. Every now and again

a bolder merchant would dive into the comparatively unknown centre,

and come back laden possibly with idol-eyes, rich brocades, jewels in

the rough.

It must--to repeat ourselves--have been a tremendous temptation having

to live, as these early writers or clerks to John Company had, on the

very verge of Tom Tiddler's ground--to have only to reach out their

hands and touch a totally different world. A world which by virtue of

immutable changelessness had not commuted the gold which the years had

brought it into luxuries, but had stored it up uselessly in lavish

ornamentation and idle, almost unappropriated treasure. Except as a

gaud for a woman, a toy for a babe, or a flourish of trumpets for some

man who called himself noble, gold in India had practically no value,

for the rich man lived in all ways much as the poor man lived. The

standard of personal comfort had not risen at all either for the

wealthy or the poverty-stricken during the four thousand years and odd

since the splendours of Princess Draupadi's Swayamvara had been

chronicled in the Mahabharata. An instant's thought will show us the

effect which this hoarding of every diamond found in Golconda, of

every bale of rich stuff made by some leisurely artificer, must have

had upon the country. It became full to overflowing with scarcely

recognised riches. To English traders, keen on commerce, India must

indeed have been the land of Upside-down; a land into which their gold

was sucked down at the same time that astounding, almost undreamt-of

treasures were literally vomited forth from every petty bazaar.

Francois Bernier's views on this matter, and the conclusions which he

draws from the indubitable facts which he observed, are so distinctly

what may be called conventionally insular, that they serve well to

show the attitude of mind in which the West, strong in conviction of

its own worth, faced the East, all unfamiliar and startling.

"Before I conclude," he says, in a letter addressed to M. Colbert, the

French Minister of State, "I wish to explain how it happens that

though the gold and silver introduced into the Empire centre finally

in Hindustan, they still are not in greater plenty than elsewhere, and

the inhabitants have less the appearance of a monied people than those

of many other parts of the globe.

"In the first place, a larger quantity is melted, re-melted, and

wasted in fabricating women's bracelets, both for the hands and feet,

chains, ear-rings, nose and finger rings, and a still larger quantity

is consumed in manufacturing embroideries; _alachas_ or striped silken

stuffs, _touras_ or tufts of golden nets worn on turbans; gold and

silver cloths and scarves, turbans, and brocades. The quantity of

these articles made in India is incredible."

He then goes on to paint, in vivid, horror-stricken phrases, the evils

of a paternal despotism, pointing out that it is "slavery," that it

"obstructs the progress of trade," since there is no encouragement to

commercial pursuits when the "success with which they may be attended,

instead of adding to the enjoyments of life, only provokes the

cupidity of a neighbouring tyrant." This we are assured is the sole

cause why the "possessor, so far from living with increased comfort,

studies the means by which he may appear indigent: his dress, lodging,

and furniture continue to be mean, and he is careful, above all

things, never to indulge in the pleasures of the table."

Poor Bernier! And after more than a hundred years of comparative

freedom under British rule there was still not a face-towel or a bit

of soap in an Indian household; not a chair, not a table, and the

simple food, cooked over a hole dug in the ground, was served on

leaf-plates set upon the floor. For luxury has hitherto passed India

by. Will it do so in the future? Who can say?

The state of the arts in India evidently puzzled Bernier's Western

brain, and he sets to work to find out some occult cause for the

undoubted skill of the artisan. He asserts that

"no artist can be expected to give his mind to his calling" without

the stimulus of personal advantage, "and that the arts would long ago

have lost their beauty and delicacy if the monarch and the principal

nobles did not keep the artists in their pay to work in their houses."

Then:--

"The protection afforded by powerful patrons, rich merchants and

traders, who give the workmen rather more than the usual wages, tends

to preserve the arts; rather more wages, for it should not be inferred

from the goodness of the manufactures that the workman is held in

esteem, or arrives at a state of independence. Nothing but sheer

necessity or blows from a cudgel keeps him employed."

And this in a country where, to this day, the pride of hereditary

dexterity in hand and eye is handed down from father to son, and to

say of a coppersmith or a carpenter or a weaver in brocades: "His

grandfather, see you, was a real _ustad_ (teacher)," is to raise that

man above his fellows. Once more, poor Bernier! He might have learnt

something from the eager-faced, lissome-fingured Indian smith, who,

handling a gun made by Manton, laid it down reverently and salaamed to

it as if it had been a god, with these simple words: "He who made that

was a Great Artificer."

Here we have epitomised the true artistic temperament.

But it needs art to apply the solvent of sympathy; and the dealings of

the West with the East were at this time purely commercial; so we meet

with absolute, almost pathetic lack of comprehension. Indeed, as we

read with painstaking care every record that exists of these Western

dealings with the East at this period, we know not whether to laugh or

to cry at the spectacle presented to us of mutual misunderstanding.

India is a problem even now. What must it have been then, to these

worthy Lombard Street merchants who knew nothing of ancient faiths and

past civilisations, who looked on the native of India as a barbarian

utterly. What a shock it must have been to them, when a native

accountant, given some abstruse problem in arithmetic, solved it

lightly, easily, by algebra! Small wonder that, finding the Hindu

circle divided into 360 equal parts and the ratio of diameter to

circumference expressed correctly at 1 to 3.14160 they credited

Alexander's Greek phalanxes with being mathematical teachers as well

as conquerors. Small wonder that every discovery of scientific

knowledge amongst these "barbarians" should have been referred to some

contact with the West.

It required long years before due credit could be given to the East;

it is doubtful indeed whether sufficient credit is given to it even

now. Who, for instance, knows of the accurate trigonometrical tables

of India, in which _sines_ are used instead of the Greek _chords?_--or

of their framer, of whom Professor Wallace writes:--

"He who first formed the idea of exhibiting in arithmetical tables the

ratios of the sides and angles of all possible triangles must have

been a man of profound thought and extensive knowledge. However

ancient, therefore, any book may be in which we meet with a system of

trigonometry, we may be assured that it was not written in the infancy

of the science. Hence, we may conclude that geometry must have been

known in India long before the writing of the 'Surya Siddhanta.'"

Now this book on Astronomy was written at the latest computation about

the year A.D. 400. Centuries before this, therefore, India was aware

of certain of those inviolable laws of our Universe, in the

apprehension of which lies humanity's best hope of immortality. And

there is one curious fact about these vestiges of ancient knowledge

which Professor Playfair has noted in a pregnant remark concerning

these same trigonometrical tables. "They have the appearance, like

many other things in the science of these Eastern nations, of being

drawn by one _who was more deeply versed in the subject than may at

first be imagined, and who knew much more than he thought it necessary

to communicate_."

It is a remark which stimulates the imagination.

But as a matter of fact the Western imagination of those days appears

not to have been stimulated at all by anything save the prospect of

plunder. And in truth the hoarded wisdom of the East was not nearly so

much in evidence as its hoarded wealth. In Akbar's time some effort

had been made to give such wisdom fair hearing. There is small doubt,

for instance, but that his study of the kingcraft chapters of the

Mahabharata had done much towards making Akbar what he was--the best

ruler India has ever seen, or is likely to see; but, taking it as a

whole, the tide of Mahomedan conquest had simply submerged Hindu

learning, and the rising flood of Mahratta power was not one whit less

prejudicial to philosophy. But below the troubled surface of wars and

rumours of wars the heart of India dreamt on undisturbed. All things,

as ever, were illusion. The Wheel-of-Life revolved between the pivots

of Birth and Death, so what mattered it whether the painted zoetrope

showed the yellow face of a Toorkh from the North, or the white one of

a trader from the West? Both sought gold; and even gold was illusion.

It is quaint to think, say, of those pirates of Arracan bursting in

upon a crowd of pilgrims round some ancient shrine, and carrying off

the whole concern, as it were--priests, worshippers, offerings, even

the idol-eyes, leaving the empty sockets staring out helplessly at the

deserted village.

But there are many such quaint items to be added to our picture

gallery of India in the beginning of the eighteenth century, not the

least of these being the spectacle of Job Charnock, the founder of

Calcutta, carrying off from amongst the very flames of her husband's

funeral pyre the Hindu widow who afterwards became his wife.

For on the confines of the various factories in the contiguous lands

which had been won from Moghul rule by purchase, or bribe, or treaty,

English laws had already begun to oust native customs. Indeed, quite

an elaborate legal procedure, duly decked with Courts of Appeal, had

been set up in the three presidencies. So far, it is to be feared,

without much benefit to the people, for those who held the power seem

ever to have been more occupied by the rules of commerce than those of

justice.

Already, also, each presidency had its own regular army. This was

composed first of recruits from England, sent out by the Company in

their ships; secondly, of adventurers who had deserted from other

European armies and had come out to the East to seek their fortunes;

thirdly, of half-caste Indo-Europeans, the offspring of mixed

marriages. In the beginning of the eighteenth century a few pure

natives were enlisted, and from this time the Sepoy army of John

Company grew by leaps and bounds.

As yet, however, there was no attempt at the policy of pike and

carronade. That had been disastrous in the days of Sir John Child; so

the small armies--the garrison of Calcutta in 1707 was _raised_ to

three hundred men--were kept simply for defence.

The insecure state of the country, also, which followed on

Aurungzebe's death led to greater caution on the part of the Company.

Hitherto, its clerks and merchants and agents had themselves carried

their English goods to the various markets in the interior of the

country; but now orders were issued directing everything to be sold by

auction at the port of import, thus minimising the risk of loss.

A simple order which, nevertheless, must have had far-reaching

results, since it introduced the middleman between the English

merchants and the people of India; an unscrupulous middleman also.

Then the method employed, and necessarily employed, in the collection

of the calicoes and other woven cotton-stuffs which at this time

formed the staple of Indian trade was one which made fair dealing

almost impossible. For there were no large merchants with whom the

Company could deal. It had therefore to elaborate an agency of its

own, by which it could come in contact with the weaver, who--ever one

of the most poverty-stricken of Indian artisans--required raw material

and sustenance given him before he could keep his rude loom going.

A fateful affair this! One European functionary issuing orders to a

native secretary, he employing a native agent, who in his turn calls

together the local brokers, who send out to village and towns by their

paid messengers and advance cotton and money to the actual workmen.

Here indeed were sufficient loopholes for fraud. Each one of these men

had, in addition to his poor pay, to find secret gratification for

himself and for those who were supposed to keep an eye upon him. The

wretched weaver, of course, coming off worst in the scramble, being

made, first, to work as he had never worked before, and secondly, as a

set-off to the sustenance given, to take a price often 40 per cent.

less than the work would have fetched in open market.

But the rate of pay which at this time the Company offered to its

servants tells in unmistakable brevity the whole tale of its

administration.

The salary of a president was but L300 a year, that of a factor but

L20. Even when Bengal was practically ceded to it, and all power,

judicial and executive, vested in its servants, the pay of a man who

had almost unlimited power, and who had doomed himself to a life of

exile, was but L130. Yet the actual profit of the East India Company

at this time was nothing prodigious; it barely touched 8 per cent. on

the capital employed. Still, the monopoly must have been valuable, for

the efforts made to retain it would fill volumes; and one Act of

Parliament followed another, prohibiting foreign adventure to India

under penalty of forfeiture of triple the sum embarked, and declaring

all British subjects found in India who were not in the Company's

service liable to seizure and punishment, and generally crying "hands

off" to all and sundry.

The Portuguese power in India had by this time dwined away;

none too soon for its reputation. It had suffered reverses at many

hands, not least of these being one dealt by itself; for the story of

Bahadur-Shah, the king of Guzerat, is not one to bring credit with it.

He had entered into negotiations with the Portuguese, had granted them

many favours, amongst others the right to build a factory. This,

however, they surrounded with a wall which converted the whole into a

fortification. Bahadur-Shah remonstrated, and was met with fair words

from Nuno de Cunha, the Portuguese viceroy, who, however, came to the

conference with a suspiciously martial fleet containing over four

thousand fighting-men. Now, whether the Portuguese historians are

right in attributing meditated treachery to the Mahomedans, or the

historians of the latter are right in attributing it to the

Portuguese, matters little in face of what actually happened. The

viceroy, feigning sickness as an excuse for not paying his respects on

land, the king, with but a few unarmed attendants, went to meet him on

the admiral's ship. Once there, he became alarmed at whisperings and

signs that were passing between the viceroy and his officers, and took

a hasty leave. Hardly had he reached his boat, however, when he was

attacked. Being a good swimmer he flung himself into the sea, was

pursued, struck over the head with an oar, and when he clung to it,

was finally despatched with a halbert.

The facts are brutal. Nothing can extenuate them, and though the

affray may have originated in mutual distrust and alarm, there can be

no doubt that such evidence of premeditated treachery as there is

points to the Portuguese as the real criminals.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, they had retired

to Further India, there to repeat their brilliant but evanescent

career of conquest, and in 1739 they finally ceded their few remaining

possessions in the Konkan to the Mahratta power.

But their influence lives still all along the western coast, where to

this day a large proportion of the people are professedly Roman

Catholic, the descendants of the converts who, it is said, flocked in

thousands to be baptized by St Francis Xavier. This, however, is

extremely doubtful. Yet even the Portuguese power was but a sea-board

influence, the nibblings, as it were, of the Western mouse upon the

rich cake of India.

Inside this frayed and fraying fringe of contact with the outside

world India was very much what it had been always, what in a way it

will be always. So far as princes and principalities went it was a

very distracted country; so far as the peasantry went it was a very

peaceful one. But neither prince nor peasant seemed to realise that a

great change was imminent.

One of the most curious points about this coming change was that

though the greed of gold was undoubtedly the chief factor in bringing

it about, the first two solid holds which the English got on India

were due to the skill, not of British diplomacy or British commerce,

but of British medicine. It was in consequence of the services

rendered by Ship's surgeon Gabriel Boughton to the Emperor Shahjahan's

beloved daughter Jahanara, when she was as a child badly burnt, that

the Old East India Company gained the right to trade in Bengal free of

all duty; this being the only fee asked--surely a public-spirited and

disinterested one. And equally so was the only fee demanded by Staff

Surgeon William Hamilton in 1715 for curing the decadent Emperor

Farokhshir of a tumour in the back which had resisted the efforts of

all the court physicians. He asked for the first sizable grant of land

on the Indian peninsula which had ever been given to any foreign

power: that is to say, for thirty-seven villages contiguous to the

factory at Calcutta, which gave the English command of the river for

10 miles south of the port, for some villages near Madras, which

consolidated that _pied a terre_; and for the island of Din on the

western coast.

These two fees, given by gratitude for services rendered, were

practically the fee simple of all India.

Some vague recognition of this fact doubtless prompted the epitaph on

William Hamilton's neglected tombstone in Calcutta, which runs thus:--

His memory ought to be dear to his Nation

For the credit he gained the English

in curing Ferrukseer

the present King of Hindustan

of a malignant distemper

By which he made his own name famous

At the Court of that Great Monarch

And without doubt will perpetuate his memory

as well in Great Britain as all other

Nations in Europe.

He died, 4th December 1717. Gabriel Boughton, his predecessor in

patriotism, dying God knows when, being buried God knows where.

So the epitaph is a trifle over-confident; for Great Britain has a

trick of forgetting her most faithful servants.

THE RISE OF THE MAHRATTA POWER

A.D. 1707 TO A.D. 1738

The story of Siva-ji has already been told. His early decease, while

it did not materially check the rising flood of Mahratta power,

certainly left the invading West a freer hand along the shores of

India from Bombay to Calicut.

For Siva-ji seems to have had a genius for sea, as well as for land

warfare. It was his unerring eye which, seizing on an island along the

coast overlooked hitherto by both Portuguese and English, had it

fortified for use as a _point d'appui_, whence he could control the

shipping north and south. Indeed, having in view the fact that he was

the only person who managed in any way to harass English fleets, it

seems not unlikely that, had he lived longer, British commerce would

have been longer, also, in finding firm foothold in India.

But he died, and his son Samba-ji died also, meanly, miserably. That,

however, only delayed the inevitable for a short time. The Mahratta

star was in the ascendant, that of the Moghuls was sinking fast, and

the death of Aurungzebe accelerated both ascent and descent.

To begin with, it ended what may be called the Rajput acquiescence in

empire; that is to say, their acceptance of "Akbar's Dream" as an

ideal, which by good fortune might become real. It was an ideal

absolutely foreign to the whole Rajput spirit, the whole Rajput theory

of life. In their State-Politic, one chieftain had as independent a

position as any other chieftain, and even amongst the followers of

those chieftains none was really before or after the other. Every

Rajput owed equal fealty to his race, was equally free to defend his

own rights as he chose. Yet side by side with this curious individual

independence ran what, for want of a better word, we may call a feudal

bond betwixt follower and chieftain, between chieftain and suzerain.

Akbar's Dream of Empire had been antagonistic to this, yet they had

accepted that Dream at his hands, and at his death the mere fact of

his heir Jahangir being half a Rajput by birth, had helped them to

forget what they had given up to the dead man's genius. Shahjahan was

still more Rajput. In his veins there flowed but one-fourth of the

hated Mahomedan blood, so they bore with him. But with Aurungzebe it

was different. Born of a Mahomedan mother, the old race intolerance

showed in him early, and from the moment he set his foot on the

throne, alienation of loyalty began actively, passively, so that by

the time the bigot's reign of fifty years was over, every Rajput in

India was ripe for revolt; a fact which naturally was in favour of the

Mahrattas, since it weakened the power of the Moghuls. It was still

more favourable to the advancement of the West, since with India

engaged in internecine strife, attention was withdrawn from many a

seemingly slight advance which yet was the first step to final

conquest. Naturally, after Aurungzebe's anxious efforts to settle the

succession by means of a last will and testament, his sons immediately

came to blows over the business; in which quarrel the best claimant

appears to have gone to the wall, for Azim, the second son, was

defeated and killed near Agra by his elder brother, Shah-Alam, and

Kambaksh, the youngest, shortly afterwards drew death down on himself

by a desperate defiance near Hyderabad. Thus Shah-Alam was left to

face the situation for five years under the title of Bahadur-Shah. It

is worthy of note that he, the first puppet-emperor of Delhi, had thus

the same name as the last, the old man Bahadur-Shah, who, after

dallying with disgrace and deceit in 1857 went to end his miserable

life in the Andaman Islands.

Bahadur-Shah the First found his hands full. Having pursued Kambaksh

to the very confines of the Dekkan, it was necessary ere returning

northward to settle the Rajput rebellion (which was becoming daily

less restrained), and to temporise in some way with the Mahrattas. And

here a piece of diplomacy on the part of the dead brother, Azim,

served Bahadur's turn well. The former, when advancing to dispute the

crown, had sought to strengthen his position and protect his rear by

giving back to the Mahrattas the rightful heir to Siva-ji's throne in

the person of his grandson Saho, who had been kept in captivity by the

Moghuls ever since his father Samba-ji had paid the penalty for

blasphemy amongst the Mahomedans, and so been made a martyr by the

Mahrattas. It was a wily move, for during the young claimant's long

incarceration, another pretender to Siva-ji's crown had arisen.

Azim-Shah, therefore, had deliberately started a successional dispute

in the hopes of being thereby freed for a time of troublesome

neighbours.

The ruse succeeded, and Bahadur-Shah, by ratifying his brother's

promise of favourable peace should the young pretender succeed in

establishing his claim, managed to keep the Mahrattas quiet for some

years.

He was less fortunate with the Rajput confederacy, though he was

prepared to give up all things but the mere name of Empire. In the

case of Oudipur (Chitore) he went so far as to restore all

annexations, to release it from the obligation of furnishing a

contingent, to abolish the infidel capitation tax, or _jizyia_, and to

re-establish religious toleration as it had existed in the time of

Akbar. He could not well have done more; but for once--almost for the

only time in Indian history--a faint political feeling is here to be

traced. For even the removal of the hated _jizyia_ was not enough for

the Rajput; he wanted, and he meant to have, independence. This is--or

seems to be--the only occasion in all the long centuries of Indian

history which gives us a hint of any recognition on the part of the

people of political rights, and as such it is peculiarly interesting.

Unfortunately, it is so mixed up with the religious motive that it is

impossible to say if it really gives ground for supposing that we have

here a faint realisation of the rights of the individual.

While Bahadur-Shah was engaged in pacifying the Rajputs by the

relinquishment of everything, he was suddenly called to the Punjab by

an insurrection amongst the Sikhs.

Nanuk, their original founder, had lived in Akbar's time; a time

peculiarly productive of religious enthusiasms all over the world. And

Nanuk was a religious enthusiast pure and simple. Of the soldier

caste, the son of a grain merchant, he was _devote_ from childhood.

Much travel and mature manhood turned him into an almost inspired

preacher of the Theistic doctrines of Kabir, who in his turn was a

disciple of the great Ramanuja. Concerning this same Kabir there is a

curious legend, the recital of which may serve to impress the memory

with the most salient feature of his teaching--his tolerance.

The tale runs that at his death the Mahomedans claimed the right to

bury the saint, the Hindus to burn him; in consequence of which there

was a free fight over the corpse, in the midst of which the still,

white-shrouded form lay, mutely appealing for peace. And lo! when

blood had been uselessly spilt, and a compromise effected, it was

found that beneath the white sheet was no dead man, only where his

holy head had lain grew a sweet basil plant, sacred to the God Vishnu,

only where his holy feet had touched, a perfumed _rehan_ bush, green

as the green of the Prophet's turban!

Nanuk, then, was a preacher, a quietest, and being possessed of this

spirit of universal charity, was allowed, naturally, to live in peace

during the reign of that past--master in tolerance, Akbar. At his

death, however, the rapid increase of the sect attracted the

unfavourable notice of Jahangir, and Nanuk was cruelly put to death.

The usual result followed. Armed with a sainted martyr, religion

became fanaticism. Har-Govind, the murdered man's son, brought revenge

and hatred to his holding of the supreme pontiff-ship, and from this

time the Sikhs, expelled forcibly from their lands, presented from the

mountains north of Lahore an unbroken front of rebellion to the

Government.

It was not, however, till 1675 that, under Govind, the tenth Guru (or

spiritual head of the sect) from Nanuk its founder, the Sikhs formed

themselves into an aggressive military commonwealth.

Guru Govind was a wise man. Numbers were his first need, so he set to

work to establish a creed wide enough to contain all converts,

attractive enough to compel them to come in.

Caste was abolished; Mahomedan or Hindu, Brahman or Pariah, were alike

when once the oath of fealty was taken, when once the new-made Sikh

had vowed to be a religious soldier, to carry cold steel about with

him from birth to death, to wear blue clothes always, and never to

clip a hair which God had sent to grow upon him. In order still

further to emphasise the separation of the Sikh from his fellows, new

methods of salutation, new ceremonials for all the principal events of

life, were instituted.

Nothing more interesting in the annals of heredity exists than the

startling rapidity of the change thus brought about in the Sikhs. They

are now--that is, after two hundred years--(as they were, indeed,

after a scant one hundred) as distinct a race as any in India, with as

well marked a national character as any of the original peoples of

India.

So far, therefore, Guru Govind was successful; but his personal

mission proved disastrous. Despite his diplomacy, he failed in

numbers; his foes were too strong for him, and in the end the pontiff

saw all his fortresses taken, his mother and his children murdered,

his followers tortured, dispersed, or killed.

This was in Aurungzebe's time, that most bigoted and bloodthirsty of

pious kings. The closing years of his reign, however, found him with

all his energies centred on the Dekkan, and almost immediately after

his death, the Sikhs recovered from their stupor, and having found a

new, and this time an unscrupulously cruel leader, broke out into

almost incredible excesses of revenge. They ravaged Sirhind, they

brutally butchered whole towns, and after penetrating southward as far

as Saharunpur, retreated to the Cis and Trans-Sutlej states, which are

to this day the stronghold of the Sikh faith.

It was against these stalwart rebels--for one of the quickly acquired

national characteristics of the Sikhs is unusual physical height and

breadth--that Bahadur-Shah had to march in person. He managed with

infinite trouble to besiege the chief offenders in a hill-fort,

whence, after enduring the utmost extremities of famine, they made a

wild sally, headed, apparently, by their leader Banda, who, after

making himself conspicuous by desperate resistance, was captured and

brought to the Mahomedan camp in triumph. Once there, however, the

prisoner threw aside his borrowed _role_, openly declared himself

nothing but a poor Hindu convert who had dared all to save his Guru,

and taunted his captors with having fallen into the trap and allowed

the real Banda to escape them!

It is pleasantly noteworthy to find that Bahadur-Shah, struck by the

man's self-devotion, spared his life.

Before, however, the further endeavours to secure the real leader and

crush the Sikhs were successful, the emperor himself fell sick and

died, and the usual turmoil of murder and intrigue followed, which

ended in the temporary enthronement, at the instigation of Zulfikar

Khan (who had been chief instrument in the late king's succession), of

the eldest son, Jahandar-Shah. An inveterate intriguer was this same

Zulfikar. He it was who had suggested hampering the hands of the

Mahrattas by presenting them with a new claimant for their crown; and

now he chose his nominee--despatching the remainder of the royal

family _instanter_--because Jahandar, weak, vicious, enslaved by a

public dancer, offered himself an easy prey to Zulfikar's desire to be

the real ruler.

But Farokhshir, son of one of the murdered princes, who had escaped

massacre by being in Bengal, had just sufficient spunk in him to

oppose the maker of puppet-kings. Fortune favoured him miraculously,

quite irrationally, and--surely to his own surprise--he found himself

marching on Delhi, victorious, triumphant. But the whole affair had

degenerated--as purely Indian history after the death of Aurungzebe so

often does degenerate--into transpontine melodrama and comic opera,

and he was met at the gates by an obsequious Zulfikar and his still

more obsequious papa, both ready, willing, and eager to deliver up

their prisoner, the late Emperor Jahandar, and take the oath of

allegiance to the new one, Farokhshir.

But this passed. It was, to use a vulgarism, "too thick" even for a

debased Moghul. So the double-dyed traitor was calmly strangled in the

imperial tent, Jahandar was quietly put out of the way, and Farokhshir

reigned in his stead.

One is irresistibly reminded, as one reads the records of the few

following reigns, of the terrible annals of the Slave and Khilji

Kings. There is only this to choose between them, that the latter

concerned themselves with kings who, however degenerate, were at least

real, whereas these occupants of Akbar's throne, Farokhshir, the two

infant princes who were in turn raised to power by political factions,

and Mahomed-Shah, were all purely puppets.

The first-named, who owed his kingdom entirely to the ability for

intrigue of two Syyeds of Ba'rr'ha, spent his time largely in trying

to emancipate himself from their claims on his gratitude. His was a

feeble, futile nature, a feeble, futile reign. During it the

Mahrattas, becoming tired of their civil war of succession, began to

renew their depredations along the Moghul frontiers. But in all ways

Farokhshir was a timid creature; so nothing, great was done to hold

the marauders in check. He, however, through the aid of a general with

an unpronounceable name, was equal to a final tussle and final

crushing of the Sikh zealots, seven hundred and forty-nine of whom,

defeated and taken prisoners to Delhi, were duly paraded through the

streets, exposed to various indignities, and finally beheaded in

batches of one hundred and eleven on seven successive days of the

week.

Their leader, Banda, was, however, reserved for more refined

barbarity. Nothing in the whole annals of history can exceed in

devilish malignant cruelty the revolting details of the treatment

meted out to this man, who had himself, it is true, led the way in

lack of humanity! They are sickening to read, and shall not be

repeated here.

Farokhshir only reigned six years. By that time even his masters, the

Syyeds, had tired of him, and despite his abject submission, he was

finally dragged from the women's apartments, a faint, frightened

shadow of a king, and privately made away with.

But these same Syyeds--king-makers as they justly called

themselves--were unfortunate in their choice of a successor. They set

up one young prince of the blood, who promptly died of consumption in

less than three months. They followed him with another, who as

promptly followed his example in less time.

The question naturally presents itself--was it tuberculosis or some

other toxin? Who can say?

They then, in despair, chose a healthy young man. But the public

confidence in them as king-makers was waning, and almost before the

new emperor--who was enthroned in the title of Mahomed-Shah--was

firmly settled in his seat, Hussan-Ali--the most powerful of the two

Syyeds--was assassinated in his palanquin, and his brother, after

vainly trying to hold his own single-handed, was defeated and made

prisoner near Delhi, his life being spared out of respect for his

sacred lineage--Syyeds being descended directly from the great

Prophet.

And all this time, while emperors intrigued against ministers, and

ministers intrigued against emperors, while here and there some

austere old Mahomedan like Asaf-Jah (whilom Grand Vizier, and

afterwards Governor in the Dekkan), who remembered the bigoted decorum

of Aurungzebe's court, lifted up voice of warning and held up holy

hands of horror--all this time the Western nibblings continued on the

sea-coast, and in the interior the Mahratta power was growing day by

day.

For some time the Moghuls kept themselves fairly secure of it by

pitting Samba, the one claimant to the crown, against Saho, the other

claimant. But Saho found a friend in the person of one Bala-ji, a

Brahmin, who began life as a mere village accountant. Ere long,

however, he was his master's right hand, and it was by his wits that

Saho found himself no longer a mere vassal of the empire, but an

independent ruler, entitled to claim endless minor dues over a large

extent of land. A quick wit was this of Bala-ji's, which recognised

the infinite opportunities for encroachments and interference given by

widespread, ill-defined rights.

In the confusion worse confounded which ensued, the Mahratta scored

invariably against the Moghul, and when Bala-ji died, his son, still

more capable, still more astute, took up the prime minister or

Peishwa-ship, and with it his father's life-work.

Now, there is no doubt that this son, by name Baji-Rao, is, after

Siva-ji, by far the ablest Mahratta of history.

He was a warrior, born and bred in camps, a statesman educated ably by

his father, a man frank and free, hardy beyond most, content to live

on a handful of unhusked grain, vital to the fingertips.

He found himself confronted by a Peace-party, who would fain have

paused to consolidate what had already been won, to suppress civil

discord, and generally to give a firm administrative grip on the south

of India before attempting further conquests on the north.

But Baji-Rao was clear-sighted; he saw the difficulties of this

policy. To attempt the consolidation of what was still absolutely

fluid, to bid the bands of predatory horsemen which constituted the

Mahratta army suddenly lay down their lances or turn them into ox

goads, would be fatal.

The only chance of peace was to form a regular army out of these

robber hordes, give that army work to do, and so establish a stern

military control as the first and most necessary step towards a fixed

Government.

The Moghul empire lay ready to hand, rotten at the core, simply

waiting to be overthrown.

He therefore urged his master to "strike the withered trunk, when the

branches will fall of themselves," and roused the lazy, somewhat

luxurious Saho to such enthusiasm that he swore he would plant his

victorious standard on Holy Himalaya itself.

The career of Saho-plus-Baji-Rao was singularly successful. Ere long,

after harassing the Dekkan, he forced his rival, Samba, to yield him

almost the whole Mahratta country except a portion about Kolapur.

Having done this, he turned himself to engage the Moghul force of

thirty-five thousand men which had marched on him with the avowed

object of delivering Saho from the terrible tyranny of Baji. This was

defeated, and Saho-cum-Baji proceeded to apportion various parts of

Southern India amongst the great Mahratta families. The Gaekwars of

Baroda date from this time. The Holkar of those days was but a

shepherd-soldier, and the Scindias, though of good birth, a mere

body-servant of the Peishwas.

Malwa was the next emprise, and though its Afghan governor effected

his own personal escape by means of a rescue party from Rohilkand

summoned by his wife, who sent her veil as a challenge to her

brethren's honour, the whole rich province fell into Mahratta hands.

The Rajah of Bundulkhund, alarmed, acceded to Baji-Rao's demands, and

Jai-Singh of Amber, hastily summoned by the Moghuls to defend their

cause, after a futile and half-hearted resistance, also yielded.

He was more of a scientist than a soldier was Jai-Singh, and would

have been remarkable in any age for his astronomical work. His 'List

of the Stars' is still of importance.

Hitherto, all these aggressions had been made by the Mahrattas under

cover of claims; those ill-defined, widespread rights of share and

taxation which Bala-ji had started. Now, seeing his opponent's

weakness, Saho-cum-Baji's demands rose, until even Moghul supineness

could not submit to his terms.

Nothing daunted, the former advanced on Delhi itself, but while his

light cavalry under Holkar were ravaging the country about Agra, they

were attacked and driven back by the Governor of Oudh, a man evidently

of some spirit, for he had actually left his own province to defend

the adjoining one.

The skirmish was magnified into overwhelming victory by the Moghuls,

and this so irritated Baji-cum-Saho, that he conceived and put into

practice what was more an impish piece of mischief than a serious

assault.

Leaving the imperial army which had come out solemnly, solidly, to

repel him on the right, he led his swarms of active freebooters by a

_detour_ to its rear, and then contemptuously disdaining an attack on

the pompous martial array, made one almost unbroken march to the very

gates of Delhi.

Here was consternation indeed! The Mahrattas at the very steps of the

throne, while the court army was seeking them in the wilderness!

His object, however, was mere intimidation; as he phrased it himself:

"Just to show the emperor that he could come if he liked."

So, after repelling with heavy loss one sally caused by the Moghul

misapprehension of a retrograde movement he made beyond the suburbs

(which was due to his desire to prevent damage by his freebooting

followers), he retreated as he came, just as the befogged, bewildered

Moghul army, duly bedrummed, beflagged, and bedisciplined, was on the

eve of arriving at Delhi.

A sheer piece of devilry, no doubt. He had meant to have crossed the

Jumna and looted the rich Gangetic plains, but the rainy season was

due, and there was more comfortable work to be done in the Dekkan.

Asaf-Jah, still active though old, followed him so soon as the weather

permitted, and he could manage to scrape together sufficient soldiery;

but so low had the power of the Moghul fallen by this time, that he

had to start with a bare thirty-five thousand men. Then ensued a

campaign of some months on the old well-known lines.

The regulars marching with difficulty, the irregulars harassing the

line of march. The Moghuls entrenching themselves scientifically, the

Mahrattas cutting off supplies, laying waste the country for miles,

looting every baggage-train that tried to get in, and finally cutting

off all communication with the base. There was nothing for it finally

but retreat; a slow retreat of 4 or 5 miles a day, the enemy's light

cavalry hanging on the rear, harassing the disheartened army in every

possible way. There could be but one end to it--almost unconditioned

surrender.

Baji-cum-Saho demanded the cession of all Malwa, the country between

the rivers Nerbudda and the Chumbal, and an indemnity of fifty lacs of

rupees, or five millions.

Weighted down with these fateful terms, for which he promised to gain

the emperor's sanction, poor Asaf-Jah continued his way Delhi-wards,

Baji-cum-Saho marching a few days behind him to take present

possession of his conquests. Whether Asaf-Jah's efforts would have

resulted in confirmation of these terms or not cannot be said; for

this was in the year of grace 1738, and in the November of that year

Nadir the Persian invaded India.

THE INVASION OF NADIR

A.D. 1738 TO A.D. 1742

The old cry once more!

Over the wheat-fields of the Punjab, just as the seed was bursting

into green, that cry--

"The Toorkh! The Toorkh!"

Surely no land on the globe has suffered so much from invasion as

Hindustan? The mythical Snake-people first, coming from God knows

where.... Then the Aryans, with their flocks and herds, from the Roof

of the World.... Next the well-greaved Greeks, leaving their indelible

mark on Upper India.... So through Parthian, and Scythian, and

Bactrian, to the wild, resistless influx of Mongolian immigrations.

Then finally Mahmud and Mahomed, Tamerlane and Babar ... last of all,

Nadir the Persian.

His was an unprovoked, almost an unpremeditated invasion. It burst

upon India like a monsoon storm, swift, lurid, almost terrible in the

rapidity with which action follows menace. And like that same storm it

came, it passed, and the blue, unclouded sky seemed far away from the

desolation and havoc that had been wrought.

In many ways this, the last, was the worst of all the sacks which

India had suffered. To begin with, it came so late in time. Towards

the middle of the eighteenth century one does not expect a robbing

raid on so vast a scale. It seems almost incredible that an army of

eighty thousand men should march through a country bent on plunder,

and plunder only.

Then its sole object--gold--was such a mean one. No political reason

lay at the back of the raid. Nadir had no ambitions. He did not wish

to add to his kingship; it was all wilful, wicked, merciless greed.

Yet Nadir-Shah himself was not absolutely a mean man. He was a native

of Khorasan, that is to say, an Afghan, born of no particular family,

but born a warrior. At the age of seventeen he was taken prisoner by

the Usbeks, but after four years of captivity made his escape.

Then he took service with the King of Khorasan, but, believing himself

ill-rewarded for a success against the Tartars, gave up his command,

and became, frankly, a freebooter.

A few years later, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, he threw in his

fortunes with those of a Persian princeling _en retraite_, and in his

name fought a variety of battles, in which he was invariably

victorious. They ended in the nominal restoration of Tahmasp to the

throne of his fathers. But behind Tahmasp sate Nadir, who had become

the idol of the Persian people; and small wonder, since he had raised

the nation from abject slavery to such military glory as Persia has

seldom possessed.

It was necessary, however, to continue soldierly exploits; so Nadir

set to work to settle a dispute with the Turks who had taken Tabriz.

He had recovered it, when trouble in Khorasan called him back, and

kept him employed for so long, that when he returned to the capital,

Isphahan, it was to find that his puppet Tahmasp had, during his

absence, become a person of much importance, and was exercising all

the royal prerogatives.

This did not suit Nadir, so, on the excuse of lack of statesmanship in

concluding a treaty with the Turks, he deliberately deposed Tahmasp,

and set his infant son in his stead.

This was practically the beginning of Nadir's reign, but he refrained

from assuming the title of King until many victories over the Turks

and Russians had strengthened his hold on the Persians.

Then, covered with glory, he assembled all the dignitaries, civil and

military, to the number of about one hundred thousand in a sort of

mutual admiration conference, when, no doubt by previous arrangement,

they offered him the crown, which, after some display of surprise and

reluctance, he was pleased to accept.

Now this was all very deep-laid, very diplomatic; but Nadir's

cleverness was at times too clever. In some of his campaigns

he had deliberately changed his religion--or rather his

denomination--becoming Sunni instead of Shiah, in order to gain over a

warlike tribe which was obdurately troublesome; now, hoping to stamp

out any sentimental attachment to the dynasty which he had just

deposed, and whose claim to kingship rested entirely on its

championship of the Shiah tenets, he changed the national

denomination, and declared Persia henceforward a Sunni country. It was

a mistake; for though the Sunni section was pleased, the Shiahs felt

themselves alienated from their new king.

In another way Nadir showed more sense. It was his greatness as a

general which had won him sovereignty, and he recognised that it must

be kept by the same means; so he gathered together an army of eighty

thousand men and set off to conquer Kandahar.

_L'appetit vient en mangeant_. India lay just over the barrier of the

Koh-i-Suleiman hills, and the tribes who had hitherto been subsidised

by the Moghul Government to keep the peaks and passes, were now sulky

over their failure for some years past to squeeze anything out of the

bankrupt Government of Delhi.

But even Nadir required some excuse for bald, brutal invasion. He

therefore peremptorily demanded the expulsion of some Afghans who had

fled from punishment to shelter in Indian territory. At all times it

would have been difficult to lay hands on a band of wandering Pathans

amongst the frontier hills, but Delhi was at this time distracted by

fear of the Mahrattas, and still all uncertain whether to acknowledge

Nadir-Shah's claim to kingship.

The hesitation suited the latter; he was over the border, had defeated

a feeble resistance at Lahore, and was within 100 miles of Delhi

before he found himself faced by a real army.

There must surely be some malignant attraction about the wide plain of

Paniput! Surely the Angel-of-Death must spread his wings over it at

all times, since bitter battle has been fought on it again and again,

and its sun-saturated sands have been sodden again and again with the

blood of many men.

How many times has the fate of India been decided amongst its

semi-barren stretches, where the low _dhak_ bushes glow like sunset

clouds on the horizon? First by the mythical, legendary Pandus and

Kurus, backed by the gods, protected by showers of celestial arrows.

Next, when Shahab-ud-din-Mahomed Ghori broke down the Rajput

resistance, and Prithvi-raj, the flower of Rajput chivalry, was killed

flying for his life amongst the sugarcane brakes. Timur passed it by,

but his great descendant Babar strewed the plain with dead in his

victorious march to Delhi. Here Hemu met with crushing defeat at

Akbar's hands, and now Nadir was to carry on the tradition of death,

until that last great fight in 1761, which ended the Mahratta power,

and so paved the way for British supremacy.

How many men's dust is mingled with the soil of Paniput? All we know

is that the life-blood of over a million is said to have been spilt

upon it.

Nadir's battle, however, appears to have been a comparatively

bloodless rout of an absolutely incapable enemy. Mahomed-Shah, the

so-called emperor of all the Indies, at any rate gave up the struggle

incontinently, sent in his submission, and the two kings journeyed

peacefully together to Delhi, which they reached in March 1739. Did

the populace come out to greet the sovereigns riding in, brother-like,

hand in hand, to take up their residence in the palace built by

Shahjahan? It is a quaint picture this, of cringing submission and

reckless ascendency.

To Nadir's credit be it said that, whatever ultimate object of plunder

he may have had, he wished to avoid bloodshed. For this purpose he

stationed isolated pickets of chosen troops about the city and suburbs

to keep order and protect the people. Unavailingly, for a strange

thing happened. Whether owing to some deep-laid, well-known plan for

poisoning the intruder which failed unexpectedly, or from some other

cause, the report was spread abroad within forty-eight hours that

Nadir-the-Conqueror, Nadir-the-mainspring-of-Conquest, was dead. The

rumours blazed like wildfire through the bazaars. In quick impulse the

mob fell on the pickets, and seven hundred Persians were weltering in

their blood when Nadir himself rode through the midnight streets,

intent, they say, on peace. But the provocation proved too much for

his cold, cruel Persian temper.

Struck by stones and mud hurled at him from the houses, the officer

next him killed by a bullet aimed at himself, he gave way to Berserk

rage. It was just dawn when the massacre he ordered began; it was nigh

sunset when it ended, and night fell over one hundred and fifty

thousand corpses. Nor did his revenge stop here. The treasure, which

he would no doubt have extorted in any case, was now seized on by

force, torture and murder being used to make the miserable inhabitants

yield up every penny. Every kind of cruelty was employed in this

extortion; numbers died from ill-usage, and many others destroyed

themselves from fear of a disgraceful death. As an eye-witness writes:

"Sleep and rest forsook the city. In every chamber and house was heard

the cry of affliction."

The Afghan has always possessed a perfect genius for pillage, and

after a short two months Nadir-Shah left Delhi, carrying away with him

an almost incredible quantity of plunder, which it is very generally

estimated at being worth L30,000,000; an enormous sum, but it must be

remembered that the famous peacock throne in itself was counted by

Tavernier as equal to L6,000,000 sterling.

But Nadir left Delhi something which, possibly, it might have

done better without; for ere leaving, he solemnly reinstated the

puppet-king, and swore fearful oaths as to the revenge he would take

on the nobles when he returned in a year or two should they fail in

allegiance. But he never did return; he really never meant to return.

He was a robber _pur et simple_, and he had got all that he had any

hopes of getting.

So he disappeared northwards again, to die a violent death ere long.

For despite his success, something of remorse had come to him,

uninvited, with the spoils of ravaged Delhi. He became cruel,

capricious, tyrannical; finally, he grew half-mad, until one night

the nobles, whose arrest he had decreed, the captain of his own

body-guard, the very chief of his own clan, entered his tent at

midnight. Then from the darkness came the challenge in the deep voice

which had so often led them to victory.

"Who goes there?"

For an instant they drew back, uncertain; but only for an instant.

They went for him with their sabres as they might have gone at a mad

dog, and Nadir, their hero, their pride, their tyrant, their horror,

ended his life.

How had he affected India?

First of all it had for the moment checked Mahratta aggrandisement.

The appearance of this unknown, hitherto almost unheard-of foe, who

traversed with such ease the country he had hoped to annex, and did

the things he had meant to do, seemed to paralyse Baji-Rao. His first

impulse was to aid in a general defence of India. "Our domestic

quarrels," he wrote, "are now insignificant; there is but one enemy in

Hindustan. The whole power of the Dekkan, Hindu and Mahomedan alike,

must assemble for resistance."

And even when Nadir-Shah had retreated without further progress

southward, Baji-Rao, free-booter, as all the Mahrattas were at heart,

must have felt himself frustrated. What use was there in reaching a

city desolate utterly, still infected by the stench of unburied

bodies; a city whose treasury doors stood wide open, empty, deserted;

a city, briefly, which an Afghan had pillaged? So he and his Saho

retired southwards.

As for the effects which Nadir's sudden swoop on the interior of the

plum-cake had on the nibbling mice upon its circumference, there is

little to be said. It must have been a surprise to the civilised

communities which were so rapidly coming into existence at such

centres as Calcutta, Madras, Bombay; centres in which life went

elegantly, and people began to talk of the latest news by mail from

England. Still, the mere brute-force of the invasion cannot have

shocked them much, for Europe itself was a prey at this time to wars

and rumours of wars. The 1715 rebellion was over in England; the 1745

had not yet begun. In France affairs were working up towards the

Revolution. Spain and Germany were alike, either at the beginning or

the end of disastrous struggles.

Yet the mere fact which must have filtered through to the

seacoast--_that thirty millions worth of solid plunder had just been

filched away from the treasury of India by foreigners_--cannot have

been pleasing news. The East India Company, however, seems to have

made no great efforts at aggrandisement during the years between the

special granting to it of lands by Farokhshir and 1746, when it

formally entered into grips with the French East Indian Company, which

about this time began that dispute for supremacy in India which

virtually ended with the taking of Trichinoply in 1761.

In truth we have very little information indeed regarding the doings

of John Company during this period. All we know is that British

imports into India fell from L617,000 in 1724 to L157,000 in 1741,

which, taken with a corresponding decrease in dividends, would seem to

show some depression, some check to trade.

One thing is certain. The Constitution of the Company was not

satisfactory. An attempt had been made to avoid a monopoly of large

shareholders by ruling that, no matter what the share held might be,

it should only, whether L500 or L50,000, carry one vote for the

election of the Court of Directors. But this ruling could be, and was,

easily evaded. All that had to be done was to split the L50,000 into a

hundred L500 shares, registered in the names of confidential agents,

who--in consideration of an honorarium, no doubt--voted according to

direction. It was not very straightforward, of course; on the other

hand, the original ruling was silly in the extreme, since it prevented

those who had a real interest in the Company from exercising their due

share of influence.

Unfortunately, this faggot-voting brought with it a corrupt

atmosphere. Appointments under the Company were a common bribe, and as

the Court of Directors had to be reappointed every year, there was

endless opportunity for jobbery.

So, after a time, opposition to the monopoly of the trade began once

more to take form. Proposals for yet a new company were floated.

Parliament once more took up the matter; which was finally settled by

the existing company offering L200,000 to Government, and a reduction

of 1 per cent. on the rate of interest payable on the previous loan of

some three-and-a-half millions (that is to say, a yearly income of

L35,000), as payment for the extension of their monopoly till 1766.

This offer was accepted, and in 1744 the term of monopoly was still

further extended until 1780, in consideration of a further loan to

Government of L1,000,000 sterling at the low rate of 3 per cent.

Coming as it did in the middle of a very expensive war, the temptation

of this pecuniary assistance must have been potent; but there can be

but little doubt that, publicly at any rate, the trade of India

suffered considerably from the exclusion of private enterprise.

Certain it is that while the English East India Company found

themselves forced to reduce their dividends to 7 per cent, the Dutch

Company was dividing 25.

Altogether, then, it is not surprising that, until the French, by

assuming the aggressive, forced the East India Company to bestir

itself, it did nothing of importance in the way of progress.

THE GAME OF FRENCH AND ENGLISH

A.D. 1742 TO A.D. 1748

The eye of France had been on India for a century and a half, for it

was in 1601 that a fleet of French merchant ships set out from St Malo

for Hindustan, but failed of their destination.

The first French East India Company was formed in 1604, the second in

1611, a third in 1615; a fourth was founded by Cardinal Richelieu in

1642, yet a fifth in 1664, and finally a sixth, made up by the

co-ordination of various older ventures, began in 1719 to trade under

the name of "Compagnies des Indes."

There was thus no lack of organisation; of action, there had been, up

to 1742, comparatively little. They had secured a factory at Surat,

they captured Trincomalee from the Dutch, and they had occupied

Pondicherry, which they still hold. Aurungzebe had ceded Chandanagore

to them, and they had also obtained Mahe and Karikal, which they

bought from the Rajah of Tanjore.

This, then, was the position of France in India when, in the year

1742, the office of Governor was bestowed on one Joseph Dupleix. He

had spent his life in India, had amassed a huge private fortune by

private trade, but at the same time had done his duty by the company

of which his father had been a director.

He was thus saturated, as it were, with the methods and manners of the

East, and in addition he had the advantage of a clever wife, who,

though European by birth, had been born and bred in India.

Incited, it is believed, by her, he evolved a plan by which he hoped

to gain supremacy for France. Competition in fair trade with both the

English and the Dutch had failed, but he hoped to gain that by

diplomacy which had been denied by commerce. The Moghul dynasty was

tottering to its fall. On all sides the petty governors of provinces

were aspiring to feeble power, and the balance of parties was often so

nearly equal, that a very little support thrown into the scale would

determine failure or success. Here Dupleix saw his opportunity, and he

set deliberately to work, using Madame Dupleix as his go-between, to

make friends for France in this welter of conflicting interests. The

work was going on secretly and surely, when in 1744 the war of the

Austrian Succession broke out in Europe between England and France.

Dupleix was evidently unwilling that this secret work of his should be

interrupted by any outbreak of hostilities in the East, and some

little time previous to the open declaration of war, both the French

and English Companies had taken steps to provide for peace at any

price. But a new factor had arisen on the French side in the person of

Admiral Labourdonnais, the Governor of the Isle of France and the Isle

of Bourbon.

His had been an adventurous life, and he had often been in and out of

favour with those who had employed him. His government of the two

contiguous islands was a case in point. He had found a plentiful crop

of abuses, he had rooted them out, and in consequence of this, when he

returned on private affairs to France, was pursued with unscrupulous

enmity and bitter detraction.

In endeavouring to right himself he gave to the Ministers of State and

the directors of his Company a full exposition of his views on the

Eastern question. It commended itself to the authorities, and he found

himself setting sail for the Isle of France in April 1741, backed by a

fleet which, with care and training, should be able to secure to his

country supremacy in the Eastern seas.

But disappointment awaited him. Long before the declaration of war

which he expected, the French Company, who thought it had been made to

bear more than its fair share of the cost of fitting out the fleet,

sent for their ships, and Labourdonnais was left at a disadvantage. A

British squadron was now cruising about the Bay of Bengal, taking the

place which he had hoped to fill, and making many French prizes. But

he was not a man of discouragements, and the situation having been

saved on the Coromandel Coast by the diplomacy of Dupleix, who induced

the Nawab of Arcot to claim Pondicherry as his territory and so save

it from occupation by the English, he managed somehow to scrape

together sufficient ships and men to try conclusions.

Fortune played a stroke in his favour by the inopportune death of the

English captain, by which the command devolved on one who erred on the

side of prudence, and who, after the two squadrons had been engaged at

long distances until nightfall off the coast, thought it wiser to cut

and run under cover of darkness, in consequence of a leak springing in

one of his largest vessels.

Labourdonnais, who had suffered far more, and who, in truth, had been

anxiously cogitating his best move during the night, thus found

himself, as the grey dawn showed an empty sea, a complete victor, and

full of relief and pride set sail for Pondicherry. But here a cool

reception awaited him, for Dupleix had no notion of having his aims

achieved by any one but himself. So the commander by land and the

commander by sea were mutually obstructive, and continued to be so; a

course which eventually ruined both, destroyed French hopes in India,

and for the present saved those of England from almost certain

annihilation.

For the British squadron was nowhere. After a month of shelter in the

harbour of Trincomalee, it reappeared, only to disappear once more.

Labourdonnais therefore put back to Pondicherry, and prepared

seriously to take Madras; which he did, without the least trouble, in

September 1746. It was, in truth, incapable of defence.

The French admiral brought eleven ships, two thousand nine hundred

European soldiery, eight hundred natives, and adequate artillery

against a small fort manned by two hundred men. For the Black Town and

the White Town, together with the contiguous five miles of sea-coast,

in which were gathered over two hundred and fifty thousand souls, lay

absolutely unprotected, at the mercy of all and sundry.

It is said that the English relied for security on the Nawab of Arcot,

who had promised to claim Madras as he had claimed Pondicherry; but,

doubtless, Dupleix had been beforehand with them.

This much it is pleasant to record, that the siege, which lasted no

less than seven days, was the most bloodless on record. The death-roll

was only one Frenchman and five English.

The terms of capitulation were severe. All goods, stores, merchandise,

etc., passed to France; all English were prisoners-of-war. A ransom

was suggested, but Labourdonnais, while intimating that he was

prepared to receive the proposal reasonably, stipulated for previous

surrender. Indeed, throughout the whole affair he appears to have

behaved honourably and liberally. Not so Dupleix, who, when the

subsequent negotiations had commenced, roughly interfered, denied the

power of Labourdonnais to dictate terms, claimed Madras as standing in

his territory, and generally brought about a dead-lock, during which

three more French ships-of-war, with over one thousand three hundred

men on board, arrived at Pondicherry.

With this addition to his fleet Labourdonnais could have swept the

seas, and Calcutta and Bombay must have shared the fate of Madras;

but--alas, for France!--her sons were quarrelling amongst themselves.

And before they could settle their differences the weather intervened.

Truly, Great Britain scores something of tenderness from the breezes

that blow, by being "set in the steely seas," in the path of the north

and the west and the east and the south winds! They saved her once

from the Spanish Armada, and now the monsoon rolled up along the coast

of Coromandel, and broke in the Madras roads, foundered a French ship

of the line, and drove five others dismasted, disabled, out to sea.

It was a crushing blow, one from which France never recovered, and by

which poor Labourdonnais, who had consented to be tied by the leg

simply from a sense of honour, a determination to stand by his word at

all hazards, met with early and disappointed death; for the French

Government, filled up with the able lies of Dupleix, sent him to the

Bastille, where he lingered for three years, dying soon after his

contemptuous and unsympathetic release of poverty and a broken heart.

Dupleix, however, flourished like the proverbial green bay tree. He

repudiated ransoms and restorations alike, and seemed likely to remain

in possession, when the Nawab of Arcot intervened, asserting--and no

doubt with truth--that the French governor, in order to prevent aid

being sent to the English, had promised to make over Madras to him as

a reward for quiescence. The intervention was followed by an

undisciplined army of ten thousand men. And here, however much the

character of Dupleix may arouse dislike, credit must be given to him

for showing indubitably the inherent strength of his claim, that

European methods should be the weightiest factor in Eastern politics.

He met this horde of ten thousand with a body of four hundred

half-disciplined native troops--barely half-disciplined--and he

literally wiped his enemy out. Henceforward a new element entered into

the Eastern problem, for it was abundantly demonstrated that to

conquer India it was not necessary to import a whole army. There was

that of valour, that of sheer soldiership, amongst the natives

themselves, to make them, when properly led, the finest troops in the

world. It is hardly too much to say that India practically changed

rulers in 1746, when the Nawab of Arcot was repulsed from Madras.

Out of this repulse (necessary in order to enable Dupleix--despite the

promise without which Labourdonnais had refused to budge--to carry

through his treacherous intention of repudiating the negotiations,

refusing ransom, and holding Madras for the French) arose much. The

Nawab, disgusted, broke with Dupleix and assisted the English at Fort

St David, a smaller factory some miles further down the coast. Here

the appearance of the undisciplined troops just as the French,

imagining themselves secure of victory, were refreshing themselves in

a garden, produced such a scare that the victors were across the river

again, and on their way back to Pondicherry before they could be

rallied.

Dupleix, greatly enraged at his failure, and knowing to a nicety how

to deal with natives, now commenced to make the Nawab of Arcot's life

a burden to him by reason of petty raids, until, wearied out, he once

more threw the weight of his support into the French scale.

It cannot have been a clean business; it certainly was not an edifying

spectacle to see two civilised European communities vieing with one

another in their efforts to secure an Oriental potentate, but this

much may be said in English extenuation--the French began it.

The case of the English along the Coast of Coromandel now seemed quite

desperate. They had lost their only ally, and though an attack by boat

on Cuddalore had been repulsed--once more by the aid of Neptune, who

always seems favourable to Britain, and who on this occasion swamped

half the enemy in the Coromandel Coast, and sent them dripping,

half-drowned, with wet powder and soaked magazines, back to sea--they

could not hope to avert the renewed assault on Fort St David, which

took place in 1747.

But this game of French and English was a series of surprises, a

perfect melodrama of dramatic coincidences; for no sooner were the

French once more comfortably ensconced in the old garden than--Hey

presto!--sails appeared to sea-ward, and in less than no time--hardly

long enough for Monsieur's hurried escape--there was a British fleet

at anchor in the roads!

It reads like some tale of adventure in which a "God-out-of-a-machine"

always appears in the nick of time to save the hero. But so it was,

though it must be confessed that beyond a display of _force majeure_

the British fleet did nothing. In truth a more incapable fleet never

floated. It seems to have spent a whole year in sailing about the Bay

of Bengal looking for the French fleet, and when it caught a glimpse

of the enemy, promptly changing its _role_ from hound to hare, and

running away itself.

Meanwhile, on land one Major Lawrence--this is the first time that

this honoured name appears over the horizon of Indian history--a

distinguished King's officer, had come out to take over charge of the

Company's forces. At first he certainly distinguished himself, for he

began by discovering a deep-laid plot, in which Madame Dupleix was

prime mover, to tamper with the fidelity of the few hundred sepoys

which the English, following the example of the French, were bringing

into discipline. Banishment and death having disposed of this

conspiracy, Admiral Griffin and the British fleet were given a chance

of more honourable warfare; but, unfortunately, at the time the French

vessels showed close in to the coast the admiral and all his officers

happened to be ashore enjoying themselves, and so once more honest

battle degenerated into the looking for a needle in a bundle of hay;

in the midst of which the French vessels achieved their object of

landing L200,000 in specie, and four hundred soldiers at Pondicherry.

Major Lawrence, however, almost neutralised this failure by a clever

repulse of the French at Cuddalore, which lay but 3 miles north of

Fort St David. Hearing that a large force was advancing, he ordered

all the guns and stores from Cuddalore to be dismantled and taken in

to the former fort. Native spies, naturally, brought the news of this

to the enemy, who consequently advanced carelessly, applied their

scaling ladders to the walls, and were surprised by perfect platoons

of musketry and a shower of grape. The guns removed by day had been

restored by night, and the garrison largely reinforced. The result was

headlong flight.

Once again it reads like a shilling shocker; one is tempted, almost,

to take the whole story as the figment of a super-excited brain.

All this time neither France nor England had--and small wonder--taken

this game of French and English on the Coromandel Coast at all

seriously; but at long last, in 1748, both the Government and the

Company of the latter woke up to the necessity for doing something.

The result being such a fleet as no Western nation had hitherto put

into Eastern waters. Thirty ships in all, thirteen of them being ships

of the line, and none of them less than 500 tons burden.

With these, close on four thousand European troops, three hundred

Africans, two thousand half-disciplined sepoys, and the support of the

Nawab of Arcot (who had once more changed sides), Fort St David

rightly felt itself strong enough, not only to recover Madras, but

also to take Pondicherry.

But here, alas! begins one of the most fateful tales of sheer

ineptitude to be found in the whole history of English warfare. Delay,

crass ignorance, useless persistence, and exaggerated importance,

marked the preliminary siege of Arrian-aupan, a small fort which might

with ease have been left alone. For the season was already far

advanced, and the object at which it was all-important to strike was,

palpably, Pondicherry.

September, however, had well begun ere the attacking force found

itself within 1,500 yards of the town, and instantly started, with

unheard-of caution, to throw up parallels. Wherefore, save from

ignorance, God knows, since in those days 880 yards was the limit for

such diggings. On they laboured with praiseworthy persistence until,

after a month's work, they reached the point at which they ought to

have begun, and found that their toil was useless! Between them and

the city lay an impassable morass.

The British fleet, meanwhile, getting as near to their range as strong

flanking batteries manned with over a hundred guns would allow, had

been pounding away quite uselessly at fair Pondicherry, which lay

smiling and peaceful, immaculate as any virgin town behind the white

line of surf.

What was now to be done? To begin again was hopeless, to persist

useless, so after losing over one-third of its European force from

sickness, and expending Heaven only knows how many rounds of

ammunition, England retired, having inflicted on France the loss by

the fire of her ships of one old Mahomedan woman, who was killed by a

spent shot in the street, and by sickness and other casualties some

two hundred soldiers.

No wonder Dupleix sang "Te Deums" until he was hoarse! No wonder he

wrote bombastic, boastful, letters round to every Nawab and Rajah,

including the Great Moghul, proclaiming that the French were the

fighters, and that those who were wise would side with them.

There can be no doubt whatever that this pantomimic siege of

Pondicherry lost the English prestige, which it took many years of

subsequent victories to regain.

For by the irony of fate, no immediate opportunity of revenge for

reparation of their honour was given them.

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle terminated the long war between France

and England, and one of the provisions of that treaty was the

restoration to each power of all possessions taken during the

hostilities.

Madras, therefore, was formally receded to England, and the combatants

on the Coromandel Coast were left eyeing one another, looking for some

new cause of conflict.

But the game of French and English was over.

PLOTS AND COUNTERPLOTS

A.D. 1748 TO A.D. 1751

When the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ended open warfare between the

French and the English, both naturally turned their eyes more keenly

upon India.

What they saw there was stimulating to those who felt within

themselves the power of conquest. On all sides were petty wars and

rumours of wars. The horrors of Nadir-Shah's invasion were being

forgotten, but the country was not coming back to its pristine quiet.

There was a strange new factor in India now: the factor of a new

knowledge of alien races, by whom it was possible to be helped, or who

could in their turn give help.

But this, still, was only about and a little beyond the sea-board.

Up-country matters went on much as ever. Mahomed-Shah's majesty crept

out of its hiding-place again, and made shift with a pinchbeck peacock

throne, a pretence of power.

Baji-cum-Saho, the Mahratta, however, almost ere he recovered from his

alarm at the Persian hordes, had died, leaving his son, Bala-ji, as

Peishwa in his stead; leaving him also some very pretty quarrels to

settle. One with the semi-pirates of Angria, which, involving the

Portuguese, ended in the latter being ousted from India in 1739 by the

Mahrattas, who, however, admitted to the loss of five thousand men in

the siege of Bassein alone.

But Bala-ji was a strong man, fully equal to the position in which he

found himself; and after driving his most formidable private enemy and

claimant to the Prime Ministership, Raghu-ji, back to his task of

besieging Trichinopoly, he turned his attention to aggression. He

began by renewing the long-deferred claim on the court at Delhi, and

was granted it, on condition that he aided the Governor Ali-Verdi-Khan

to repulse the invasion of Raghu-ji; who, having succeeded in his

siege, had made an independent raid into Bengal. This opportunity of

killing two birds with one stone was naturally welcome to Bala-ji, who

drove out the intruders without difficulty, and received his reward.

But, so far as Bengal was concerned, it was merely a postponement of

an evil day, for Raghu-ji returned to his prey, and finally obtained

the cession of a large part of Orissa, and a tribute from Bengal

itself.

Thus in 1748 the only ascending power was that of the Mahrattas. On

all other sides France and England were spectators of a general

scramble for territory, a general assertion of independence on the

part of petty chiefs.

And the question naturally came swiftly--"Why should we remain

inactive? Why should we not extend our sphere of influence by giving,

perhaps even _selling_, our aid?"

The question had already been answered by France. Dupleix had dipped

deep into Indian politics, and, by so doing, had undoubtedly

strengthened the position of the French. The temptation to follow suit

was almost overwhelming, and so in 1749 England drew the sword which

was impatiently resting in its scabbard, and became a mercenary in the

pay of one Sahu-ji who claimed the Rajahship of Tanjore. The

ostensible bribe offered was an unimportant fort of Devi-kottah, and a

slip of country along the coast. The real cause of the coalition being

the fact that the large English army, brought eastward during the late

war, was eating its head off in idleness.

The whole affair of the Tanjore succession was absolutely trivial, yet

almost too complicated for abbreviated detail. It is sufficient to say

that one Pratap Singh had reigned for years, that England had

recognised him, negotiated with him, and courted his assistance

against the French.

Policy, however, changes with the times, and it was now thought

advisable, without any further provocation, to assist in dethroning

him! No doubt there were excellent reasons for this _volte face_, only

at the present they are not in evidence.

This first venture on mercenary lines was not a brilliant passage in

the history of British arms. In truth, England in the East did not at

that time possess any man fit to carry on similar work to that which

Dupleix was doing for France; for Lieutenant Clive, though he had

given proof of high courage during the pantomimic siege of

Pondicherry, had not yet raised his head above those of his compeers.

Indeed, but for a chance he might never have so raised it, since at

the taking of Devi-kottah he narrowly escaped death; being one of the

four survivors in a rash attempt to cross the river Kolarun on a raft.

So this Tanjore campaign, which began in a tempest[4] that killed all

the baggage-animals and severely crippled the whole force, ended

ignominiously in another _volte face_. For, finding their _protege_,

Sahu-ji, had no local support for his claim, the English forces, on

condition of his receiving a pension of four thousand rupees,

re-transferred their friendship to the original King Pratap, who,

however, was made to ratify the bribes promised by the pretender, and

also to pay the cost of the war! The latter being certainly a seething

of the kid in its mother's milk.

---------------------

[Footnote 4: It was in this storm that the admiral's ship, _Namur_,

went down, with seven hundred and fifty men.]

---------------------

Meanwhile, France had been busy with more important matters.

To understand what was happening, it is necessary to go back to old

Asaf-Jah, who had begun his career under Aurungzebe, and who only died

in 1748 at the extraordinary age of one hundred and four.

A cunning old fox, brave to the death after the manner of foxes when

in a tight place, he had, under the title of Nizam-ul-mulk--a title

still held by the rulers of the Dekkan--kept his grip on that country

in almost absolute independence of Delhi.

Now, at his death, innumerable points cropped up for settlement. The

Carnatic was a fief of the Dekkan, and in the Carnatic were two

semi-independent kingdoms, Tanjore and Trichinopoly. The successions

of all these were disputed, especially that of the Carnatic, which was

held by that very Nawab of Arcot who had bandied about his allegiance

between the French and English. A most immoral proceeding, no doubt,

but at a time when civilised and Christian men were palpably only

playing for their own hand, it is not to be wondered at if less

cultivated, more pagan peoples followed suit. There seems, anyhow, no

reason--except the advantage to be gained from having a real

_creature_--why Dupleix should have thrown him over and supported the

claims of Chanda-Sahib. But he did; chiefly because Chanda-Sahib, the

only member of a former ruler's family who had sufficient talent for

the rise in fortune, had been brought up in the refuge of Pondicherry,

and promised important concessions should he succeed. This decision on

the part of Dupleix put the English in a quandary. They could not sit

still and see France succeed, and yet the chances of success on the

other side were small. So they temporised by sending one hundred and

twenty Europeans to help Trichinopoly, by which, of course, they

committed themselves as much as if they had sent twelve hundred.

They themselves, however, did not seem to think so, for in spite of

this absolute challenge to France they refused the English admiral's

offer to remain in Eastern waters. So suicidal did this appear to

Dupleix that for some time he treated the departure as a mere feint.

So both parties settled down with their "legitimate heir," neither

caring one straw for the justice of the claim, since both were equally

bad.

Whatever else may be said, this much is certain, that the _protege_ of

the French was a better puppet than the _protege_ of the English.

Furthermore, he drew into the French net no less a person than

Muzaffar-Jung, a grandson of old Asaf-Jah, who was a claimant for the

Dekkan. Truly, therefore, with a Nizam of the Dekkan, and a Nawab of

the Carnatic, both owing their thrones to French interference, Dupleix

had a right to expect much for his country.

Their interference, also, was successful. There was a pitched battle

close to Arcot, at which the Nawab was killed (at the most unusual age

of one hundred and seven), and only one of his sons escaped with the

wreck of his army to Trichinopoly.

Dupleix, it is said, urged the allies to press on after him, but the

Oriental mind, as a rule, is satisfied with the present. Chanda-Sahib

and Muzaffar-Jung amused themselves with playing the parts of Nizam

and Nawab to their hearts' content, and spending themselves and their

resources in luxurious pleasures, until the rightful claimant of the

former _role_ appeared on the horizon with an army composed largely of

mercenary Mahrattas. A big army, a good army; Dupleix saw victory in

it, and he instantly began with his usual unscrupulous diplomacy to

attempt negotiations.

In this, however, for once, the English were beforehand with him. They

had, as we know, moved by vague fear of the growing French ascendency,

sent a few men to support Trichinopoly against possible attacks from

Chanda-Sahib-cum-Muzaffar-Jung, and now, taking heart of grace, Major

Lawrence and four hundred troops joined the camp of the rightful

Nizam.

The two armies, that of Nasir-Jung backed--in truth but feebly--by the

English, and that of Chanda-Sahib-cum-Muzaffar-Jung backed by the

cunning of a man versed in all the tortuosities of Indian policy, were

now in touch with each other, but they did not come into action.

Thirteen of the French officers resigned their commissions the day

before the battle; the disaffection--due to some failure to divide

spoils--spread to the men, and their commander, Monsieur d'Auteuil,

feeling it unwise in the circumstances to venture anything, took

veritable French leave during the night, followed by Chanda-Sahib.

Muzaffar-Jung, thus left in despair, seized the bull by the horns and

surrendered himself to the rightful heir, who was in truth his uncle.

There is an element of the comic opera in all these incidents which

almost preclude their being taken seriously.

But here we have an _impasse_. At Pondicherry all was confusion, and

Dupleix driven to despair because his cock would not fight. At Arcot,

Major Lawrence trying through an interpreter to warn his cock, the

triumphant Nizam, against froggy Frenchmen, and seeking to get the

reward promised for the loan of the now useless British soldiery.

In both of which attempts he failed. In the first, because the

politeness of Oriental manners refused bald translation of the

Englishman's home truths. In the second, because wily Oriental

astuteness suggested that services having been bought must be given

before being paid for, and that Major Lawrence had better serve out

his time--if as nothing else--as a boon companion!

This suggestion was refused, and "after speaking his mind freely"

(through the polite interpreter!), the English commander and his

troops went back in dudgeon to Fort St David.

It took the French less time than it did the English to recover from

this fiasco. Dupleix, indeed, was once more deep in diplomacy ere

Major Lawrence had made up his mind whether to intrigue or fight.

His decision came too late for success, his indecision too early; for

having offered English support for the retaking of the Pagoda of

Trivadi, a strongly fortified place but 15 miles west of Fort St

David, he withdrew it when an advance of pay was refused. Whereupon

the French stepped in--the misunderstanding was in all probability the

result of their machinations--and added to their acquisitions by

taking the celebrated fort of Jingi, which, situated on a vast

isolated mountain of a rock, had been considered impregnable.

It was an exploit of which to be proud, and it is said that after

fully realising its natural strength the French force was lost in

wonder as to how it had managed to take it!

It was an exploit, also, which roused the Nizam Nasir-Jung from his

dream of luxurious pleasures. A nation which could take Jingi was

evidently the nation with whom to make terms. He therefore offered to

negotiate. Dupleix made extravagant demands, and so lured the Nizam to

take the field, for the wily diplomatist was aware that conspiracy was

rife amongst the Nizam's supporters, and hoped by getting in touch

with them to rid himself more effectually of a troublesome opponent

than by entering into terms with him.

It took fifteen days for the unwieldly army, 300,000 strong--60,000

foot, 45,000 cavalry, 700 elephants, 360 pieces of artillery, the rest

being camp followers--to march 30 miles.

Then it was stopped by the bursting of the monsoon. And so, with his

enemy blocked hopelessly within 15 miles of him, treachery became

possible to the Frenchman. And black treachery it was! To be brief,

Dupleix negotiated with the conspirators, and also with the Nizam; so,

finding himself finally in a dilemma as to which side to choose, took

the opportunity of a delay in sending back a ratified treaty with the

latter, to order the whole French force to attack.

The miserable Nizam at first refused to believe it possible that those

with whom but the day before he had signed a treaty of peace should

take arms against him; refused to believe it possible that disloyalty

was the cause of half his camp standing sullen spectators of the fray.

He mounted his elephant and rode straight to rouse them. It being

early dawn, he feared lest he might not be recognised, and rose in his

howdah in order to give a clearer view of his person.

Too clear, for he fell in an instant, pierced through the heart by two

bullets fired by one of his favourites.

Muzaffar-Jung, thus set free once more, resumed the Nizamship of the

Dekkan, and all went merry as a marriage bell. Both he, the Pathan

nobles who had formed the bulk of the conspirators, and Dupleix, had

their share of the two and a half millions of treasure said to have

been taken from Nasir-Jung; and much of it was spent in various

elaborate festivities, notably in the official installation of

Muzaffar; he, in his turn, nominating Dupleix as official Governor for

the Great Moghul in all countries south of the Kistna. All the

revenues of these countries were to pass through him, and no coins

save those minted by the French at Pondicherry were to be current coin

of the realm.

It was a tremendous victory for France. The English, who had hitherto

been fairly content to exist in India on sufferance, heard their

enemy's boast, that ere long the Moghul himself would tremble at the

name of Dupleix, with absolute stupefaction. So stunned were they that

they did not even object to the commander of their forces choosing

this most inopportune moment to return on leave to England.

Fortunately, however, for them, thieves are apt to fall out. The

Pathan nobles, discontented with their share of the plunder, once more

became conspirators, with the result that Muzaffar-Jung, the creature

of the French, was killed.

Fortunately, also, for the honour of England, a man called Robert

Clive had been born in Shropshire six-and-twenty years before, and

after several years of uncongenial employment as a clerk, had in 1747

received an ensign's commission, from which he had risen in 1751 to

the rank of Captain.

And now, when the power of the French was in its zenith, he appeared,

young, arrogant, determined to try a sword's conclusions with that

past-master of diplomacy, Dupleix.

But before we pass on to the most honourable, the most exciting

chapter in the history of British India, a look round must be given to

see what had been going on in the far-away north, which lay almost out

of touch with Trichinopoly, Arcot, Pondicherry, Madras, the Carnatic,

Jingi, Masulipatam, all those places on which the fingers of France

and England had been laid more or less tentatively.

Mahomed-Shah had died after having successfully resisted the

invasion of the Durrani or Afghan prince, Ahmed-Khan, who, fired by

Nadir-Shah's example, tried in 1748 to imitate his exploit. He was

badly beaten at Sirhind, close to the old battlefield of Panipat.

Before this Ali-Verdi-Khan, Governor of Bengal, had revolted, and

become independent; but in his turn had suffered reverse at the hands

of the Mahrattas, and had to yield up the province of Orissa.

The latter race had been much exercised over the succession to the

throne, for the puppet Saho, who, combined first with Baji-rao and

afterwards with Bala-ji, had exercised sovereignty for so long, had no

children. The right of adoption, therefore, was his, and, his wife's

influence being paramount on personal points, he was inclined to

choose the Rajah of Kolapur. This, however, did not suit Bala-ji. He

therefore induced the old queen, Tara-Bhal, to trump up a tale of a

posthumous son of her son, whose birth had been concealed from fear of

danger to the child. Saho, almost imbecile by this time, was deluded

into believing the tale of a collateral heir, and ere dying, secretly

signed an instrument giving the regency to Bala-ji, on condition of

his supporting the claims of Tara-Bhai's supposed grandson.

But the ghost of a grandmother thus raised proved a curse to the

Peishwa, for Tara-Bhai, old as she was, did not lack energy or

ambition, and at the time of Muzaffar-Jung's death in 1751, she had

taken the opportunity of Bala-ji's absence in the south to meet and

crush the combined advance of the French under General Bussy and the

puppet they had instantly set up in Muzaffar's place, to proclaim her

own story a pure fiction, put the pretended heir into chains, and

assert herself Queen of the Mahrattas.

Truly the impossibility at this time of putting reliance on any one's

word, the fluctuations of faith, the unforeseen, unexpected

complications arising from the general fluidity of morals, makes

history read like undigested melodrama.

Such, then, was India when England, all too tardily, found a champion

in Robert Clive.

ROBERT CLIVE

A.D. 1751 TO A.D. 1757

Never was the strange susceptibility of India to the influence of

personal vitality better exemplified than in the case of Robert Clive.

When, in 1751, he first emerged--a good head and shoulders taller than

the general ruck of Anglo-Indians--from the troubled turmoil of

conflicting interests, conflicting policies which characterised India

in those days, Hindostan was on the point of yielding herself to

France; when, in 1767, he finally left the land where he had laboured

so long and so well, England was paramount over half the peninsula.

Never in the whole history of Britain was better work done for her

prestige, her honour, _by one man_; and yet that one man died

miserably from opium, administered wilfully by the sword-hand which

had never failed his country; administered as the only escape from

disgrace.

It will always be a question whether Clive was or was not guilty of

the charges preferred against him. Those who really know the Indian

mind, who fully realise the depth of the degeneracy into which that

mind had fallen amongst the effete nobility of the eighteenth century,

may well hesitate before denying or affirming that guilt, knowing, as

they must, how easy a thing is false testimony, understanding how

skilfully an act, innocent enough in itself, may be garbled into

positive crime.

Either way, this much may be said. The benefits he had conferred on

his country were sufficient surely to have ensured him more

sympathetic treatment at the hands of that country than he actually

received.

But this is to anticipate.

Clive was born--but what does it matter when, where, and how, a man of

deeds comes into the world? All that is necessary is to say what he

did. Clive, then, was a writer, or clerk, in the East Indian Company's

service. It was not, apparently, a congenial employment. Quiet,

reserved, somewhat stubborn, he led a very solitary life, knowing, he

writes in one of his home letters, scarcely "any one family in the

place." A friend tells a tale of him, characteristic, yet hardly

sufficiently authenticated for history. He found young Clive sitting

dejectedly at a table, on which lay a pistol. "Fire that thing out of

the window, will you?" said the lad, and watched. "I suppose I must be

good for something," he remarked despondently, when the pistol went

off, "for I snapped it twice at my own head, and it missed fire both

times."

Whether true or not true, the lad of whom such a story could even have

been told must have been something out of the common.

He was rather a tall English lad, silent, with a long nose and a

pleasant smile. He was barely one-and-twenty when Dupleix took Madras,

and for the first time he found himself a soldier. He returned to his

writership, however, for a time, but such a profession was manifestly

impossible to his temperament--a temperament admirably illustrated by

the following story. He accused an officer of cheating at cards. A

duel ensued, in which Clive, with first shot, missed; whereupon his

adversary, holding his pistol to Clive's head, bade him beg his life.

This he did instantly with perfect coolness, but when asked also to

retract his accusation, replied as calmly: "Fire, and be damned to

you! I said you cheated, and you did. I'll never pay you."

The adversary, struck dumb by his--no doubt--righteous stubbornness,

thereupon lowered his weapon.

Such was the young man who at six-and-twenty, in the absence on leave

of Major Lawrence, set off as a captain to the relief of Trichinopoly

with six hundred men. He was completely outclassed both in numbers and

pecuniary resources, and feeling himself to be so, he returned to Fort

St David and boldly proposed a complete _volte face_. The French were

thoroughly engaged aiding their ally at Trichinopoly. If he and his

small force made a detour to Arcot, the capital, they might find it

unprepared. They did; Clive marched in, took possession of the fort

before the very eyes of one hundred thousand astonished spectators,

and finding over L50,000 worth of goods in the treasury, gave them

back to their owners, and issued orders that not a thing in the town

was to be touched; the result of such unusual consideration being

that, when he finally had to defend his capture, not a soul in the

town raised a hand against the strange young _sahib_ who seemed to

have no fear, and certainly had no greed.

But young Clive had a Herculean task before him. With a mere handful

of men--three hundred and twenty in all--he had to defend a ruinous,

ill-constructed fort one mile in circumference--ditch choked, parapets

too narrow for artillery--from the determined onslaught of ten

thousand men. And he did so defend it. Despite failures due to

inexperience, rebuffs due to rashness, despite hair's-breadth personal

escapes, due to reckless, almost criminal courage, he won through to

the end. There is something impish and boyish about the record of

these six weeks' siege. How, more out of sheer bravado than anything

else, the garrison crowned a ruined tower on the ramparts with earth,

hoisted thereto an enormous old seventy-two-pounder cannon which had

belonged to Aurungzebe! How they turned it on the palace which rose

high above the intervening houses, and letting drive with thirty-two

pounds of their best powder, sent the ball right through the palace,

greatly to the alarm of the enemy's staff, which was quartered there!

How once a day they fired off the old cannon, until on the fourth day

it burst and nearly killed the gunners!

All this, and the thrilling story of the mason who--luckily for the

garrison--knew of the secret aqueduct constructed so as to drain the

fort of water, and stopped it up ere it could be used, would make a

fine chapter for a boy's book of adventure. Here it is enough to

record that on the 14th November, after a desperate and futile

assault, the enemy--French allies and all--withdrew, and Clive found

himself free to follow on their heels to Vellore, where he succeeded

in giving those of them who were sufficiently brave to stand, a most

satisfactory beating; in consequence of which numbers of the beaten

sepoys, with the quick Oriental eye for vitality, deserted their

colours. Clive enlisted six hundred of the best armed, and returned to

Madras, where he was received with acclaim, for victory was then a new

sensation to the Anglo-Indian. A month or two afterwards, however, he

was out again on the war-path, giving the French-supported army of

Chanda-Sahib a good drubbing at Cauvery-pak. Whilst out, he received

an urgent summons to go back to the Presidency town. Major Lawrence

was returning from leave, and would resume command.

Despite the urgency, he found time, nevertheless, on his way back to

go round by a certain town which Dupleix, in the first pride of

victory, had founded under the name of Dupleix-Fattehabad, to

commemorate--what surely had been better forgotten--his terrible act

of treachery towards Nasir-Jung in the matter of the ratified but

delayed treaty which cost the latter his life. And here, with the same

reckless hardihood which had characterised the whole campaign, he

paused--though in the midst of an enemy's country--to batter to pieces

the pretentious flamboyant column on which Dupleix had recorded his

conquest in French, Persian, Mahratti, Hindi.

One can picture the scene, and one's heart warms to the English boy

who watched with glee the hacking and hewing, while the natives stood

by, their sympathy going forth inevitably to the strong young arm.

Three days afterwards Clive gave up his command, and here his first

campaign ends. It was very straightforward, very clear; but what

followed was complicated--very!

Trichinopoly was still besieged: the French backing Chanda-Sahib, who

claimed it as Nawab of the Carnatic; the English backing Mahomed-Ali,

who held it as Nawab of Arcot. To the support of the latter Major

Lawrence led his mercenaries, and for a time the siege was raised. By

this time, however, the Directors in London were becoming restive over

hostilities which interfered with the commerce of the Company. In

order to bring the struggle for supremacy to a head, Clive proposed a

division of forces, south and north. Whether he was actuated in making

this bold proposal by any hope of getting a command over the heads of

his seniors or not, certain it is that after agreeing to the proposal,

Major Lawrence found it impossible to keep to seniority. The natives

flatly refused to go north unless Clive led them.

Here, again, the personal equation--the only thing that has ever

counted in India--stepped in. It was a genuine tribute to Clive's

possession of that greatest attribute of a good general--_fortunae_. It

heartened him up, and he instantly began a second campaign of success,

driving Dupleix to despair, since after every petty victory some of

the beaten sepoys, following fortune, invariably deserted to the

English side. Clive's army, in fact, was a snowball. It increased in

size as it went, and after the big fight at Samiaveram, was joined by

no less than two thousand horse and fifteen hundred sepoys. But the

young man, for all his gloomy face, his silence, his stubbornness, had

a curiously sympathetic personality to the natives. When Seringham was

taken, and a thousand Rajputs shut themselves up in the celebrated

pagoda swearing death ere it should be defiled, Clive "did not think

it necessary to disturb them," but at Covelong he drove the frightened

recruits back to battle at the point of the sword. After taking

Chingleput, the campaign came to an abrupt conclusion. Clive, falling

sick, had leave to go to England. This was in 1752.

Major Lawrence, meanwhile, in the south, had been fairly successful.

The siege of Trichinopoly raised, the French, who had done all the

artillery work, retreated to Pondicherry.

But complications arose. Mahomed-Ali, Nawab of Arcot, showed

indisposition to press his advantage, and to his great chagrin Major

Lawrence discovered that Trichinopoly itself had been promised to the

Mysore king, one of Mahomed-Ali's native allies. The Nawab himself was

ready to repudiate his promise; the English, it is to be feared, did

not favour straightforward fulfilment. The result was a hollow

compromise, which in its results showed that honesty would have been

the best policy. For the next two years, therefore, Trichinopoly

became the scene of constant warfare, and such was the stress of

battle that raged round the unfortunate town, that in November 1753

not a tree was left standing near it, and the British detachment and

convoy which finally relieved it was forced to go six or seven miles

to get a stick of firewood.

The story of the final and futile assault of the French is a thrilling

one, especially the incident of the night-attack frustrated by the

falling into a disused well of a soldier, whose musket going off,

alarmed the garrison, thus rendering of no avail a previous wholesale

tampering with the guard. For the French had no hesitation in using

underhand means; in this, indeed, lay the strength of Dupleix. On this

occasion, anyhow, they suffered for it, since, pinned between the

outer ramparts and an inner one, four hundred out of six hundred

Frenchmen were either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

The year 1740 brought a mutual fatigue of warfare both to the French

and the English East India Company. They called a truce to assert that

they had never really been at war, the hostile interlude being merely

the amusements of mercenaries.

But the whole affair was comic. The Council-of-Negotiation which met

at a neutral little Dutch settlement was as unreal as the patents

produced on both sides in support of the claims of their puppets.

There were seven on the French side for the murdered Muzaffar-Jung's

successor, Salabut, including one from the Great Moghul. The English,

too, had patents for their puppet Mahomed-Ali, also including one from

the Great Moghul. Now it is possible that both these contradictory

patents were genuine--anything was possible in the India of 1754--but

the English one was not produced, and the French one had a wrong seal!

So the affair ended in added exasperation.

But in truth France and England's attention was now awakening to the

unceasing hostilities in India. International conferences were held in

London, where the Secretary of State, in order to be prepared for

refusal of his terms, fitted out a fleet for Eastern waters. The

menace proved successful. France, never greatly enamoured of her

Eastern Company, gave away the game by sending out one Monsieur

Godeheu to take over the Governorship from Dupleix.