Part 560

On the death of Nadir Shah, who was murdered in 1747, his Afghan kingdom was acquired by a native chief, Ahmed Abdalee, who, first a prisoner and a slave to Nadir Shah, had become one of the trusted officers of his court and army. "Ahmed Abdalee had acquired so great an ascendency among the troops that upon this event [the death of Nadir Shah] several commanders and their followers joined his standard; and he drew off toward his own country. He fell in with and seized a convoy of treasure, which was proceeding to the camp. This enabled him to engage in his pay a still larger body of his countrymen. He proclaimed himself king of the Afghauns; and took the title of Doordowran, or pearl of the age, which being corrupted into Dooranee,[or Duranee], gave one of their names to himself and his Abdallees. He marched towards Candahar which submitted to his arms; and next proceeded to Cabul … and this province also fell into the hands of the Afghaun." Lahore was next added to his dominions, and he then, in 1747, invaded India, intent upon the capture of Delhi; but met with sufficient resistance to discourage his undertaking, and fell back to Cabul. In 1748, and again in 1749, he passed the Indus, and made himself master of the Punjab. In 1755-6 he marched to Delhi, which opened its gates to him and received him, pretendedly as a guest, but really as a master. A plague breaking out in his army caused him to return to his own country. He "left his son Governor of Lahore and Multan; disordered by revolutions, wasted and turbulent. A chief … incited the Seiks [Sikhs] to join him in molesting the Dooranees; and they gained several important advantages over their principal commanders. They invited the Mahratta generals, Ragonaut Raow, Shumsheer Bahadur, and Holkar, who had advanced into the neighbourhood of Delhi, to join them in driving the Abdalees from Lahore. No occupation could be more agreeable to the Mahrattas. After taking Sirhind, they advanced to Lahore, where the Abdalee Prince made but a feeble resistance and fled. This event put them in possession of both Multan and Lahore. … The whole Indian continent appeared now about to be swallowed up by the Mahrattas. … Ahmed Shah [the Abdalee, or Dooranee] was not only roused by the loss of his two provinces, and the disgrace imprinted on his arms, but he was invited by the chiefs and people of Hindustan, groaning under the depredations of the Mahrattas, to march to their succour and become their King. … For some days the Dooranees hovered round the Mahratta camp; when the Mahrattas, who were distressed for provisions, came out and offered battle. Their army, consisting of 80,000 veteran cavalry, was almost wholly destroyed; and Duttah Sindia, their General, was among the slain. A detachment of horse sent against another body of Mahrattas, who were marauding under Holkar in the neighbourhood of Secundra, surprised them so completely that Holkar fled naked, with a handful of followers, and the rest, with the exception of a few prisoners and fugitives, were all put to the sword. During the rainy season, while the Dooranee Shah was quartered at Secundra, the news of this disaster and disgrace excited the Mahrattas to the greatest exertions. A vast army was collected, and … the Mahrattas marched to gratify the resentments, and fulfil the unbounded hopes of the nation. … They arrived at the Jumna before it was sufficiently fallen to permit either the Mahrattas on the other side, or the Dooranees, to cross. In the meantime they marched to Delhi, of which after some resistance they took possession; plundered it with their usual rapacity, tearing away even the gold and silver ornaments of the palace; proclaimed Sultan Jewan Bukht, the son of Alee Gohur [or Shah Alum, absent son of the late nominal Emperor at Delhi, Alumgeer II., who had recently been put to death by his own vizir], Emperor; and named Sujah ad Dowlah, Nabob of Oude, his Vizir. {1715} Impatient at intelligence of these and some other transactions, Ahmed Shah swam the Jumna, still deemed impassable, with his whole army. This daring adventure, and the remembrance of the late disaster, shook the courage of the Mahrattas; and they entrenched their camp on a plain near Panniput. The Dooranee, having surrounded their position with parties of troops, to prevent the passage of supplies, contented himself for some days with skirmishing. At last he tried an assault; when the Rohilla infantry … forced their way into the Mahratta works, and Bulwant Raow with other chiefs was killed; but night put an end to the conflict. Meanwhile scarcity prevailed and filth accumulated in the Mahratta camp. The vigilance of Ahmed intercepted their convoys. In a little time famine and pestilence "raged. A battle became the only resource [January 7, 1761]. The Abdalee restrained his troops till the Mahrattas had advanced a considerable way from their works; when he rushed upon them with so much rapidity as left them hardly any time for using their cannon. The Bhaow was killed early in the action; confusion soon pervaded the army, and a dreadful carnage ensued. The field was floated with blood. Twenty-two thousand men and women were taken prisoners. Of those who escaped from the field of battle, the greater part were butchered by the people of the country, who had suffered from their depredations. Of an army of 140,000 horse, commanded by the most celebrated generals of the nation, only three chiefs of any rank, and a mere residue of the troops, found their way to Deccan. The Dooranee Shah made but little use of this mighty victory. After remaining a few months at Delhi, he recognized Alee Gohur as Emperor, by the title of Shah Aulum II.; and entrusting Nujeeb ad Dowlah with the superintendence of affairs, till his master should return from Bengal, he marched back to his capital of Cabul in the end of the year 1760 [1761]. With Aulum-geer II. the empire of the Moguls may be justly considered as having arrived at its close. The unhappy Prince who now received the name of Emperor, and who, after a life of misery and disaster, ended his days a pensioner of English merchants, never possessed a sufficient degree of power to consider himself for one moment as master of the throne."

_J. Mill, History of British India, book 3, chapter 4 (volume 2)._

"The words 'wonderful,' 'strange,' are often applied to great historical events, and there is no event to which they have been applied more freely than to our [the English] conquest of India. … But the event was not wonderful in a sense that it is difficult to discover adequate causes by which it could have been produced. If we begin by remarking that authority in India had fallen on the ground through the decay of the Mogul Empire, that it lay there waiting to be picked up by somebody, and that all over India in that period adventurers of one kind or another were founding Empires, it is really not surprising that a mercantile corporation which had money to pay a mercenary force should be able to compete with other adventurers, nor yet that it should outstrip all its competitors by bringing into the field English military science and generalship, especially when it was backed over and over again by the whole power and credit of England and directed by English statesmen. … England did not in the strict sense conquer India, but … certain Englishmen, who happened to reside in India at the time when the Mogul Empire fell, had a fortune like that of Hyder Ali or Runjeet Singh and rose to supreme power there."

_J. R. Seeley, The Expansion of England, course 2, lecture 3._

ALSO IN: _J. G. Duff, History of the Mahrattas, volume 2, chapters 2-5._

_G. B. Malleson, History of Afghanistan, chapter 8._

_H. G. Keene, Madhava Rao Sindhia, chapter 2._

INDIA: A. D. 1755-1757. Capture of Calcutta by Surajah Dowlah. The tragedy of the Black Hole. Clive's recovery of the Fort and settlement.

Clive remained three years in England, where he sought an election to Parliament, as a supporter of Fox, but was unseated by the Tories. On suffering this disappointment, he re-entered the service of the East India Company, as governor of Fort St. David, with the commission of a lieutenant-colonel in the British army, received from the king, and returned to India in 1755. Soon after his arrival at Fort St. David, "he received intelligence which called forth all the energy of his bold and active mind. Of the provinces which had been subject to the house of Tamerlane, the wealthiest was Bengal. No part of India possessed such natural advantages both for agriculture and for commerce. … The great commercial companies of Europe had long possessed factories in Bengal. The French were settled, as they still are, at Chandernagore on the Hoogley. Higher up the stream the Dutch traders held Chinsurah. Nearer to the sea, the English had built Fort William. A church and ample warehouses rose in the vicinity. A row of spacious houses, belonging to the chief factors of the East India Company, lined the banks of the river; and in the neighbourhood had sprung up a large and busy native town, where some Hindoo merchants of great opulence had fixed their abode. But the tract now covered by the palaces of Chowringhee contained only a few miserable huts thatched with straw. A jungle, abandoned to water-fowl and alligators, covered the site of the present Citadel, and the Course, which is now daily crowded at sunset with the gayest equipages of Calcutta. For the ground on which the settlement stood, the English, like other great landholders, paid rent to the government; and they were, like other great landholders, permitted to exercise a certain jurisdiction within their domain. The great province of Bengal, together with Orissa and Bahar, had long been governed by a viceroy, whom the English called Aliverdy Khan, and who, like the other viceroys of the Mogul, had become virtually independent. He died in 1756, and the sovereignty descended to his grandson, a youth under twenty years of age, who bore the name of Surajah Dowlah. … From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English. It was his whim to do so; and his whims were never opposed. He had also formed a very exaggerated notion of the wealth which might be obtained by plundering them; and his feeble and uncultivated mind was incapable of perceiving that the riches of Calcutta, had they been even greater than he imagined, would not compensate him for what he must lose, if the European trade, of which Bengal was a chief seat, should be driven by his violence to some other Quarter. Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found. {1716} The English, in expectation of a war with France, had begun to fortify their settlement without special permission from the Nabob. A rich native, whom he longed to plunder, had taken refuge at Calcutta, and had not been delivered up. On such grounds as these Surajah Dowlah marched with a great army against Fort William. The servants of the Company at Madras had been forced by Dupleix to become statesmen and soldiers. Those in Bengal were still mere traders, and were terrified and bewildered by the approaching danger. … The fort was taken [June 20, 1756] after a feeble resistance; and great numbers of the English fell into the hands of the conquerors. The Nabob seated himself with regal pomp in the principal hall of the factory, and ordered Mr. Holwell, the first in rank among the prisoners, to be brought before him. His Highness talked about the insolence of the English, and grumbled at the smallness of the treasure which he had found; but promised to spare their lives, and retired to rest. Then was committed that great crime, memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English captives were left at the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor, that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of England by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans. The number of the prisoners was 146. When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were joking; and, being in high spirits on account of the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon discovered their mistake. They expostulated; they entreated; but in vain. The guards threatened to cut down all who hesitated. The captives were driven into the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly shut and locked upon them. Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer, approaches the horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of that night. They cried for mercy. They strove to burst the door. Holwell who, even in that extremity, retained some presence of mind, offered large bribes to the gaolers. But the answer was that nothing could be done without the Nabob's orders, that the Nabob was asleep, and that he would be angry if anybody woke him. Then the prisoners went mad with despair. They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among them. The gaolers in the mean time held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims. At length the tumult died away in low gaspings and moanings. The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be opened. But it was some time before the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on each side the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate had already begun to do its loathsome work. When at length a passage was made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their own mothers would not have known, staggered one by one out of the charnel-house. A pit was instantly dug. The dead bodies, 123 in number, were flung into it promiscuously and covered up. … One Englishwoman had survived that night. She was placed in the harem of the Prince at Moorshedabad. Surajah Dowlah, in the mean time, sent letters to his nominal sovereign at Delhi, describing the late conquest in the most pompous language. He placed a garrison in Fort William, forbade Englishmen to dwell in the neighbourhood, and directed that, in memory of his great actions, Calcutta should thenceforward be called Alinagore, that is to say, the Port of God. In August the news of the fall of Calcutta reached Madras, and excited the fiercest and bitterest resentment. The cry of the whole settlement was for vengeance. Within forty-eight hours after the arrival of the intelligence it was determined that an expedition should be sent to the Hoogley, and that Clive should be at the head of the land forces. The naval armament was under the command of Admiral Watson. Nine hundred English infantry, fine troops and full of spirit, and 1,500 sepoys, composed the army which sailed to punish a Prince who had more subjects than Lewis XV. or the Empress Maria Theresa. In October the expedition sailed; but it had to make its way against adverse winds, and did not reach Bengal till December. The Nabob was revelling in fancied security at Moorshedabad. He was so profoundly ignorant of the state of foreign countries that he often used to say that there were not ten thousand men in all Europe; and it had never occurred to him as possible, that the English would dare to invade his dominions. But, though undisturbed by any fear of their military power, he began to miss them greatly. His revenues fell off. … He was already disposed to permit the company to resume its mercantile operations in his country, when he received the news that an English armament was in the Hoogley. He instantly ordered all his troops to assemble at Moorshedabad, and marched towards Calcutta. Clive had commenced operations with his usual vigour. He took Budgebudge, routed the garrison of Fort William, recovered Calcutta, stormed and sacked Hoogley. The Nabob, already disposed to make some concessions to the English, was confirmed in his pacific disposition by these proofs of their power and spirit. He accordingly made overtures to the chiefs of the invading armament, and offered to restore the factory, and to give compensation to those whom he had despoiled. Clive's profession, was war; and he felt that there was something discreditable in an accommodation with Surajah Dowlah. But his power was limited. … The promises of the Nabob were large, the chances of a contest doubtful; and Clive consented to treat, though he expressed his regret that things should not be concluded in so glorious a manner as he could have wished. With this negotiation commences a new chapter in the life of Clive. Hitherto he had been merely a soldier carrying into effect, with eminent ability and valour, the plans of others. Henceforth he is to be chiefly regarded as a statesman; and his military movements are to be considered as subordinate to his political designs."

_Lord Macaulay, Lord Clive (Essays)._

ALSO IN: _Sir J. Malcolm, Life of Lord Clive, chapter 3 (volume 1)._

_J. Mill, History of British India, book 4, chapter 3 (volume 3)._

_H. E. Busteed, Echoes from Old Calcutta, chapter 1._

{1717}

INDIA: A. D. 1757. A Treacherous conspiracy against Surajah Dowlah. His overthrow at the battle of Plassey. The counterfeit Treaty with Omichund. Elevation of Meer Jaffier to the Subahdar's throne.