INDIA.] ROBERT CLIVE. 303 all the provinces adjoining Fort St. George and Fort St. David, and would at the first opportunity renew their attack upon those settlements. On the other hand, the English were at this time ill prepared for any further active hostilities; their only officer of experience, Major Lawrence, had gone home, and the garrisons remaining for their own defence were extremely small. There seemed almost equal danger in remaining passive or in boldly advancing. These doubts were solved, these perils overcome, by the energy of one man, - Robert Clive. 66 66 The father of Clive was a gentleman of old family, but small estate, residing near Market-Drayton in Shropshire. There Robert, his eldest son, was born in 1725. From early childhood the boy showed a most daring and turbulent spirit. His uncle thus writes of him, even in his seventh year: "I hope I have made a little further con"quest over Bob..... But his fighting, to which he is "out of measure addicted, gives his temper so much "fierceness and imperiousness that he flies out upon every trifling occasion; for this reason I do what I can to suppress the hero."* - The people at Drayton long remembered how they saw young Clive climb their lofty steeple, and seated astride a spout near the top, — how, on another occasion, he flung himself into the gutter to form a dam, and assist his playmates in flooding the cellar of a shopkeeper with whom he had quarrelled. At various schools to which he was afterwards sent he appears to have been idle and intractable. Even in after life he was never remarkable for scholarship; and his friendly biographer admits, that, wide as was his influence over the native tribes of India, he was little, if at all, acquainted with their languages.† His father was soon offended at his waywardness and neglect of his studies, and, instead of a profession at home, obtained for him a writership in the East India Company's service, and in the Presidency of Madras. Some years later, when the old gentleman was informed of his son's successes and distinctions, he used to exclaim, half in anger and half in pride, "After all the booby has sense!" *Letter, June 9. 1732. Malcolm's Life of Clive, vol. i. p. 32. † Malcolm's Life, vol. ii. p. 173 66 66 The feelings of Clive during his first years at Madras are described in his own letters. Thus he writes to his cousin : "I may safely say I have not enjoyed one happy day since I left my native country. I am not acquainted 66 with any one family in the place, and have not assurance enough to introduce myself without being asked. . . . . "Letters to friends were surely first invented for the "comfort of such solitary wretches as myself." There is no doubt that the climate at Madras was unfavourable to his health, and his duty at the desk ill-suited to his temper. But worse than any other discomfort was his own constitutional and morbid melancholy, a melancholy which may yet be traced in the expression of his portraits, and which, afterwards heightened as it was by bodily disease and mental irritation, closed the career of this great chief, by the act of his own hand, before he had attained the age of fifty years. As a writer at Madras he twice one day snapped a pistol at his own head. Finding it miss fire, he calmly waited until his room was entered by an acquaintance, whom he requested to fire the pistol out of the window. The gentleman did so, and the pistol went off. At this proof, that it had been rightly loaded Clive sprang up, with the exclamation, " Surely "then I am reserved for something!" and relinquished his design. I have already found occasion to relate how Clive was led a prisoner from Fort St. George to Pondicherry, and how he effected his escape from Pondicherry to Fort St. David. At this latter station his daring temper involved him in several disputes. Once he fought a duel with an officer whom he had accused of cheating at cards. They met without seconds; Clive fired, and missed his antagonist, who immediately came close up to him, and held the pistol to his head, desiring him to recant the accusation, and threatening instant death as the alternative. "Fire!" answered Clive, with an oath, "I said you "cheated; I say so still, and I will never pay you!" -Awestruck at so much boldness, the officer flung away his pistol, exclaiming that Clive was mad.† * Letter, February 16. 1745. This story is related in the biographichal sketch by Henry Beaufoy, Esq., M.P., drawn up from family papers and information, and (like the former) is admitted by Sir John Malcolm, INDIA.] CLIVE SURPRISES ARCOT. 305 From this time forward, however, the undaunted spirit of Clive found a nobler scope against the public enemy. During the petty hostilities which ensued, when the merchants' clerks were almost compelled in self-defence to turn soldiers, — the name of Ensign or Lieutenant Clive is often, and always honourably, mentioned; and during the intervals of these hostilities he returned to his ledgers and accounts. But on the emergency produced by the successes of Dupleix, the siege of Trichinopoly, and the departure of Major Lawrence, he accepted a Captain's commission, and bade adieu to trade. With no military education, with so little military experience, this young man of twenty-five shone forth, not only, as might have been foreseen,- —a most courageous, but a most skilful and accomplished commander ;-a commander, as Lord Chatham once exclaimed, "whose resolution would "charm the King of Prussia, and whose presence of "mind has astonished the Indies." *-At this crisis he discerned, that, although it was not possible to afford relief to Trichinopoly, a diversion might still be effected by a well-timed surprise of Arcot, thus compelling Chunda Sahib to send a large detachment from his army. The heads of the Presidency, on whom he strenuously urged his views, not only approved the design, but accepted the offer of his own services for its execution. Accordingly, in August 1751, Captain Clive marched from Madras at the head of only 300 Sepoys and 200 Europeans. Scanty as seems this force, it could only be formed by reducing the garrison at Fort St. David to 100 and the garrison of Madras to 50 men; and of the eight officers under Clive, six had never before been in action, and four were merchants' clerks, who, incited by his example, took up the sword to follow him. A few days' march brought the little band within ten miles of Arcot, and within sight of the outposts of the garrison. There a violent storm of thunder, lightning, and rain arose, through which, how * Lord Orford's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 276. In a speech in the House of Commons (March 30. 1772) we find Clive disclaim all knowledge of trade. " My line has been military and political. I owe all I have "in the world to my having been at the head of an army, - and as to cotton, I know no more about it than the Pope of Rome!" (Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 332.) 66 ever, Clive undauntedly pushed forward. Slight as seems this incident, it became attended with important results, for the garrison, apprised by their outposts of the behaviour of the English, were seized with a superstitious panic, as though their opponents were in league with the Heavens, and they fled precipitately, not only from the city, but from the citadel. Thus Clive, without having struck a blow, marched through the streets amidst a concourse of an hundred thousand spectators, and took quiet possession of the citadel or fort. In that stronghold the Arcot merchants had, for security, deposited effects to the value of 50,000l., which Clive punctually restored to the owners; and this politic act of honesty conciliated many of the principal inhabitants to the English interest. Clive, learning that the fugitive garrison had been reinforced, and had taken post in the neighbourhood, made several sallies against them; in the last he surprised them at night, and scattered or put them to the sword. But his principal business was to prepare against the siege which he expected, by collecting provisions and strengthening the works of the fort. As he had foretold, his appearance at Arcot effected a diversion at Trichinopoly. Chunda Sahib immediately detached 4,000 men from his army, who were joined by 2,000 natives from Vellore, by 150 Europeans from Pondicherry, and by the remains of the fugitive garrison. Altogether, the force thus directed against Arcot exceeded 10,000 men, and was commanded by Rajah Sahib, a son of Chunda Sahib. The fort in which the English were now besieged was, notwithstanding some hasty repairs, in great measure ruinous; with the parapet low and slightly built, with several of the towers decayed, with the ditch in some parts fordable, in others dry, and in some choked up with fallen rubbish. But Clive undauntedly maintained, day after day, such feeble bulwarks against such overwhelming numbers. Nor did he neglect, amidst other more substantial means of defence, to play upon the fears and fancies of his superstitious enemy. Thus he raised on the top of his highest tower an enormous piece of ordnance, which he had found in the fort, and which, according to popular tradition, had been sent from Delhi in the reign of Aurungzebe, dragged along by a thousand yoke of oxen. INDIA.] CLIVE BESIEGED. 307 This cannon was useless for any real practical effect, but being discharged once a day with great form and ceremony, it struck, as we are told, no small alarm into Rajah Sahib and his principal officers.* 66 66 66 The exertions and the example of Clive had inspired his little band with a spirit scarce inferior to his own. "I have it in my power," writes Sir John Malcolm, "from authority I cannot doubt, to add an anecdote to the ac"count of this celebrated siege. When provisions became so scarce that there was a fear that famine might compel them to surrender, the Sepoys proposed to Clive "to limit them to the water (or gruel) in which the rice was boiled. 'It is,' they said, sufficient for our support; the Europeans require the grain.'-This fact "is as honourable to Clive as to those under his command, "for the conduct of the native troops in India" (Sir John might, perhaps, have said the same of any troops in any country,) "will always be found to depend upon the cha"racter of the officers under whom they are employed." † 66 6 After several weeks' siege, however, the besiegers, scanty and ill-served as was their artillery, had succeeded in making more than one practicable breach in the walls. Some succour to the garrison was attempted from Madras, but in vain. Another resource, however, remained to Clive. He found means to despatch a messenger through the enemy's lines to Morari Row, a Mahratta chieftain, who had received a subsidy to assist Mahomed Ali, and who lay encamped with 6,000 men on the hills of Mysore. Hitherto, notwithstanding his subsidy, he had kept aloof from the contest. But the news how bravely Arcot was defended fixed his wavering mind. "I never thought "till now," said he, " that the English could fight. Since 66 they can I will help them." And accordingly he sent down a detachment of his troops from the hills. Rajah Sahib, when he learnt that the Mahrattas were approaching, perceived that he had no time to lose. He sent a flag of truce to the garrison, promising a large sum * Orme's Hist., vol. i. p. 191. See, in the Memoires du Baron de Tott, the consternation produced among the Turks by the discharge of another such enormous and useless piece of artillery at the Dardanelles in 1770 (vol. ii. p. 75. ed. 1785). † Life of Lord Clive, vol. i. p. 96. |