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he held aloof from his companions and his superiors. These in their turn ceased after a time to notice a young man so resolute to shun them. And although with time came an approach to intercourse, there never was cordiality. It is doubtful, however, whether in this description there has not mingled more than a grain of exaggeration. We have been told of his wayward nature: we have read how he insulted a superior functionary, and when ordered by the Governor to apologize, complied with the worst possible grace: how, when the pacified superior, wishing to heal the breach, asked him to dinner, he refused with the words that although the Governor had ordered him to apologize, he did not command him to dine with him: how, one day, weary of his monotonous existence, and suffering from impecuniosity, he twice snapped a loaded pistol at his head; how, on both occasions, there was a misfire; how, shortly afterwards, a companion, entering the room, at Clive's request pointed the pistol outside the window and pulled the trigger; how the powder ignited, and how then Clive, jumping to his feet, exclaimed, 'I feel I am reserved for better things.'

These stories have been told with an iteration which would seem to stamp them as beyond contradiction. But the publication of Mr. Forrest's records of the Madras Presidency (1890) presents a view altogether different. The reader must understand that the Board at Fort St. David—at that time the ruling Board in the Madras Presidency—is reporting, for transmission to Europe, an account of a complaint of assault made by the Rev. Mr. Fordyce against Clive.

It would appear from this that Mr. Fordyce was a coward and a bully, besides being in many other respects an utterly unfit member of society. It had come to Clive's ears that this man had said of him, in the presence of others, that he, Clive, was a coward and a scoundrel; that the reverend gentleman had shaken his cane over him in the presence of Mr. Levy Moses; and had told Captain Cope that he would break every bone in his (Clive's) skin. In his deposition Clive stated that these repeated abuses so irritated him, 'that he could not forbear, on meeting Mr. Fordyce at Cuddalore, to reproach him with his behaviour, which, he told him, was so injurious he could bear it no longer, and thereupon struck him two or three times with his cane, which, at last Mr. Fordyce returned and then closed in with him, but that they were presently parted by Captain Lucas.'

The Board, in giving its judgement on the case, recapitulated the many offences committed by Mr. Fordyce, the great provocation he had given to Clive, and suspended him. With regard to Clive they recorded: 'lest the same,' the attack on Fordyce, 'should be to Mr. Clive's prejudice, we think it not improper to assure you that he is generally esteemed a very quiet person and no ways guilty of disturbances.' It is to be inferred from this account that, far from deserving the character popularly assigned to him, Clive, in the third year of his residence in India, was regarded by his superiors as a very quiet member of society.

Still, neither the climate nor the profession suited him. 'I have not enjoyed,' he wrote to one of his cousins, 'a happy day since I left my native country.' In other letters he showed how he repented bitterly of having chosen a career so uncongenial. Gradually, however, he realized the folly of kicking against the pricks. He associated more freely with his colleagues, and when the Governor, Mr. Morse, sympathizing with the young man eating out his heart from ennui, opened to him the door of his considerable library, he found some relief to his sufferings. These, at last, had reached their term. Before Clive had exhausted all the books thus placed at his disposal, events occurred which speedily opened to him the career for which he had panted.





CHAPTER II
SOUTHERN INDIA IN 1744



It will contribute to the better understanding of the narrative of the events which plunged the English into war in 1745, if we take a bird's-eye view of the peninsula generally, particularly of the southern portion, as it appeared in the year preceding.

Of India generally it is sufficient to say that from the year 1707, when the Emperor Aurangzeb died, authority had been relaxing to an extent which was rapidly bringing about the disruption of the bonds that held society together. The invasion of Nadír Sháh followed by the sack of Delhi in 1739 had given the Mughal dynasty a blow from which it never rallied. Thenceforward until 1761, when the third battle of Pánípat completed the catastrophe, the anarchy was almost universal. Authority was to the strongest. The Sallustian motto, 'Alieni appetens sui profusus,' was the rule of almost every noble; the agriculturists had everywhere abundant reason to realize 'that the buffalo was to the man who held the bludgeon.'1

1 The late Lord Lawrence used to tell me that when he was Acting Magistrate and Collector of Pánípat in 1836, the natives were in the habit of describing the lawlessness of the period which ceased in 1818 by using the expressive phrase I have quoted.

The disorder had extended to the part of India south of the Vindhyan range which was then known under the comprehensive term of the Deccan. When Aurangzeb had conquered many Súbahs, or provinces, of Southern India, he had placed them under one officer, to be nominated by the Court of Delhi, and to be called Súbahdár, or chief of the province. As disorder spread after his death the Súbahdárs and inferior chiefs generally began to secure themselves in the provinces they administered. The invasion of Nadír Sháh made the task generally easy. In the Deccan especially, Chin Kílich Khán, the chief of a family which had served with consideration under Akbar and his successors, whose father had been a favourite of Aurangzeb, who had himself served under that sovereign, and who had obtained from the successors of Aurangzeb the titles of Nizám-ul-Múlk and Asaf Jáh, took steps to make the Súbahdárship of Southern India hereditary in his family. The territories comprehended under the term 'Deccan' did not, it must be understood, include the whole of Southern India. Mysore, Travancore, Cochin were independent. But they comprehended the whole of the territories known now as appertaining to the Nizám, with some additions; the country known as the 'Northern Circárs'; and the Karnátik.

But the Karnátik was not immediately under the government of the Súbahdár. It was a subordinate territory, entrusted to a Nawáb, bounded to the north by the river Gundlakamma; on the west by the chain of mountains which separate it from Mysore; to the south by the possessions of the same kingdom (as it then was) and by Tanjore; to the east by the sea. I have not mentioned the kingdom of Trichinopoli to the south, for the Nawábs of the Karnátik claimed that as their own, and, as we shall see, had occupied the fortress of that name during the period, prior to 1744, of which I am writing.

It will be seen then, that, at this period, whilst the nominal ruler of the Deccan was Chin Kílich Khán, better known as Nizám-ul-Múlk, as I shall hereafter style him, the Nawáb of the Karnátik, who ruled the lands bordering on the sea, including the English settlement of Madras and the French settlement of Pondicherry, was a very powerful subordinate. The office he held had likewise come to be regarded as hereditary. And it was through the failure of the hereditary line, that the troubles came, which gave to Robert Clive the opportunity to develop the qualities which lay dormant within him.

Before I proceed to describe those events, it seems advisable to say a few words regarding the two settlements to which I have just referred; of the principles which actuated their chiefs; and of the causes which brought them into collision.

The English had made a first settlement on the Coromandel coast in the year 1625 at a small place, some thirty-six miles to the south of Madras, known now as Armagon. Seven years later they obtained from the Rájá of Bisnagar a small grant of land, called by the natives Chennapatanam from the village contained thereon. They re-named the place Madras, and built there a fort round their storehouses which they named Fort St. George. In 1653 the Company in London raised the agency at Madras to the position and rank of a Presidency. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the establishment there counted a population of 300,000 souls. In 1744 the town consisted of three divisions: that to the south (the White Town) extending about four hundred yards in length from north to south, and about one hundred yards in breadth. There resided the Europeans, mainly English. They had there about fifty houses, two churches, one of them Catholic; likewise the residence of the chief of the factory. All these were within the enclosure called Fort St. George. That somewhat pompous title represented merely a slender wall, defended by four bastions and as many batteries, very slight and defective in their construction, and with no outworks to defend them. This division was generally known as the 'White Town.' To the north of it, and contiguous, was another division, much larger and worse fortified, principally tenanted by Armenian and Indian merchants, called the Black Town. Beyond this, again to the north, was a suburb, where the poorer natives resided. These three divisions formed Madras. There were likewise to the south, about a mile distant from the White Town, two other large villages, inhabited solely by natives; but these were not included within that term. The English at this period did not exceed three hundred in number, and of these two-thirds were soldiers, but few of whom had seen a shot fired.2

2 Vide Orme's History of Indostan (Edition 1773), vol. i. p. 65.

The English colony in Madras was a trading colony. Not one of its members, up to this period, had the smallest thought of embroiling their presidency in the disputes which were frequent amongst the native chieftains. They wished to be let alone; to remain at peace; to conciliate friendship and goodwill. They were content to acknowledge the lords of the soil as their masters; to pay for the protection they enjoyed at their hands by a willing obedience; to ward off their anger by apologies and presents.

But there was a French colony also on the same coast, and in that a different policy had begun to prevail. In the year 1672 the King of Bíjapur had sold to some French traders, led by a very remarkable man, Francis Martin, a tract of land on the Coromandel coast, eighty-six miles to the south-south-west of Madras. On this tract, close to the sea, was a little village called by the natives Puducheri. This the French settlers enlarged and beautified, and made their chief place of residence and trade. By degrees the name was corrupted to Pondicherry, a title under which it became famous, and under which it is still known.

So long as M. Martin lived, the policy of the French settlers was similar to that of the English at Madras. Nor did it immediately change when Martin died (December 30, 1706). Up to 1735, when M. Benoit Dumas was appointed Governor-General of the French possessions in India (for they had besides possessions on the Malabar coast and at Chandranagar, on the Húglí, in Bengal) it was in no way departed from. M. Dumas, however, almost immediately after his assumption of office, adopted the policy of allying himself closely with native princes; of taking part in their wars; with the view of reaping therefrom territorial and pecuniary advantage. This policy, of which he was the inventor, was, we shall see, carried to the most extreme length by his

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