CHAPTER XV. EVENTS IN BENGAL (continued), FROM THE BATTLE OF BERAR TO THE DEPARTURE OF LORD CLIVE, 1764 TO 1767. English. AFTER the defeat of his allies at Buxar, the emperor voluntarily joined the English, and opened negotiations with the The emperor Council at Calcutta in regard to the disposition of the the Oudh territory, which was declared to be forfeit. The Negotiations. Council proposed to divide it with the emperor, retaining the southern portion; but the negotiation was ultimately broken off, and was not resumed. On the other hand, the vizier was also negotiating; but he evaded Munro's demand for the surrender of Meer Cassim, whom, after despoiling of much of his wealth, he allowed to escape, and of Sumroo, whom, however, he coolly proposed to assassinate. The army, therefore, advanced towards Allahabad, and invested Chunargurh; but it was inactive, and as, for want of money, no extensive operations could be carried on, Munro resigned his command. In the hope of recruiting their now exhausted finances, the Council sent for Meer Jaffier Pecuniary Not only was the public service to be provided for, but dimeulties of the shameless demands for private presents and losses their were pursued with even more than usually stringent rapacity, even to the neglect of the public interests, which, indeed, seem to have been of very secondary consideration. The finances of the Nawab, were, however, as low as those of his friends; and, already worn out by anxieties, disease, and age, he died Death of at Moorshidabad soon after his return there in January Meer Jaffer. 1765, but not before he had disbursed the enormous sum of fiftythree lacs 530,000l.—to the private claimants. the Council: rapacity. Meer Jaffier's death rendered a new appointment necessary, and Nujm-ood-Dowlah, his second son, was elected to Nujm-oodsucceed him. This event, as might have been expected, Dowlah. was too tempting, in regard to demands for presents, to be resisted; and in these days we read, with as much amazement as Fresh exacindignation, the sums which were demanded almost as tions by rights, and received without the least compunction, by the senior officers of the Calcutta Council. Among them, in various shares, was paid away no less than 138,3557. While by Mr. Mill's accounts ('Hist.' vol. iii. pp. 326-329) the totals of private donations received by individuals from the Moorshidabad treasury up to this period were 2,169,655l., the payments on account of the Council. 'restitutions,' had reached 3,770,8331., making a sum total of no less than 5,940,4987. Private individuals were indeed enriched beyond conception; but the public finances of the company were impoverished, notwithstanding their enormous extra receipts. By the treaty with the new Nawab, the military defence of the country was undertaken by the company, and a deputy, Mahomed Reza Khan, was appointed as the Nawab's representative and executive minister. Mr. Vansittart had returned to England, and Mr. Spencer, a civilian from Bombay, occupied his place. The Council undertakes the military defence of Bengal. Dissatisfac tion of the Court of Directors. Clive is proceed to Bengal. The Court of Directors were not, however, satisfied with the progress of affairs in Bengal. It was impossible for them to defend their servants from the imputations of scandalous rapacity which were becoming notorious, and it was even more unendurable that the public trade of the company should have been well-nigh extinguished by the private trade of its own servants. Clive was, therefore, requested to proceed again to Bengal. During his residence in England, requested to he had been elected an Irish peer; he was a member of Parliament, and aspired to be a director of the East India Company; but in this he had failed. There was a party in the court who virulently opposed him, and who had ordered a resumption of the payment of the revenue of his jahgeer, or estate, which obliged him to resort to an action at law; and it is probable these contentions would have continued, but for the dangers and embarrassments of Bengal, which he alone was considered capable of removing. In regard to the jahgeer, he agreed to relinquish it to the company after ten years, if he lived so long, and this closed the discussion. Lord Clive landed in Calcutta on May 3, 1765, and on the same day the Vizier of Oudh, with his Mahratta and Rohilla allies, was again defeated at Corah by General Carnac, and threw himself on the generosity of the English. It was a strange sight for the people of India to behold. Their emperor, and his most powerful subject, were alike suppliants for assistance and for consideration, at the hands of those who, not ten years before, were no more than humble merchants, and had been ignominiously expelled from Bengal. It was a situation which required the solution and direction of a master mind; and Lord Clive, after a brief survey of affairs in Calcutta, which disclosed to him unbounded rapacity and vice-and having declared that he would summarily dismiss from the service any servant of the company who refused to sign the new covenants which had been prepared in England left Calcutta on June 25, and proceeded to Clive reaches Joseph II., emperor of Germany. Vizier of feated. Clive proclaims the new govern ment; and joins the army. join the army. As he passed Moorshidabad, the arrangements for the military defence of the country were definitively settled. Fifty-three lacs of rupees-530,0007.-were assigned for the purpose, and in order to preserve a check upon Mahomed Reza Khan, two Hindoo gentlemen of rank, Rái Doolub and Jugget Sett, the banker, were associated with him. Clive now proceeded to the camp; and, on August 2, the affairs of the vizier were considered settlement and decided. His dominions, which he had forfeited with the by an unprovoked war, were restored to him, except two Oudh. districts, Corah and Allahabad, which were reserved for the emperor; he was to pay fifty lacs for the expenses of the war, and Rajah Bulwunt Sing, who had rendered material assistance to the English, was confirmed in his possession of Benares and Ghazipoor. vizier of Transactions emperor. The emperor only remained. On him were settled the two reserved districts of Oudh, and twenty-six lacs-260,000l. -of the annual revenue of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa; with the but he was required to relinquish his claims to the arrears which had accumulated. He had already twice offered the dewany, or revenue management of Bengal, to the English, once to Clive and once to General Carnac; and on Cession of Clive again proposing the arrangement, he readily the dewany acquiesced in it. On August 12, the emperor took his seat on a throne, constructed of the dining-tables and an armchair, in Lord Clive's tent, covered with rich cloths, and the imperial firman was executed and formally delivered to the representative of the English nation. It conferred upon Particulars of them in perpetuity the three provinces, which possessed of Bengal. the cession a population of 25,000,000, and a revenue of 4,000,000%. sterling, the only alienation being the twenty-six lacs-260,000l.—guaranteed to the emperor, and fifty lacs, the pension of the Nawab of Moorshidabad. At the same time, Clive obtained from the emperor a formal grant of the whole of the Northern Circars, at present in the possession of the Nizam, to be used when the English might be in a position to enforce their surrender. Clive's at Calcutta. On Lord Clive's return to Calcutta, he resumed the question of the check of private trade, and in this had to oppose his resolute will to the interests of the whole English measures community, who, in the unbridled exercise of privilege and power, had become alike insolent and reckless. The salaries of the civil officers had hitherto been nominal, and were on a scale so paltry that to live on them would be impossible. To raise them in a sufficient degree would be difficult, and he Duties on therefore arranged that the proceeds of the monopoly of of salt, which had hitherto been considered one of the civil salaries salt assigned Nawab's private perquisites, should be collected into a joint-stock sum, to be divided in proportion to their rank among all grades. It amounted to about thirty-two lacs of rupees, and the proper division was to be made by a committee formed out of the whole body. Difficulties with the Mutiny of the officers. So far everything had been settled on comparatively easy terms; but the turn of the army was now to ensue, and the risk was much more formidable; extra allowances, called army. batta, had been granted to it, with other special augmentations and the whole was to be reduced to one system by which the receipts of pay would be greatly diminished. Notwithstanding the danger, it was proclaimed that after January 1, 1765, all these extra perquisites were to cease. The consequence was an immediate mutiny of the officers; bat their proceedings were kept secret till March, when Clive, who had gone to Moorshidabad, received the first round robin' remonstrance. The officers had threatened, as they had bound themselves to each other, to resign; and Clive directed Sir Robert Fletcher, who commanded one of the three divisions, to receive any resignation offered, and dispatch the individuals at once to Calcutta, while he wrote to Madras to send up every the European officer that could be spared. At Mongheer, on March 13, the European soldiers assembled in arms to support their officers; but were overawed by the Sepoy regi ments. In the camp at Serájpoor, similar scenes took place; but there was no actual outbreak, and the sudden arrival of a regiment of Sepoys, who had marched 104 miles in fifty-four hours, prevented what had been contemplated. By these resolute means Mutiny of soldiers, checked by the native regiments. Clive's eventual success. had Lord Clive again obtained the mastery of a position from which most men would perhaps have receded by compromise, and it was a strange element of his success, that the Sepoy battalions, led by a few faithful and devoted officers, should have overawed and controlled the Europeans. Sir Robert Fletcher, who was the instigator and ringleader of the whole, was tried and cashiered, and others were similarly sen tenced; but the whole was settled more by firmness and resolu tion than by severity, and the majority of the officers expressing their contrition, were restored to their rank in the service. During the progress of this mutiny, the young Nawab died at Moorshidabad on May 8. The succeeded by event was of no political importance, and his brother, Syf-ood-Dowlah, a youth of sixteen years old, was in Death of the young Nawab of Moorshi. dabad, who is his brother. vested with his dignity. If the state of Lord Clive's health had permitted him to remain in India, it is probable that he would have stayed to watch, England. for a time, the progress of the revolution he had directed: but he was unable to bear the effects of the climate, and in Lord Clive January 1767 intimated to the Council his intention returns to of proceeding to England. His second administration had lasted only twenty-two months, and yet was crowded with events which had added greater lustre to his reputation than his first. The objects he had most deeply at heart, the possession of the three great provinces of Bengal, had been Review of secured with marvellous ease; he had treated the his policy. enemies of his nation with singular courtesy and favour; and as he left India, he recorded that any further extension of territory in India would be 'a scheme so extravagantly ambitious, that no government in its senses would ever dream of it.' In his latter acts none of the greed of money which he had at first displayed was evident, else he might have obtained any sum he chose to demand from the Vizier of Oudh, whose dominions he restored to him, and from the Rajah of Benares, for the confirmation of his possessions; and in regard to the Nawáb, his declaration of defence before his peers, that, when piles of money and jewels lay before him in the treasury of Moorshidabad, he only 'marvelled that he had taken so little,' has been accepted by posterity. One of his last acts in India was to refuse a legacy of 50,000l. which had been left him by the Nawáb, and cause the sum to be applied to the maintenance of the Invalid Poplar Hospital. In regard to the application of the salt duties to the pay of the civil officers, the directors and proprietors of East India stock, eager for increased dividends, disapproved of the measure, and ordered the salt duties to be incorporated with the general revenue of Bengal; but as no provision was made for the pay of these officers, Lord Clive took upon himself to order the continuance of his own plan, until proper gradations of salary could be decided in England. He left India finally on January 29, 1767, being succeeded in office by Mr. Verelst. CHAPTER XVI. OF EVENTS AT MADRAS, 1761 To 1768. Pesition of THE capture of Pondicherry had raised the English in the Carnatic to the highest rank of local power. The difference between their positions in Bengal and Madras was this; the English that, whereas in the former the English had created their own Nawáb, who was solely dependent on them, in the H H in Madras. |