YOU are now permitted to peep into the citadel of Arcot, the old capital of the Carnatic. Its walls are ruinous, its ramparts unfitted for guns, its battlements too low to protect soldiers. The town is in the hands of four thousand native troops, assisted by one hundred and fifty Frenchmen. Within the fort there are but a hundred and twenty Europeans and two hundred Sepoys. Their stock of provisions is very low. At the request of the Sepoys the Europeans take the rice, while the faithful natives contrive to keep body and soul together on the water in which it has been boiled. The defenders are daily diminishing in number from starvation, disease, and the musketry fire of the enemy, but there is no talk of surrender. You judge that their leader must be a man of no common courage and resolution, and you are right. Within yonder room their young English captain is placidly sleeping, though he knows that the enemy is about to assault his feeble post.

Already he has been offered honourable terms and a bribe of money if he will but yield. He has rejected both with the utmost scorn and defiance, though he knows full well that the capture of the fort means the death of every man in it. In haughty tones the young Englishman has told the prince who commands the besieging army that his father is a usurper, that his forces are a mere rabble, and that he will do well to think twice before he sends such poltroons against English soldiers. It is now the 14th day of November, and on the 30th of August last he and his little army marched through a violent storm of thunder and rain, and captured the fort without striking a blow. He has already held out for seventy-five days, hoping hourly for relief. But he has not been inactive. Time after time he and his little band have sallied forth and inflicted considerable damage on the besiegers. The artillery of the enemy has already made much havoc; two great breaches gape in the walls. Every attempt to storm them has failed. Now the enemy is in overwhelming force, and to-day an assault is to be made; yet the commander of the post lies calmly sleeping, though a touch on the shoulder will awaken him and bring him on to the walls to direct the defence. He has made all arrangements; he has done all that man can do. Now he is recruiting his exhausted strength for the critical struggle that awaits him.

To-day is the most solemn festival in the Mohammedan calendar, a day on which the followers of Mohammed believe that he who falls in fight against the infidel will enter at once into Paradise. The religious enthusiasm of the besiegers is almost a frenzy, and they have further increased their madness by a free use of the intoxicating drug which they call bhang. They are ready to go to death with eager joy; no man of them will flinch from the most dangerous duty; all are zealous for the privilege of sacrificing their lives.

Suddenly you hear the discharge of three bombs. It is the signal for the attack. Our young Englishman is awake now, and you get your first glimpse of him. One glance at his face convinces you that he is a warrior of warriors, that there is not a particle of fear in his whole composition, that he is a born leader of men. His Sepoys positively worship him. They believe him to be more than mortal. Whatever he commands they obey. Their devotion to him exceeds that of the Tenth Legion to CÆsar and of the Old Guard to Napoleon.

Such is Robert Clive, a young man of twenty-five, who left his Shropshire home as the scapegrace of the family. In his home at Styche and in the grammar school of Market Drayton he acquired a most unenviable reputation—always in mischief, ready to use his fists on the slightest provocation, an idle, worthless dunce. In desperation his father packed him off to India as a book-keeper; but he has exchanged the pen for the sword, and has now found his vocation. It is he who suggested this desperate enterprise, and to-day he is about to lay the foundations of his great fame.

The attack has begun. A vast multitude of besiegers is beneath the walls carrying ladders, while against the four points where the fort is weakest—the two gates and the two breaches—organized and simultaneous attacks are preparing. Huge elephants, with their foreheads armed with iron plates, are driven forward, and you expect that the gates will be smashed to matchwood by the impact of these living battering-rams. But watch! Now you see Clive directing his men to pour their fire into the elephants. They do so, and the huge beasts, stung by the bullets, turn round and trample under foot the dense masses of men behind them. The enemy has been hoist with his own petard.

There is a wild rush into the north-west breach, which is blocked with yelling natives. Suddenly you hear a volley, and down go scores of the assailants. Clive has dug trenches behind the breaches, and his men are in them pouring a murderous fire on the living, struggling mass that swarms through the gap in the wall. As soon as the guns are discharged they are handed to the rear-rank men to be loaded, and others charged and primed are received in exchange. Three field-pieces now open fire, and every shot tells. After three desperate onsets the enemy is driven back.

Meanwhile the south-west breach is attacked. Water fills one part of the ditch which protects it, and on this the foe has launched a raft crowded with soldiers, who are urging it towards the shattered walls. The gunners at this post fire wildly and their aim is bad. Clive springs to the gun and works it himself. In three discharges he has cleared the raft and torn it asunder. Many of its occupants are drowning in the ditch, the remainder are swimming back to the bank.

The fight has now lasted an hour, and four hundred of the assailants are dead. The grand attack has failed. There is firing during the night, but when day breaks the besiegers are nowhere to be seen. They have hurriedly abandoned the town, leaving their artillery and ammunition behind them.

At once India rings with the praises of Clive. Reinforced, he proceeds upon his victorious career, and the natives tremble at his name. Within the next three years, by his marvellous energy and skill, he will establish British supremacy in India.

Now we must hark back in order to understand the meaning of the struggle which we have just witnessed. The East India Company, in whose service Clive had enlisted, was established as far back as the days of Queen Elizabeth. It was founded for trade, and it attended closely to business. When Clive arrived in India its territory consisted of a few square miles of land, for which rent was paid to native rajas. Its troops were scarcely sufficient to man the ill-constructed forts which had been erected at Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, and a few other places to protect the warehouses. Most of the soldiers in the service of the Company were natives, and were neither furnished with European weapons nor disciplined according to European methods. The white servants of the Company were simply traders, whose business it was to make advances to manufacturers, ship cargoes, and in other ways push the business interests of their employers. Most of the younger clerks, of whom Clive was one, were miserably paid, while the older ones enriched themselves by trading on their own account.

A French East India Company had also been founded, but at the outset it met with much less success than the English Company. At the close of the seventeenth century it possessed little more than the small town of Pondicherry, which still remains in French hands. At this time the Moguls, the descendants of the Mohammedan conquerors of Northern India, dominated the land; but a few years later their power fell to pieces, and India was splintered into little independent kingdoms. The land was given over to civil war; every nawab, or governor, quarrelled and fought with his neighbours. The feebleness of the native rulers and the disturbed state of the country positively invited the European traders, both English and French, to conquest. Hitherto they had been merely competitors for commerce; soon they were to become rivals for dominion.

Such was the condition of affairs when Clive sailed for India. He was very homesick and depressed during the long voyage round the Cape, and when he arrived he had spent all his money and contracted some debts. He was stationed at Fort George, Madras, where he was wretchedly lodged and badly paid, and engaged in duties ill-suited to his daring, ardent nature. On more than one occasion he got into scrapes and received reprimands. Twice he attempted suicide, and twice the pistol which he snapped at his own head failed to go off. “It appears I am destined for something,” he said, and, as you already know, his prophecy proved true. In the year of his arrival in India (1744) war was declared by Britain against France, and the struggle in Europe led to the long fight for supremacy in India.

Dupleix, the French Governor of Pondicherry, was a man of great ambition, and he now conceived the idea of founding a great French empire in India. Himself an able soldier, he made two most important discoveries. First, he observed that the native armies could not stand against men disciplined in the European fashion; and, secondly, he perceived that the natives could be brought under European discipline by European officers. Forthwith he began to enlist Sepoys, or native soldiers, and to arm and discipline them after the French manner. With these Sepoys he intended to intervene in the disputes of the native rulers, and by taking first this side, and then that, gradually win India for France.

A French expedition appeared before Madras, captured Fort George, and seized the contents of the warehouses as prize of war. Some of the servants of the Company, including Clive, were paraded through the streets of Pondicherry in triumphal procession, and treated with great indignity. Clive, in the disguise of a Mohammedan, managed to escape from the town by night and make his way to Fort St. David, a small British settlement one hundred miles south of Madras. Here he begged an ensign’s commission in the service of the Company, and at twenty-one entered upon his military career.

He took part in Admiral Boscawen’s unsuccessful siege of Pondicherry, where he distinguished himself, and in his twenty-fifth year was promoted to be a captain. Shortly after the failure at Pondicherry peace was proclaimed. Nevertheless, there was but a short cessation of hostilities in India; for though British and French were supposed to have sheathed the sword, a great struggle for power was about to begin both in India and in America. Before long there was open war, which at first went greatly in favour of France.

Dupleix, continuing his rapid and brilliant career, had intervened in the affairs of the two great native states of Hyderabad and the Carnatic, and had managed to get his own candidates placed on the thrones of both these states. Thus he was practically master of South India. Civil war, however, continued in the Carnatic, where the French nominee was besieging Trichinopoly, the last stronghold of his rival. Trichinopoly was about to fall, and its fall would mean the complete supremacy of the French in India. At the critical moment Clive persuaded the Governor of Madras to entrust him with a small force to attack Arcot, the capital of the nawab whom Dupleix was supporting. By doing so, he hoped to draw off the nawab’s forces from the siege of Trichinopoly. You already know how splendidly he defended Arcot, and how he forced the enemy to raise the siege. By 1753 he had completely undone the work of Dupleix.

Worn out by anxiety and fatigue, he now returned to England. He had gone out ten years before, a friendless, wayward boy; he now returned, at the age of twenty-eight, to find himself greeted as one of Britain’s most famous soldiers. Naturally, his father and mother and the other members of his family were overjoyed to learn that naughty, idle Bobby had developed into a famous man, the theme of all tongues, honoured and praised by the greatest in the land. The East India Company thanked him for his services in the warmest terms, and offered him a sword set with diamonds. This he refused to accept unless a similar one was given to his friend and commander Lawrence. With his prize-money Clive helped to pay off some of his father’s debts, and to redeem the family estate.

In 1755 Clive returned to India. He had only just arrived when terrible news reached him. Suraj-ud-Dowlah, the Nawab of Bengal, a fiend in human shape, whose amusement as a child was to torture beasts and birds, and his pastime as a man to watch the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, had attacked the British settlement at Calcutta, and had seized one hundred and forty-six Europeans. These he thrust into a chamber known as the “Black Hole.” It was eighteen feet by fourteen, and its cubical content was twenty feet square. When ordered to enter the cell the prisoners imagined that the soldiers were joking, and as the nawab had promised them their lives they laughed aloud at the absurdity of the idea that they could possibly exist during the stifling heat of a Bengal June night in such a confined space. They discovered their error when they were driven in at the point of the sword. The windows were small and barred, and soon the air was poisonous. The horrors that followed are almost too terrible to recount. The poor creatures cried for mercy, they strove to break in the door, they offered large bribes to their jailers; but all to no purpose. Nothing could be done without the nawab’s orders, and he was asleep and could not be awaked. Many went mad; they trampled each other down, and fought like wild beasts for places at the windows. The murderers outside mocked at their agonies, holding lights to the bars, and shouting with laughter as they beheld the struggles of their victims. When day broke and the doors were opened only twenty-three ghastly figures staggered out into the sunlight. A hundred and twenty-three corpses were flung promiscuously into a pit dug for the purpose.

The rage and anger of the British in India can well be imagined. Clive hastened to Bengal to avenge the awful outrage. He had nine hundred Europeans and fifteen hundred Sepoys with which to oppose Suraj-ud-Dowlah’s huge army. After a short, sharp fight the enemy fled in confusion, leaving baggage, guns, and cattle in the hands of the victors. This battle of Plassey, fought on June 23, 1757, secured for the British the province of Bengal, the richest and most populous province of India.

The battle, however, was not won without grave treachery. Prior to the battle Clive learned that Mir Jaffier, Suraj-ud-Dowlah’s chief commander, had formed a plot against his master. He managed to get into communication with the disaffected general through the agency of one Omichand, a wily, unscrupulous Bengali merchant. This man held the thread of the whole plot in his hands; one word whispered by him in the ear of Suraj-ud-Dowlah would have meant the lives of all the conspirators. Omichand claimed £300,000 sterling as the price of his secrecy and assistance, and insisted that an article regarding his claims should be inserted in the treaty between Clive and Mir Jaffier. Clive now descended to conduct for which he cannot be defended, though excuses may be made. He knew he had to do with a villain, and he determined to defeat him by his own knavish acts. Two treaties were drawn up—the one, on white paper, was real; the other, on red paper, was a sham. The red paper contained the promise to pay Omichand’s demand; there was no mention of it in the white paper. Clive now added his signature, and forged that of Admiral Watson to the red paper, which was handed to Omichand. The treaty to which Mir Jaffier agreed was on the white paper.

When Suraj-ud-Dowlah was overcome, Mir Jaffier received the throne of Bengal as his reward. According to the terms of the treaty, he granted territorial and other rights to the East India Company, and gave Clive a gift of £200,000. “It is now time,” said Clive, “to undeceive Omichand.” Turning to the man, Clive’s interpreter said, “Omichand, the red treaty is a trick. You are to have nothing.” Omichand fell back insensible, and afterwards relapsed into a state of idiocy. Soon after, Mir Jaffier was besieged by the eldest son of the Great Mogul; but Clive marched to his relief, and the besiegers melted away. Then Mir Jaffier in gratitude made over to Clive the yearly rent, amounting to £30,000, which the British paid for the lands which they occupied about Calcutta. Probably Clive was justified in accepting this present, but it gave his enemies a powerful handle against him. In 1760 Clive returned to England, and was everywhere greeted as a “heaven-born general.” He became member of Parliament for Shrewsbury, and received an Irish peerage. His fortune, acquired by spoils, presents, and grants, actually yielded him £40,000 a year.

In 1765 he returned to India as governor-general, and set himself the task of purifying the administration of the Company. The officials and military commanders received very small salaries; but these they turned into fortunes by “shaking the pagoda tree”—that is, by blackmail, extortion, and corruption of all kinds. Clive attempted to stop these practices, and though his reforms were bitterly opposed, he left the Company’s service much purer than he found it. In the process he raised up a host of enemies, who in 1767, when he finally returned to England in shattered health, brought about his impeachment for corrupt practices, especially with reference to the Omichand affair and the present from Mir Jaffier. During the Parliamentary inquiry, Clive, when confronted by hostile evidence, remarked, “Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation!” The House of Commons evaded a decision on his conduct by passing a resolution that Lord Clive “had rendered great and meritorious services to his country.” He was acquitted, but the acquittal was really a vote of censure. Clive, broken in health, keenly sensitive to the disgrace of the verdict, and enfeebled in mind by the use of opium, felt the disgrace keenly. During one of the fits of deep depression to which he was subject, he ended his life by his own hand (November 1774).

Thus perished, in his forty-ninth year, the great Clive. His faults were many, but his merits outweighed them, and he must always stand high in the roll of British empire-makers. “Our island has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great either in arms or in council.” Let this be his epitaph.

The natives of India believed that Clive bore a charmed life. On one occasion, when he was resting along with several of his men, a party of Frenchmen fired into the room which he occupied, killing the man next to him. Clive rushed out, and finding himself confronted by six Frenchmen, loudly ordered them to lay down their arms as they were surrounded. The native allies of the French fled, and the assailants themselves took refuge in a temple. Next day they surrendered.