"I will do whichever you please, sir," I answered with, I fear, an almost sullen resignation.

"Wisely spoken, Robert; and now for my plans. Your knowledge of the languages renders you a very valuable coadjutor to any man in a public post. I wrote some time ago to Watts, who is just now a kind of State prisoner at Chinsurah, telling him of my intention to return to England, and recommending you to his service in the same capacity you have held with me. Any fortunate change in our affairs will of course restore him to power; and in the mean time I have no doubt he is busy in some secret manner, since he has a rare talent for diplomacy. As I expected, he promptly accepts the transfer, and if you are content to be confidential secretary to Mr. Watts, instead of to John Zephaniah Holwell, the post is ready for you."

I thanked Mr. Holwell heartily for his consideration, and was very glad thus to obtain my release from Fulta, and to proceed as best I might up the river to Chinsurah, which station I reached early in December. Here I found Mr. Watts established, in a very doubtful frame of mind as to the prospects of the Honourable East India Company in Bengal; though he knew that Admiral Watson, with a small armament, was on his way to our rescue, and that, after much squabbling of committees and jealousy of brother-officers, Robert Clive had been finally accredited with full powers for the delivery of the English out of the hands of Suraja Doulah.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CLIVE TO THE RESCUE!

THE pains of disappointed avarice had imbittered the tyrant's success at Calcutta. The pitiful condition of the treasury, and the limited amount of merchandise which could be realised for the royal plunderer after the daring depredations of his soldiery, had been a death-blow to his hopes. The native inhabitants of Calcutta had all contrived to make off with their treasures while the Soubah's army was on the road to the city, with the exception of the ill-fated Omichund; and the only prize in the shape of private fortune swallowed by the royal maw was forty thousand rupees and a variety of valuable effects belonging to this Gentoo merchant. Thus, that English caution which had imprisoned Omichund on the eve of the siege had thrown this large amount into the lap of our worst enemy.

Disgusted beyond all measure with the poverty of Calcutta, where he had perhaps expected a booty as great as Nadir Shah carried away from imperial Delhi, the Soubahdar consigned the governorship of the Fort of Ally to the Gentoo Manickchund, and turned his royal back upon his conquest in search of new victories. In the month of October he achieved a rapid conquest of a rebellious relation, the Phoujdar of

Purneah, and having seen this youth slaughtered, and his country reduced to submission, returned in triumph to Muxadavad, where he expressed himself convinced of our complete annihilation, assuring his low-born favourites that we were a very beggarly set of people, and that the whole of Europe did not contain ten thousand men.

From this blissful state of ignorance Suraja Doulah was disturbed by the news that Robert Clive and Admiral Watson had retaken Calcutta by force of arms, after a vain attempt to obtain its peaceful surrender from Manickchund. It had been almost a bloodless victory, for the might of Mahometan arms had fled panic-stricken at the aspect of British men-of-war, with British soldiers on board them, brightening the broad river with an awful glory, while to landward sounded the rattle of the cannonade from Colonel Clive's artillery.

This capture had been achieved after a spirited skirmish in a green hollow, close by a deserted village of mud-huts, within a mile and a half of Buz-buzia, where the English were surprised asleep by Manickchund and his army. This surprise might have proved fatal for the English arms, had a lesser spirit than Clive's ruled the fortunes of the day. The men had dragged two field-pieces and a tumbril of ammunition through a swampy country, and had arrived at this halting-place, after a sixteen-hours' march, worn-out with fatigue, and entirely ignorant of the enemy's vicinity.

Happily, Clive and British valour prevailed against strength and numbers immeasurably superior, and a ball chancing to come unpleasantly close to Governor Manickchund's turban, that distinguished Hindoo turned his elephant's head, and the whole army went lumbering back through swamp and jungle to the fort named in veneration of the god whose shrine was so soon to be overthrown.

The 1st of January 1757 witnessed the taking of Calcutta by Watson and Clive, a noble New-Year's gift, which the Colonel offered to the Directors of the East India Company, and for which, with all other benefits from the same daring hand, they showed themselves as usual ungrateful in the future. Some ill-feeling was displayed between the naval and military heroes on this occasion, Admiral Watson allowing Clive to be rudely repulsed from the fort which he had helped to capture, and Clive asserting his own rights with his usual spirit.

The English flocked back to their once flourishing settlement to find a scene of desolation. The best houses had been demolished, or damaged by fire. A Moorish mosque, built with the materials of ruined English habitations, defaced the fort; all the prosperous native inhabitants had fled from the rapacity of Manickchund, and squalid poverty prevailed in every quarter. The private losses of inhabitants were roughly estimated at two millions.

Before January was over, Clive and his army, supported by the naval force, had taken Hooghley, a wealthy Moorish city, close to Chinsurah, whose inhabitants had been thrown into consternation by the

capture of Calcutta, and were ill-prepared to resist a foe they had begun to consider invincible, so speedily do these Mahomedans change from insolence to cowardice. We heard the cannon roaring as the ships battered the fort, and at nightfall were gladdened by the news of victory. This conquest gave the English army a handsome booty, and must have awakened the Soubahdar from his pleasant delusion respecting the insignificance of European arms.

Hooghley was scarce taken when news of the declaration of war between England and France arrived from Aleppo. These tidings Mr. Watts considered to the last degree alarming, and at once hastened to Calcutta, taking me with him, in order to be present at the meetings of the select committee. These gentlemen expected that the French forces at Chandernagore would at once join the Nabob, as it was well known that the ambitious Bussy thirsted for the extirpation of the English from Bengal, and for that extension of French empire which had been the daring dream of Dupleix.

Impressed with the belief that even British valour would be powerless against the combined forces of Suraja Doulah and Bussy, Clive at once wrote to Juggat Séth, the great Gentoo banker at Muxadavad, requesting his mediation with the Soubahdar, with a view to arranging a peace. Tidings of the capture of Hooghley happened, however, to reach the council-chamber at the same time as this pacific overture, and the mediator found the tyrant frantic with rage against the English plunderers who had sacked his town, and eager for an instantaneous march to Calcutta.

Hither he hurried, while Clive, hearing of his approach, made prompt preparations to receive him, and at once encamped his forces in a strong position on the outskirts of the settlement. To the native mind the very tidings of the Soubahdar's march carried panic-neighbouring villages refused to send us our usual supplies, Bengalese troops deserted. We had but few bullocks for draught, and but one horse in the whole settlement, and he a stranger, brought from Madras.

Sorely doubtful of success, and as prudent as he was bold, Colonel Clive now wrote to the Nabob, inviting him to peaceful negotiation. The Nabob replied with vast cordiality, but continued his progress; and at daybreak on the 3d of February the flames of burning villages reddened the sky to the northward, and the flash of arms and sound of barbarous music announced the approach of the Soubahdar's army.

Suraja Doulah encamped in Omichund's garden, leaving two-thirds of his army on the other side of the ditch, while the remaining third of his forces took possession of a raised causeway that crossed the Morattoe ditch, and thus led into the Company's territory. When I perceived their position I could but wonder that Colonel Clive had suffered them to seize a post so formidable.

Having pitched his royal tent in Omichund's garden, no doubt at the invitation of the wily Gentoo, the Soubahdar held a durbar in full state. To this council came two of the Company's servants, who were searched by the prince's prime minister, before entering his tent, lest they should carry hidden weapons wherewith to extinguish that light, the Sun of the State.

These two English gentlemen, Mr. Scrafton and Mr. Walsh, found the Nabob surrounded by all his chief officers, and by a circle of scowling rascals of enormous stature, men of low birth, but much affected by the Sun of the State on account of their bulk and ferocious aspect.

These men sat frowning at our deputies throughout the audience; and Mr. Scrafton afterwards told me how he had at this juncture recalled to mind the murderous plot by which this young man's granduncle, Allaverdy, had beguiled the Morattoe general into his tent, there to slay him.

With the ever-present fear of assassination, our gentlemen ventured to remonstrate with the Nabob for his breach of courtesy in thus entering our settlement while he was beguiling Colonel Clive with offers of peace, and then handed his Mahometan highness a paper stating the proposals of the Company. This the Nabob perused in gloomy silence, and anon dismissing the assembly, after some rather alarming whispering between himself and his officers, bade our deputies repair to the tent of his prime minister, there to await a more private conference.

"Egad, Ainsleigh," said Mr. Scrafton, as he related the adventure to me next day, "I had a sensation as of cold water trickling down my back the whole time I was in the yellow-faced heathen's presence, and I think had you seen those truculent scoundrels of his glaring at us from under their enormous turbans, you'd scarce wonder at our distaste for the situation. As we left the tent, that Gentoo rogue Omichund whispered us to take care of ourselves, with a look that I shall never forget. Once safe outside the Nabob's tent, you may be sure we did not go to the prime minister's. The invitation sounded too much like the farmer's wife's one of 'Dilly, dilly, come and be killed.' We bade our black servants extinguish the torches with which they had escorted us, preferring the shelter of darkness to so dangerous a distinction, made off for Perrin's redoubt as fast as we could scamper, and thence in safety to the camp."

It was the report of these two gentlemen that decided Colonel Clive upon an immediate attack; and about three o'clock in the morning of the 5th he marched out with the chief part of his force, assisted by five or six hundred seamen, who drew the artillery and carried ammunition. At six the English entered the enemy's camp in a thick fog. Had this fog cleared off after they had made themselves masters of the camp, the colonel would doubtless have successfully executed his bold design, which was to make his first assault upon a train of heavy artil

lery, spike the guns, and push straight forward to the Nabob's headquarters. But the fog thickening to a dense impenetrable darkness threw our men into confusion, and Clive had a sharp contest with a strong body of the enemy, from which he withdrew the poorer by two field-pieces and an eighth of his small army. Yet, so poor a thing was this descendant of the hardy Tartar general, Allaverdy, that a skirmish, which Clive considered a defeat, struck terror to his craven spirit, and he looked upon this night-attack on his camp as the extreme of desperate valour, and, while shivering in his jewelled shoes, roundly abused his officers for their arrant cowardice. His own losses had been indeed far greater than ours, many officers of distinction, with six hundred common soldiers, five hundred horses, four elephants, some camels, and innumerable bullocks, having perished in the struggle. It was with difficulty this cowardly prince, whose host of forty thousand strong could not sustain him against Clive and two thousand, was induced to spend a second night in such dangerous quarters. His whole army were on the watch from sunset to sunrise, and an incessant firing of cannon and small arms was kept up as a precautionary measure, lest we should again run our raid upon this host of Moorish heroes. It is strange how these eastern soldiers take their colour from the captain who leads them, and thus the men who could achieve wonders of valour under grim old Allaverdy prove the veriest cravens when a craven commands them. A Nadir Shah has but to plant his banner on Persia's barren mountains, and a host of conquerors arise at his call. A Clive takes a handful of sepoys, and the Moorish legions shrivel like the jungle foliage before the rush of a conflagration. What is this subtle spirit of the master-mind which can thus infect battalions, this wondrous Promethean spark that from the breath of one man's nostrils can fire an army? Yet, when some man like Clive has made our arms victorious, there is always a little knot of cavillers ready to dispute his claim to praise or reward, while some small evening paper, the oracle of coffee-house macaronies, must have its little vapid sneer at the hero's achievements. I lived to see Robert Clive hated because, while pouring millions into the coffers of the East India Company, he had contrived to make his own fortune. I lived to read the complaint of one fine gentleman that, while the Roman conquerors were content with a garland of oak, our Indian hero had secured a handsome income. I lived to see that man who redeemed India from the hands of our mortal enemies turn indignantly upon his interrogators of the House of Commons, and tell them that had he been a sheep-stealer they could scarce have questioned him more insolently.

This is a long digression; but when I remember what I saw Robert Clive achieve in Bengal, and consider his experience of a commercial nation's gratitude, I am apt to grow warmer than becomes the writer of a sober chronicle such as this.