of the officers generally, just as happened when Dupleix tried to give Paradis command of the expedition against St David's in 1746. Under Lawrence's command, however, Clive was given every opportunity he could desire.

At this time the French were led by an exceedingly inefficient officer, Law, who failed to prevent the junction of Lawrence's reinforcements with the troops already at Trichinopoly, and then retired into the island of Srirangam, which lies between the Cauvery and the Coleroon. Clive then proposed that the English forces should be divided, one part operating to the south and the other to the north, so as to block up the French and compel their surrender. Every English officer but Lawrence condemned the plan as foolhardy; and indeed its sole justification lay in the proved inactivity of the French command, but for which the two parties might have been crushed in detail. The plan was adopted, and Clive received command of the detachment operating to the northward. Once there, he became much more sensible of the dangers of his position, from which indeed he escaped only by his own activity and the enemy's negligence. His camp was surprised, but by a party too small to take advantage of the confusion they had caused. Soon after this all the French posts outside the island were carried. A party advancing with treasure from Pondicherry was driven back and finally captured. Thereupon Chanda Sahib and the French surrendered. Chanda Sahib was beheaded by the Tanjoreans, whose territory he had ravaged a dozen times in his day of power; and Law's surrender determined the French Company to recall Dupleix. It is hard to see what else they could have done. Dupleix had for three years been amusing them with stories of a war that was always going to end and was never going to cost any money. He had never explained to them or even formulated to himself the principles on which his policy rested. Nor was his recall so great a misfortune as some have supposed. Fertile of expedient as he was, he lacked all sense of reality and failed to see what was, and what was not, practicable.

Clive's military career in Southern India was now almost concluded. He conquered a few posts which the French had re-established in the Carnatic, and then

went home, at the age of twenty-eight, with a great fortune, considerable military reputation, and a character for being vastly favoured by luck. As is often the case, this last meant that he possessed that rapid and accurate judgment which alone enables a man to avert impending disaster and to seize every chance of victory.

Two years in England sufficed to incline him again eastwards. He lived extravagantly; his generosity was profuse; and he dabbled in politics. He returned to India, in 1755, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and as second in council on the Coromandel Coast. He proceeded at first to Bombay, for the Company had evolved a plan to overthrow the supremacy which the French under Bussy had established in the Deccan. That province was continually in dispute between the Moghul subahdar and the Marathas; and it was proposed that the Bombay Council should enter into an alliance with the latter which, in view of the French support enjoyed by the subahdar, they were almost certain to embrace. But the Bombay councillors were better qualified to deal with matters of trade than questions of policy. They refused to enter into the project; and the only use they made of the troops sent out to them with Clive was the destruction of a stronghold of petty pirates who had long vexed their private commerce.

But this decision, though stupid, was fortunate for Clive. He reached Madras by May 1756, instead of being engaged in a serious campaign in the Deccan, at the very moment when Siraj-ud-daula chose to threaten the English in his province of Bengal. The reasons for his action have been much discussed. It was asserted by the unveracious Holwell that he was warned by Alivirdi Khan, his predecessor, against the ambitions of the European nations; and, though Holwell's evidence would not hang a dog, we have no doubt that Siraj-ud-daula from the very first entertained strong suspicions of English, French, and Dutch alike. However great the apathy with which Indians regarded the fate of distant provinces, it is hard to suppose that a Muslim court regarded with unconcern the extraordinary events which had taken place in the Carnatic-the slaughter of two Muhammadan princes by the infidel, and the predominance which certain of these unbelievers had established

at the court of Hyderabad. Nor is this a mere plausible suggestion. We know on unimpeachable evidence that Siraj-ud-daula's grandfather had been so shocked by the murder of Nasir Jang that he had threatened the French in Bengal with the confiscation of their property.

These suspicions, directed especially against the English, were strengthened by the fact that they ventured to prepare defences against a possible French attack from the river. The Nawab ordered the new works to be demolished. The English were unwise enough to explain. Siraj-ud-daula seems to have supposed that these nations meditated a repetition in Bengal of the events which had laid waste the Carnatic. He at once turned back from an expedition on which he had set out, seized the English factory at Murshidabad, marched on Calcutta, and, to his own enormous surprise, captured it with ease.

This news, with that of the great crime which accompanied it, reached Madras in August 1756. An expedition had been on the point of starting for the Deccan; and more than one member of the Council was anxious, from interested motives, to continue it and neglect Bengal. But, thanks to the efforts of Clive and Orme, it was resolved to send every available man to recover the lost settlements. In October they sailed under the command of Clive himself. Calcutta was recovered as easily as it had been lost. When the Nawab advanced to repel the invaders, he was so alarmed by a nightattack on his camp-tactics which Clive had borrowed from the French-that he at once conceded all the English demands.

It was known, however, that he had only yielded to circumstances. He continued scheming how best to avenge himself for this humiliation, and wrote repeatedly to Bussy to come and help him. War had now broken out again between France and England; and there was an obvious danger that Bussy, or at all events the French at Chandernagore, might join the Nawab. But there was a long-established custom among the European nations in Bengal not to take part in European wars. A neutrality was proposed, and, though it came to nothing, Siraj-ud-daula was cajoled into looking on while the English captured Chandernagore and destroyed his

only possible allies. It was then the Nawab's own turn. Just as Dupleix had joined the conspiracy of Pathan nawabs against Nasir Jang, so Clive joined in a plot, supported largely by Hindus, to overthrow Siraj-ud-daula and establish Mir Jaffar as Nawab. The latter proved a most futile ally. He would neither join Clive on the march nor unite with him on the battlefield. But the Nawab had disgusted all his supporters. His camp was full of rumours of treachery. When the English at last reached Plassey, where Siraj-ud-daula lay covering Murshidabad, the Nawab's troops were prepared for defection and defeat. After a short action the Nawab gave up all hopes and fled to his capital.

All this time Mir Jaffar had done nothing. But now, on the urgent representations of Clive, he followed the Nawab and reached Murshidabad while the latter was still there. With strange imbecility this irresolute victor went quietly to his own palace, and allowed Siraj-uddaula to complete his preparations for renewed flight. Luckily, however, for him, his relatives were of a more determined type. One seized the fugitive; another murdered him. Thus within a year of capturing Calcutta Siraj-ud-daula perished.

Meanwhile Clive had seated Mir Jaffar on the masnad of Bengal, just as five years before Bussy had made Salabat Jang subahdar of the Deccan. There were further resemblances. Neither prince was in the least qualified for government. In spite of their difference of age, both were feeble, irresolute, and untrustworthy; and both, according to the tradition of oriental generosity, rewarded those who had raised them to their undeserved eminence. It has been usual to condemn such gifts; and, from an abstract point of view, subjects of European sovereigns doubtless should not have accepted them. But we gravely doubt whether there was a living man who, in the circumstances in which Bussy and Clive found themselves, would have refused what they accepted. Acceptance was warranted by the custom of the country, the traditions of the service, and a lively sense that such gifts were merited.

It was now to be seen what would happen when the whole political power lay in the Nawab's hands and the whole military power in those of the English. There

were two precedents-Dupleix and Chanda Sahib in the Carnatic, Bussy and Salabat Jang in the Deccan; and each offered warnings and examples. Thus Dupleix found Chanda Sahib's management of the finances so intolerably bad that he procured farmans appointing himself governor of all the country south of the Kistna; and, at the time of Chanda Sahib's death, he was only awaiting an opportunity to put these farmans into force. Bussy met with a similar difficulty at Hyderabad. Though the accumulated treasure of the past had sufficed for a while to meet both the French demands and the daily requirements of the administration, yet within eighteen months Bussy was writing, 'There is no hope of his [Salabat Jang] ever re-establishing his finances, they are too badly administered. . . . It is a kind of brigandage. The renters only pay half what is due.' The officials were corrupt and uncontrolled; the native army was on the verge of mutiny; and the French were unable to obtain the high pay which had been promised them. The only remedy which Bussy could apply was to get a grant of certain districts-the Northern Circars-to defray the expenses of his army.

Again the control which Bussy exercised over the Durbar had occasioned wide-spread discontent. The French, it was muttered, were carrying off the whole wealth of the Deccan. Only a few months before Clive had sailed for Bengal, all Madras had been agog with the news that Bussy had been dismissed; and an expedition designed to replace French by English influence had been on the verge of despatch, being only stopped by the news from Bengal. Bussy had been reinforced, had successfully resisted the attacks made upon him, and had finally condescended once more to support Salabat Jang on his tottering throne. But it was abundantly clear that the control of an Indian prince involved endless troubles, arising from financial mismanagement and durbar jealousies. In one respect, however, the position in Bengal afforded Clive an advantage which Bussy lacked in the Deccan. In Bengal the Hindus were enjoying a larger share of important posts than was usual in the southern province. The revolution by which Siraj-ud-daula had been overthrown had been supported by several prominent Hindus; and, by continuing the