now the most northerly suburb of Calcutta. The nawab hastened to
conclude a treaty, under which favourable terms were conceded to the
Company's trade, the factories and plundered property were restored, and
an English mint was established. In the accompanying agreement,
offensive and defensive, Clive appears under the name by which he was
always known to the natives of India, Sabut Jung, or "the daring in
war." The hero of Arcot had, at Angria's stronghold, and now again under
the walls of Calcutta, established his reputation as the first captain
of the time. With 600 British soldiers, 800 sepoys, 7 field-pieces and
500 sailors to draw them, he had routed a force of 34,000 men with 40
pieces of heavy cannon, 50 elephants, and a camp that extended upwards
of four miles in length. His own account, in a letter to the archbishop
of Canterbury, gives a modest but vivid description of the battle, the
importance of which has been overshadowed by Plassey. In spite of his
double defeat and the treaty which followed it, the madness of the nawab
burst forth again. As England and France were once more at war, Clive
sent the fleet up the river against Chandernagore, while he besieged it
by land. After consenting to the siege, the nawab sought to assist the
French, but in vain. The capture of their principal settlement in India,
next to Pondicherry, which had fallen in the previous war, gave the
combined forces prize to the value of L130,000. The rule of
Suraj-ud-Dowlah became as intolerable to his own people as to the
British. They formed a confederacy to depose him, at the head of which
was Jafar Ali Khan, his commander-in-chief. Associating with himself
Admiral Watson, Governor Drake and Mr Watts, Clive made a treaty in
which it was agreed to give the office of viceroy of Bengal, Behar and
Orissa to Jafar, who was to pay a million sterling to the Company for
its losses in Calcutta and the cost of its troops, half a million to the
British inhabitants of Calcutta, L200,000 to the native inhabitants, and
L70,000 to its Armenian merchants. Up to this point all is clear.
Suraj-ud-Dowlah was hopeless as a ruler. His relations alike to his
master, the merely titular emperor of Delhi, and to the people left the
province open to the strongest. After "the Black Hole," the battle of
Calcutta, and the treachery at Chandernagore in spite of the treaty
which followed that battle, the East India Company could treat the nawab
only as an enemy. Cli