had so misconducted the
siege of Trichinopoli, and by recalling his army from Plassey, where
he had posted it, to a point nearer to his capital.

{85}Of Siraj-ud-daula something must be said. The province which he
ruled from his then capital of Murshidabad had been one of the great
fiefs which the dissolution of the Mughal Empire had affected. The
family which had ruled it in 1739 had had the stamp of approval from
Delhi. But when the invasion of Nadir Shah in that year overthrew for
the time the authority of the Mughal, an officer named Ali Vardi
Khan, who had risen from the position of a menial servant to be
Governor of Bihar, rose in revolt, defeated and slew the
representative of the family nominated by the Mughals in a battle at
Gheria, in January, 1741, and proclaimed himself Subahdar. Ali Vardi
Khan was a very able man. Having bribed the shadow sitting on the
throne of Akbar and Aurangzeb to recognize him as Subahdar of Bengal,
Bihar, and Orissa, he ruled wisely and well. On his death in 1756 he
had been succeeded by his youthful grandson, the Siraj-ud-daula, who,
as we have seen, had come, so fatally for himself, under the
influence of Clive.

For all the actions of Clive at this period prove that he was
resolved to place matters in Bengal on such a footing as would render
impossible atrocities akin to that of the Black Hole. Were he to quit
Bengal, he felt, after accomplishing the mission on which he had been
sent, and that mission only, what security was there that the
Subahdar would not return to wreak a vengeance the more bitter from
the mortifications he had had to endure? No, there {86}was but one
course he could safely pursue. He must place the Company's affairs on
a solid and secure footing. Already he had begun to feel that such a
footing was impossible so long as Siraj-ud-daula remained ruler of
the three provinces. As time went on the idea gathered strength,
receiving daily, as it did, fresh vitality from the discovery that
among the many noblemen and wealthy merchants who surrounded the
Subahdar there were many ready to betray him, to play into his own
hand, to combine with himself as against a common foe.

Soon his difficulty was to choose the man with whom he should ally
himself. Yar Lutf Khan, a considerable noble, and a divisional
commander of the Siraj-ud-daula's army, made, through Mr. Watts, the
English agent at Kasimbazar, the first offer of co-operation, on the
sole condition that he sho