inferior
numbers, he had sent a note to Clive asking for implicit
instructions. Clive, who was playing whist when the note reached him,
knowing with whom he was dealing, wrote across it, in pencil: 'Dear
Forde, Fight them immediately: I will send you the order {132}in
Council to-morrow,' and sent back the messenger with it.

The two victories were in all respects decisive. Never again did the
Dutch trouble the tranquillity of India. Mir Jafar was cowed. Three
days after the victory of Biderra, his son, Miran, arrived from
Murshidabad with 6,000 horse, for the purpose, he explained, of
exterminating the Dutch. Clive, always merciful in victory, gave to
these, against their baffled confederate, the protection which he
considered due to a foe no longer to be dreaded.

Clive now regarded the British position in Bengal so secure that he
might return to England to enjoy there the repose and the position he
had acquired. He had compressed into three years achievements the
most momentous, the most marvellous, the most enduring, recorded in
the history of his country. Landing with a small force below Calcutta
in the last days of 1756, he had compelled the Subahdar, who had been
responsible for the Black Hole tragedy, though guiltless of designing
it,[15] to evacuate Calcutta, to witness without interfering his
capture of Chandranagar. Determined, then, in the interests of his
country, to place matters in Bengal on such a footing that a
repetition of the tragedy of 1756 should be impossible, he resolved
to replace Siraj-ud-daula, himself the son of a usurper, by a native
chieftain {133}who should owe everything to the English, and who
would probably allow himself to be guided by them in his policy. To
this end he formed a conspiracy among his nobles, fomented discontent
among his people, and finally forced him to appeal to arms. At
Plassey Clive risked everything on the fidelity to himself of the
conspirators with whom he had allied himself. They were faithful. He
gained the battle, not gloriously but decisively, and became from the
morrow of the victory the lord paramount of the noble whom he placed
then on the _masnad_. Possibly it was partly policy which impelled
him to give his nominee no chance from the beginning. Certain it is,
that Mir Jafar was, from the moment of his accession, so handicapped
by the compulsion to make to his allies enormous payments, that his
life, from that moment to the hour of his deposition, presen