1754.] RETROSPECT OF INDIAN AFFAIRS: CLIVE. 203 the head of his army, looking with contempt upon the few French who were drawn up in battle to oppose him. Dupleix received the new Nizam at Pondicherry, and was declared Governor, under the Mogul, of the country upon the eastern coast, from the river Kistna to Cape Comorin. There never was a period in the previous history of our commercial relations with India when it was more probable that the power of the English Company, like that of the Dutch, was hastening to an end. And yet, within a third of a century, a great orator in the House of Commons took the English dominion over the vast peninsula as a theme for reflection on the inconstancy of human greatness, and the stupendous revolutions that had happened in an age of wonders. "Could it be believed, when I entered into existence, or when you, Mr. Speaker, a younger man, were born, that on this day, in this house, we should be employed in discussing the conduct of those British subjects who had disposed of the power and person of the Great Mogul ? "* The boy who fled from Madras, when Dupleix violated the capitulation of Fort St. George, was destined to lay the foundation of the British Empire in India. In Trichinopoly Mahomed Ali prolonged a feeble resistance to Chunda Sahib and his French allies, in their rapid steps towards the complete dominion of the Carnatic. The last stronghold was invested. There was no force to attempt raising the siege. There was no officer at Madras to head the handful of English and native troops to any such daring enterprise. Ensign Clive had now become Captain Clive, and his abilities had procured him the employment of commissary to the troops in the Presidency of Madras. The inspirations of military genius in cases of great emergency are bold even to rashness. The young captain of twenty-five, who had never seen a field of battle, but who rightly estimated what daring might effect, in the first place, and who knew the possibility of combinations with native powers to secure what daring might win, conceived the plan of attacking Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic. A circumstance almost as extraordinary as Clive's bold project is, that the heads of the Presidency listened favourably to his plans, and gave him the command of an expedition consisting of three hundred Sepoys, and two hundred Europeans. He had eight officers under him, four of whom were factors of the Company. Clive and his little band marched up to the gates of Arcot, whilst a violent storm terrified the superstitious natives who composed the garrison. He entered the city of a hundred thousand people without striking a blow. His success induced the besiegers of Trichinopoly to detach a large force, which finally amounted to ten thousand men, to attack the ruinous fort at Arcot in which Clive had established his small garrison. The siege went on, week after week, with little hope of succour from the Company's settlements of Madras and St. David's, where scarcely troops enough were left for their own defence. But Clive thought of a wavering Mahratta chief, who might become his ally. He put himself in communication with Morari Row, who was encamped on the hills of Mysore. Their captain's courage and sagacity inspired all around him with confidence. The garrison began to feel the assaults of hunger. His sepoys begged, not for more food, but that they, who could subsist on * Burke's Speech on Fox's India Bill, December 1, 1783. 204 RETROSPECT OF INDIAN AFFAIRS: CLIVE. [1754. scantier fare than the Europeans, might have the liquid in which the rice was boiled, whilst their fellow-sufferers ate the grain which they more needed. The Mahratta chief, the head of a tribe ever conspicuous for bravery, was touched with the resolution by which Arcot was defended. He never thought before, he said, that the English could fight, but now he would help them. Rajah Sahib, who commanded the besiegers, offered Clive a large bribe if he would surrender; but threatened inevitable death to the commander and his garrison, if they should compel him to take the fort by storm. Clive sent him a message of defiance. The 14th of November, the fifteenth day of the siege, was the great festival of Hossein, when all true believers are assured that they who died on this day, battling against the infidels, would be forgiven all the sins of their lives, and enter upon every joy of the Mohammedan paradise. Fired with superstition, and not less with stimulating drinks, crowds rushed to the assault of Arcot. Elephants with plates of iron on their foreheads were driven against the gates. Terrified by the musketry from the walls, they turned upon the multitudes that followed them, and trampled them down. Clive was the soul of the defence. He even took the management himself of a piece of artillery, and destroyed the assailants who were crossing the ditch on a raft. In an hour the attack was at an end. At two o'clock the next morning the besiegers were no more seen. The wonderful success of the inexperienced captain inspired a confidence in Madras that was justified by the result. Large reinforcements were sent to him; and he went forth to attack Rajah Sahib in the open field. The 1754.] NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. 205 The contest was pro victory of Arnee opened the way to more successes. longed by Rajah Sahib, who marched upon Madras in January, 1752, and committed some ravages. But Clive was at hand; and again he won a great victory. Trichinopoly was feebly defended, although the siege had now become a mere blockade. Clive was appointed to head a new expedition to raise the siege; but his senior officer, major Lawrence, having arrived from England, took the command. The two acted together without jealousy. The besiegers of Trichinopoly capitulated; and Chunda Sahib was put to death by the Mahrattas. But Dupleix continued to struggle against the powerful rivals whom he thought to have swept from the Indian territory. Clive, after less important successes, found his health fail. He returned to England, with the lady he had married, a sister of Maskelyne, the eminent astronomer. Honours awaited him; and he had acquired a large amount of prize money. His presence in India had become unnecessary; for in 1754, under the direction of English and French commissioners, hostilities had been suspended; and it was agreed that the rival companies, and the subjects of both nations, should in future abstain from interference in the affairs of the native princes. It was a vain stipulation; for it was perfectly clear that upon the renewal of a European war, hostilities, whether as principals or auxiliaries, would be renewed by the English and French in India. The man upon whom reliance could be placed in such a contingency was Clive. In 1755 he was appointed governor of Fort St. David; and he received from the king the commission of lieutenant-colonel in the British army before he sailed for India. Dupleix had been superseded by his government; and he returned to France, to be neglected, and to die in poverty. The North American colonies of Great Britain were looked upon as possessions to be defended at all cost from foreign assault. Any invasion of their territorial limits was regarded as a just cause of hostility. Any settlement near their boundaries was viewed with intense jealousy. Their inhabitants were, for the most part, of the same race as the English nation; speaking the same language; governed by laws nearly identical; imbued with the same love of liberty. The original settlers of the New England States had left their own land, to found communities where freedom and toleration might flourish in a more congenial region than that governed by the Stuarts. An American historian has shown, by minute investigations, that twenty-one thousand Englishmen had settled in these New England States before the time of the Long Parliament; that the number of subsequent settlers from Britain, or any other part of Europe, after 1640, to some time beyond the commencement of the present century, was very inconsiderable; and that from these stout-hearted Puritans are descended one-third of the present vast population of the United States. Many of the people of New Hampshire, Massachussets, Rhode Island, and Connecticutt, had thus, in their English origin, old family associations, if not existing family connexions, with the parent country. Their commercial intercourse kept up amongst all classes a mutual interest in a common prosperity. Of the Middle States, Pennsylvania + and Maryland had the same English origin, and were bound to England by Palfrey-"History of New England during the Stuart Dynasty."-Boston, 1858. 206 NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. [1754. the same ties. New York had been settled by the Dutch, and New Jersey by Danes and Swedes; but each of these states had been ceded to England before the close of the seventeenth century. Of the Southern States, Virginia was the earliest English settlement, as Georgia was the latest. The two Carolinas were settled in the middle of the seventeenth century.* These were the Colonial possessions on the North American continent which the English government had to defend and protect at the period when the peace, or rather armistice, of Aix-la-Chapelle was likely to be broken. Though all the Colonists had occasional causes of complaint, they showed no doubtful allegiance to the British crown. Nova Scotia, or Acadia as it was called by the French, who had been several times its masters, was held by Britain after 1711. In 1749, a large grant was made by Parliament for the encouragement therein of a new settlement. Four thousand emigrants, with their families, established themselves in the province; and by them was Halifax founded. This settlement was made in the belief that France was again looking to the possession of Nova Scotia; and that those of the French race who occupied considerable portions of the territory, and took the name of Neutrals, would, with the aid of the Indians, overpower the small British garrison kept at the port of Annapolis-Royal. New Brunswick, ceded at the peace of Utrecht by France, was a mere fishing station. Newfoundland was colonized by England under a charter of 1610. Numerous British settlements were made on its east coast; and the French had their settlement of Placentia on the south. By the treaty of Utrecht the island was ceded to Great Britain, but a limited right of fishery was reserved to the French. Here, therefore, was a cause of perpetual dispute. Prince Edward Island received its present name in honour of the father of queen Victoria. Before 1799 it was called St. John's Island. We may here add that, at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the West Indian possessions of Great Britain were the islands of Antigua, Barbadoes, Jamaica, Montserrat, Nevis, St. Kitt's, Tortola and Anguilla, Bahamas, Bermudas, Honduras. The East India Company possessed St. Helena at this period; and in Africa there was a settlement in Gambia, and there were some forts on the Gold Coast. The possession of Canada by France was a perpetual source of disquiet to the British colonists of New England, and of Virginia and Pennsylvania. The French Canadian settlers had penetrated to the Ohio, and had there built a fort which they named Duquesne. On the Ohio, the Virginians had also a fort called Block's Town. The settlement of Virginia, at this period, extended about two hundred miles from the sea-coast, and spread over about one-third of the state, according to its present limits. Its population was about two hundred thousand, of whom more than a fourth were slaves. The territory then unoccupied by the descendants of the colonists of the reign of James I. was the hunting-ground of Indians; and the Virginians upon the Ohio were traders in skins. The French, also, were seeking a participation in that commerce which quickly perishes, as the extension of civilization creates more profitable industries. The old families of Virginia were engaged in fär more lucrative and less adventurous occupations than in exchanges with the *Florida was a Spanish possession till 1763. Of the Western States, Louisiana and Missouri were French. The other Western States, now so populous, were deserts, where one Indian tribe would occupy a hundred square miles. 207 1754.] NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES-CONTESTS ON THE OHIO. Indians. They were cultivating tobacco upon every estate. Their tobacco fields were the Potosi of the first settlers of North America. Tobacco was their sole article of export. It brought them all the comforts and luxuries which England and Scotland could supply. It was the general measure of value, and the principal currency. Public officers, ministers of the church, had their salaries paid at so many annual pounds of tobacco. In 1758 the colony exported seventy thousand hogsheads of the precious weed, equivalent to seventy millions of pounds. The price was ten times higher than the present rate. Virginia was thriving. Her planters lived luxuriously on their estates, surrounded by their slaves, and affecting the aristocratic habits of grand old English families, from which many of them claimed to have sprung. Hospitable they were to profusion.* In such a state of society was George Washington born; who, in 1754, then a young man of twenty-two, was fighting for the integrity of the colonial territory against the aggressions of the French. At the age of nineteen, he became an adjutant-general, having the rank of major, and taking the direction of one of the military districts into which the province of Virginia was divided, for the purpose of resisting the encroachments of the French and the depredations of the Indians. These divisions were reduced to four, in 1752, and the young major had the command of the northern division. In the capacity of commissioner in 1753, he went into the territory occupied by the French, to negociate with their commander. He had no success in his diplomacy; but he brought back with him a plan of the fort which the French had constructed in the neighbourhood of Lake Erie. He had been employed, when at the age of sixteen, as a public surveyor, and in the wild district of the Alleghanies had acquired that practical mode of viewing large tracts of country which was of essential importance to him in his future great career. In 1754, under the command of an English officer, colonel Fry, he was sent to occupy the British posts of the Ohio, in the presence of a French force. He defeated a detachment of the enemy, but was finally compelled to capitulate to superior numbers, who surrounded his entrenched fort. He was allowed to retreat with his men, with what are termed military honours. The feuds of the two nations were the subject of official discussions in Paris; but it was clear that this sort of halfwarfare in America could not long endure. In January, 1755, although no formal declarations of hostilities had taken place, general Braddock, with a body of English troops, was sent to the succour of the colonists in Virginia. His campaign was a most unfortunate one. Braddock was a commander of the old routine cast, who fancied that well-dressed and well-equipped soldiers, who could go through all the manoeuvres of the Prussian drill, were sure to be victorious over any number of irregular troops. He marched against the French fort on the Ohio, taking Washington with him, although he despised the American militia and their What the Highlanders were to Cope and Hawley, the Indians were to Braddock. In a valley between two woods, within ten miles of Fort Duquesne utterly neglecting all precautions against surprise-the English general fell into an ambuscade of Indians. A few French only encountered him; but the unerring marksmen of the woods picked off his officers; and * See Tucker's "Life of Jefferson," chapter i. |