of "the Daring in War" animated other British officers in different parts of India: and Calliaud, Forde, Coote, and men like them, soon gained advantages on the side of Madras almost equal to those obtained by Clive himself in Bengal.*

* While passing these sheets through the press, we have received a letter from a young officer of the 1st European Bengal Fusiliers, who, at the time of writing, was descending the river to Calcutta, there to embark for the war in Burmah. He says: "In the rainy season, the steamers do not go round through the Sunderbunds to Calcutta, but make a much shorter cut through the river which they now call the Bogherette river, and which leads from the Ganges into the Hooghly. This Bogherette is rather a pretty little stream; but it is navigable only in the rainy season. Moorshedabad is on the left bank of this stream. We passed the well-known city at about 10 o'clock in the morning; and, in the afternoon, we passed the famous field of Plassey. Lord Clive, and all the stirring scenes which were enacted there, came forcibly to my memory as we glided by in our steamer. They say that there is one tree left of the memorable mango grove in which brave Clive encamped the evening before the celebrated battle."

BEDARRA.

A.D. 1759. November 26.

THE greatness of a battle does not always depend on the numbers engaged in it. Very little battles have been fought by immense armies, and very great ones-great in their circumstances and in the importance of the results—have been fought and won by very small armies. Bedarra saved our rising empire in the East from convulsion, if not from ruin and death

Meer Jaffier, whom Clive had made Nabob after his victory at Plassey, proved an unsteady and faithless ally or dependent, and was hurried by the passions of his son Meeran into plots and combinations for driving the English out of Bengal. He invited the Dutch to send a strong armament from Batavia and their other possessions in the Indian Archipelago. There was at the moment no war in Europe between Holland and England, yet the authorities at Batavia eagerly entered into the project, and agreed to send troops up the Hooghly to the Dutch factory and fort of Chinsura, on the opposite side of the river, but only a few miles above Calcutta. There were traitors in the camp and council of the great traitors Meer Jaffier and Meeran, and Clive obtained some intelligence of their intentions.

Early in the month of August a Dutch ship arrived in the Hooghly with European troops on board. The Dutch solemnly protested that the ship which had come into the lower part of the river, had been driven in by stress of weather, and that she and the troops on board would depart in peace as soon as they had obtained water and provisions. The vessel, however, continued to lie where she was, and attempts were made to send soldiers up to Chinsura by conceal

ing them in the bottom of native boats; but Clive issued his mandate that every Dutch and native boat should be stopped and searched. The gentlemen at Chinsura remonstrated and protested against these proceedings on the part of a friendly power; but Clive continued to stop their soldiers, and to send them back to their ship, telling the gentlemen of the factory that he was in Bengal in a double capacity: that as an English officer, while England was engaged in a war with France, he was justified by the laws of nations in searching all vessels whatever, not knowing but that they might introduce French troops into the country; and that, as an auxiliary to the Great Mogul, he was under the necessity, by solemn treaty, to oppose the introduction of any European or foreign troops whatsoever into Bengal. The Dutch, perhaps proud of their great writers on that subject, cited the laws of nations on their own side, and kept pressing their warlike preparations all the time; and the mind that can condemn Clive's conduct in this particular, and call it an attacking" without provocation the ships and troops of a nation in friendship with this country," must previously have lost its perception in the muddiest mazes of metaphysics. If Clive had seen with such organs all would have been lost.

Early in October, Meer Jaffier arrived in person at Calcutta, as if merely intending to honour Clive with a visit. A day or two after advices came from below of the arrival of six more Dutch ships of a large size, and crammed with troops, partly Europeans and partly Malays, from Batavia and other Dutch settlements in the islands. "Now," says Clive, or a pen that wrote for him, "the Dutch mask fell off, and the Nabob (conscious of his having given his assent to their coming, and at the same time of our attachment and his own unfaithful dealings with us) was greatly confused and disconcerted. He, however, seemed to make light of it; and told the governor (Clive) he was going to reside three or four days at his fort of Hooghly, where he would chastise the insolence of the Dutch, and drive them soon out of the river again. On the 19th of October he left Calcutta; and in place of his going to his fort at Hooghly, he took up his residence at Čojah Wazeed's garden, about half-way between that and Chinsura; a plain indication that he had no apprehensions from the Dutch, whom he received there in the most gracious

manner he could, more like friends and allies than as enemies to him and his country."

In three or four days, Clive received a letter from the Nabob, informing him that he had thought proper to grant some indulgence to the Dutch in their trade, and that the Dutch, on their part, had engaged to leave the river with their ships and troops as soon as the season would permit. But this reference to the seasons was unfortunate, inasmuch as, at the time of his writing, the season permitted their departure with the greatest safety. Clive, from the tenor of the letter, and the whole course of the Nabob's conduct, felt assured that the Dutch had no intention to quit the river, and that Meer Jaffier had given his permission to them to bring up their troops if they could. This Clive was determined they should not do; and the council at Calcutta heartily agreed with him. The Nabob had not ventured to withdraw the orders he had given to the English to oppose the Dutch. A very few days later, intelligence was received that the Dutch armament was actually moving up the river towards Calcutta, and that the Dutch agents were enlisting troops of every denomination at Chinsura, Cossimbuzar, and even as far up the country as Patna, and this plainly with the connivance of Meer Jaffier, and the more open assistance of his son Meeran. Clive saw that the junction of the armament from below, and the troops from above, with the force already collected within the walls of Chinsura, would be followed by the declaration of the Nabob in favour of the Dutch, and an immediate movement upon the English settlements. His force in Europeans was, at the moment, actually inferior in number to that of the Dutch on board the seven ships alone, without counting those in garrison at Chinsura; for the force from Batavia, now accurately reported, consisted of 700 Europeans and 800 Malays-the latter a far braver race of men than the natives of Bengal. There was no time to be lost-this was no season for indulging in subtleties and nice distinctions, or for turning over the pages of Grotius and Puffendorf-and Clive resolved to proceed at once against the Dutch, as if they were open instead of secret enemies. At the critical moment, some of the council were startled by

*Account from a MS. entitled "A Narrative of the Disputes of the Dutch in Bengal," found by Sir John Malcolm among Clive's papers.

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the notion of infringing the treaties of peace existing between the United Provinces and Great Britain, and of commencing a war on their own responsibility. But Clive said that "a public man may sometimes be called upon to act with a halter round his neck." Clive's private interests must have been in conflict with his public duty, for he had recently remitted a great part of his fortune to Europe through the Dutch East India Company, who might have kept the money in the banks of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, both in revenge and in compensation. These considerations might have induced another man to avoid extremities, but they appear to have had no weight whatever with "the Daring in War," who was equally daring in policy. "Notwithstanding all that had passed," says the paper we have already quoted from, on receipt of the last Dutch remonstrance, we found our sentiments a good deal embarrassed, doubting whether we should stand justified to our country and employers in commencing hostilities against an ally of England, supposing they should persist in passing the batteries below with their ships and troops. In this situation we anxiously wished the next hour would bring us news of a declaration of war with Holland; which we had indeed some reason to expect by our last advices from England. Another strong reason which determined us to oppose them, and on which subject we had been guarded against by the Court of Directors, was, that in all likelihood the Dutch would first commence hostilities against us in India. Thus circumstanced, the Dutch themselves removed all our difficulties by beginning hostilities below, attacking with shot and seizing several of our vessels, grainboats, &c.; tearing down our colours; disembarking our guns, military stores, &c., from our vessels to their own ships, making prisoners of the captains, officers, &c. They also began hostilities on shore in our settlements, where they tore down our colours, and burned the houses and effects of the Company's tenants in those parts."

It was not known whether the Dutch would come up the river and pass the English batteries with their ships and troops on board, or whether they would land the troops below the batteries, and march them thence by land; but Clive made the necessary dispositions against both these plans of operation, as far as comported with the smallness of his dis