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Home Foreign Affairs and the Empire, 1714-1763 Empire, 1714-1763; Part 7 |
Empire, 1714-1763; Part 7In the constant rivalries between these various States lay the opportunity for European interference. And in 1741 a Frenchman, by name Dupleix, of exceptional ability and ambition, was appointed Governor of Pondicherry. He determined to take advantage, in the south, of this state of affairs. During the War of the Austrian Succession he devoted his energies to the capture of Madras, only to be obliged to give it back at the peace. But there followed disputed successions at Hyderabad and in the Carnatic. Dupleix and the British each supported a rival pair of candidates. One of the French candidates triumphed at Hyderabad: the other secured the whole Carnatic save Trichinopoly, and even that place was besieged and seemed likely to fall.It was at this critical moment in 1751 that the position was saved by Robert Clive. The son of a small Shropshire squire, he had-after a somewhat turbulent boyhood - gone to India to act as a clerk in the East India Company (He was, even in early life, of a somewhat pugnacious disposition, and, at the age of six, was described as " out of measure addicted to fighting ", whilst, later on, the shopkeepers of Market Drayton, so tradition says, used to pay "a small tribute of apples and halfpence" to Clive and a band of his schoolfellows in order to preserve their windows from molestation. Clive, when he reached India, was for some time profoundly unhappy, and tried lo commit suicide, but the pistol did not fire). When Dupleix attacked Madras, he had volunteered for service, and both then and subsequently made his mark as a soldier. He now proposed, as a diversion, an attack upon Arcot, the capital. His proposal was accepted, and with a small force he succeeded in capturing it. This bold action had the effect he desired, and the siege of Trichinopoly was raised. But this was by no means all. He had now to defend Arcot until relief came. With two hundred and thirty men he held on for fifty days, though he had to defend two breaches, the one of fifty and the other of ninety feet, against an army of ten thousand men. From the successful defence of Arcot, as Macaulay says, dates the renown of the British arms in the East. We had shown that we were not mere pedlars but fighters as well. Further successes led to the triumph of the British candidate in the Carnatic, and in 1754 Dupleix was recalled. Yet, as in Canada, the struggle was not over; and the Seven Years’ War was to prove as important for its effects in India as for those in Canada. The Seven Years’ War did not begin formally till 1756. But, as we have seen, hostilities between Great Britain and France had occurred in America and in India long before the war broke out in Europe. The capture and defence of Arcot by Clive occurred in 1751, the English attacks on Fort Duquesne began in 1754, whilst in 1755 hostilities spread to the sea, on which the British captured two French men-of-war carrying soldiers to Canada. Finally, in the early months of 1756 the French attacked Minorca; and with this last event war was regularly declared between the two. countries. |
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