The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Twenty-five-year-old Robert Clive’s extraordinary daring helped to prevent India falling into the hands of the French King.
In 1751, France, Holland and Britain were all vying for the friendship of India’s ruling princes. Chunda Sahib, Nawab of Arcot, backed by the French, had Britain’s ally Mohammed Ali pinned down in Trichinopoly; so Robert Clive persuaded his superiors to let him capture Arcot itself. Immediately, Chunda’s son Rajah brought ten thousand men to relieve it.
Smarting for his outraged ‘rights’, Cain lost his reason — but not God’s pity and love.
Abel and his brother Cain were the sons of Adam and Eve. Theirs is a universal tale of what long-nursed envy and a sense of outraged ‘rights’ can lead us to do; but it is also an allegory of the deteriorating relationship between Judah and the ten tribes of northern Israel in the 8th century BC.