Introduction
By the Spring of 1752, the power of the French in India was waning, thanks to young Robert Clive of the East India Company’s militia. Now he was utterly exhausted, and ready for home; but he reckoned he had strength and time enough to capture a couple more forts and still marry Margaret Maskelyne in Madras before his ship sailed.
THE Forts of Covelong and Chingleput were occupied by French garrisons.* It was determined to send a force against them. But the only force available for this purpose was of such a description, that no officer but Clive would risk his reputation by commanding it. It consisted of five hundred newly-levied sepoys* and two hundred recruits who had just landed from England, and who were the worst and lowest wretches that the Company’s crimps could pick up in the flash-houses in London.*
Clive, ill and exhausted as he was, undertook to make an army of this undisciplined rabble, and marched with them to Covelong. A shot from the fort killed one of these extraordinary soldiers; on which all the rest faced about and ran away, and it was with the greatest difficulty that Clive rallied them. On another occasion the noise of a gun terrified the sentinels so much that one of them was found, some hours later, at the bottom of a well.
Covelong in Tamil Nadu, India, some 20 miles down the coast from Madras (Chennai) on the eastern side of India, is also known as Kovalam (not to be confused with the one in Kerala) and is the location of Fisherman’s Cove, a luxury beach resort; Chingleput is Chengalpattu, an important railway and manufacturing town a little further inland.
A sepoy was an Indian soldier in service with the East India Company”s militia. As indicated here, many were superior to their British comrades.
A flash-house is a now archaic term for a brothel. A ‘crimp’ is someone who rounds up men for compulsory service in the military, a member of a press-gang. See also Press Pass.
If you like what I’m doing here on Clay Lane, from time to time you could buy me a coffee.
Buy Me a Coffee is a crowdfunding website, used by over a million people. It is designed to help content creators like me make a living from their work. ‘Buy Me a Coffee’ prides itself on its security, and there is no need to register.
