Introduction
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.
CLIVE had received secret intelligence of the design, had made his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue, had thrown himself on his bed.* He was awakened by the alarm, and was instantly at his post. The enemy advanced, driving before them elephants whose foreheads were armed with iron plates. It was expected that the gates would yield to the shock of these living battering rams. But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket-balls than they turned round, and rushed furiously away, trampling on the multitude that had urged them forward.
A raft was launched on the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving that his gunners at that post did not understand their business, took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared the raft in a few minutes. Where the moat was dry, the assailants mounted with great boldness; but they were received with a fire so heavy, and so well directed, that it soon quelled the courage even of fanaticism and of intoxication.*
This was on November 13th, 1751. The siege had begun on September 23rd. Clive was just twenty-five at the time, and had gone out to India as a lowly clerk with a reputation for indiscipline. See Clive of India. For a map of India, see A map of British India in 1760, with the Nizam’s Dominion, just west of Madras, in green.
Macaulay states that Rajah’s men had taken narcotics to embolden them to fight. As for the charge of fanaticism, these events fell out around the time of the commemoration called Ashura, on the 10th day of Muharram, which remembers the death of Husayn ibn Ali, Mohammad’s grandson. Muharram is second only to Ramadan in the Islamic year, and Ashura is observed with particularly poignant devotion.
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