Delhi affairs: flight of the Prince Imperial.
Suddenly, a new vista opened out to Clive through the territory of Oudh, on the north-west, to the remote capital of the Great Mogul at Delhi. The Great Mogul was a mere pageant in the hands of the Vizier, who exercised what remained of the imperial authority. The Prince Imperial, the son and heir of the Great Mogul, was afraid of being murdered by the Vizier, and fled away into Oudh, and threw himself on the protection of the Nawab.
Invasion of the Nawab of Oudh.
The Nawab of Oudh had long desired to get possession of the Bengal provinces, and thought to secure them by making the Prince Imperial a cat's paw. He proclaimed that the Prince Imperial had been invested by his father with the government of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. He then sent the Prince forward with a large force to enforce the proclamation, whilst he himself remained behind in Oudh and awaited events.[7] To make matters worse, the Hindu officials in the Bengal provinces, who had been dispossessed, or were expecting to be dispossessed, were preparing to join the invaders.
Clive's difficulty.
Mir Jafir was in a panic of fear at the appearance of the Prince Imperial, and proposed to pay him a sum of money to go away. Clive would not listen to the suggestion. He ignored the Prince Imperial and the Great Mogul, and soon routed the invading army. The Prince Imperial then became a suppliant to the British, and implored Clive for help; but Clive had been requested by the Vizier at Delhi to arrest the fugitive, and would not commit himself. He, however, sent a bag of 500 mohurs, about 800l. sterling, to relieve the immediate necessities of the Prince Imperial, and the money was gladly received by the impoverished fugitive.
Wanted, a British army.
Meanwhile, Clive was at his wits' end for money. The Bengal provinces could be held against any enemy in India by a standing army of Europeans and sepoys. Such an army could be maintained for half a million sterling per annum, and the public revenue amounted to three or four millions; but the Nawab refused to disband his own rabble soldiery, and pretended that he could not pay the Europeans.
Solution.
At this crisis Clive received a secret and startling proposal from the Vizier at Delhi, that he should accept the post of Dewan to the Great Mogul for Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. In the palmy days of the Mogul empire, every province was governed by two officials, the Nawab and the Dewan. The Nawab kept the peace and administered justice; the Dewan kept the public purse, received the revenues, paid all salaries, and sent the surplus as tribute to the Great Mogul. The later Nawabs had become their own Dewans, and spent the revenue as they pleased, without sending any tribute to the Great Mogul. Had Clive closed with the offer, it would have involved a mortal struggle with Mir Jafir, for it would have deprived the Nawab of all power over the public purse. But it would have removed every financial difficulty, as the Vizier would have been satisfied with a yearly tribute of half a million sterling, or even less, whilst Clive would have had the whole remaining surplus at his own disposal.
Clive's offer to Pitt, 1759.
Clive would not accept the post of Dewan, either for himself or for the East India Company. But he wrote privately to the British premier, the first William Pitt, and proposed that the British Crown should act as Dewan to the Great Mogul. Under such an arrangement, the Crown might have taken over the Bengal revenues, sent half, or a quarter of a million a year to Delhi, spent another half million on a standing army, and devoted another half million to the salaries of the Nawab and his officials; and then might have secured a surplus of two millions a year towards the payment of the national debt. William Pitt, however, was already alarmed at the growing power of the Crown, and he declined taking over the proposed income lest it should endanger the liberties of the British nation.
Turmoils in the north-west.
In 1760 Colonel Clive returned to England, and in 1761 the war with France was over. India might now have been at peace, but the north-west was in a turmoil. The Great Mogul was murdered by his Vizier. The Afghans had slaughtered 200,000 Mahrattas on the fatal field of Paniput, and established their ascendency at Delhi. The fugitive Prince Imperial was proclaimed Padishah, or Emperor, by the Nawab of Oudh, who assumed the title of Nawab Vizier; and the Padishah and his Nawab Vizier invaded Behar and threatened Patna.
Change of Nawabs.
§3. The British at Calcutta were now in sore peril, and there was no Clive to guide them. They deposed Mir Jafir on their own authority, and set up his son-in-law, Mir Kasim, as Nawab of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. The new Nawab was unquestionably a better man than the deposed Mir Jafir; but the transfer of a throne by a Governor and Council of British merchants was somewhat startling. There was, however, no one to resist the Calcutta traders, and Mir Jafir yielded to his kismet, retired from his post as Nawab, and removed to Calcutta, as a safer residence than Murshedabad.
Mastery of the British.
Mir Kasim agreed to all the British demands. He was bound over to pay half a million sterling for the maintenance of the British army; but he averted money disputes with the Company's servants by ceding three districts in the immediate neighbourhood of Calcutta, which yielded the same amount of revenue, and the British could collect the money for themselves. Above all, the new Nawab agreed, as Mir Jafir had done before him, to free the Company's servants from the payment of all inland transit duties within the Bengal provinces.
Dealings with the Padishahs.
Mir Kasim, accompanied by a British force, took the field against the young Padishah and the Nawab Vizier. The invaders were soon defeated; the Nawab Vizier fled back to Oudh, but the young Padishah remained at Patna. Accordingly, the British determined to get his sanction to their proceedings, and thus to justify their appointment of a new Nawab in the eyes of the people of India and the European nations trading with Bengal. He was without territory or revenue. His throne and capital at Delhi were in the hands of the Afghans. Yet he had been proclaimed Padishah in India, and was legally the Great Mogul. Accordingly, the British determined to recognize his sovereignty, and arrange for the appointment of Mir Kasim as Nawab of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, under his imperial seal and commission.
British set up a Great Mogul.
It was somewhat audacious for a handful of British traders to set up a Great Mogul for themselves as lord paramount of India. It was still more audacious to carry out the ceremony of installation in a building sacred to silk and saltpetre. Nevertheless, the work was done. The Company's factory at Patna was converted into a Mogul palace; the centre room into a hall of audience; the dining-tables into an imperial throne. The Padishah was carried in procession to the factory, and enthroned on the dining-tables as the Great Mogul. Mir Kasim paid homage to the sovereign, and was invested with the post of Nawab of the Bengal provinces. In return, the Nawab was bound over to pay a yearly tribute to the Great Mogul of a quarter of a million sterling.
Enthronement at Patna.
The installation of the Great Mogul, and the formal appointment of the Nawab of Bengal, were established facts, but no party was satisfied. The Padishah was disgusted, because the British would not conduct him to Delhi and place him on the throne of Aurangzeb. The Nawab was disgusted at paying a heavy tribute when the Padishah might have been forced by a little pressure to sell the appointment for a bag of rupees. He was apparently bent on breaking off all relations with the British, and there was no objection to his doing so. He moved his court from Murshedabad, which was only a hundred miles from Calcutta, to Monghyr, which was more than three hundred miles. Here he formed an army of picked men, and employed a European deserter, known as Sombre or Sumru, to drill the troops in British fashion, and began to manufacture muskets and cast guns.
No one satisfied.
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