But on this occasion, due not to good planning so much as chance, there was another option.

From The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple.  Colonial history is usually massively oversimplified and miscommunicated; usually for malevolent ideological purposes but realistically, in part, because it is so complex.  One example is the caricature so often advanced characterizing European colonial powers as having an inordinately decisive advantage in military technology.  

In India, as an example, it was far more complex than simple military technology.  Military culture and institutional traditions were often even more critical than the technologies used.  Some of that complexity is captured in the account of the East India Company recapture of Calcutta after its loss to Siraj ud-Daulah, the last Nawab of Bengal.

News of the fall of Kasimbazar, and a first request for military assistance, reached Madras on 14 July. It was a full month later, on 16 August, that the news of Siraj ud-Daula’s successful attack on Fort William finally arrived. In normal circumstances, Madras would probably have sent a delegation to Murshidabad, negotiations would have taken place, apologies and assurances would have been issued, an indemnity would have been paid and trading would have carried on as before, to the benefit of both sides. But on this occasion, due not to good planning so much as chance, there was another option.

For, as fate would have it, Robert Clive and his three regiments of Royal Artillery had just arrived on the Coromandel Coast at Fort St David, south of Madras, aboard Admiral Watson’s flotilla of fully armed and battle-ready men-of-war. The force was intended to take on the French, not the Nawab of Bengal, and in the discussions that followed several members of Madras Council argued that the fleet should stay in the Coromandel and continue to guard against the French flotilla believed sent from Port Lorient. This was expected any day, along with news of the outbreak of war, and a strong case was made by several Council members that, having lost one major trading station, it would be an act of extreme carelessness on the part of the Company to risk losing a second.

Moreover, Admiral Watson, as a loyal servant of the Crown, initially saw his role to defend British national interests against the French, not to defend the Company’s economic interests from local potentates. But Clive was not going to miss his big chance, especially as he had just lost substantial sums invested both directly in Bengal and indirectly in Company stock. He forcefully, and ultimately successfully, argued for a more aggressive course of action, eventually winning over the other Council members, and persuading Watson to come with him, along with all four of his battleships and a frigate. Watson’s one insistence was to wait until the onset of the monsoon in early October, after which the French were less likely to risk sailing into open waters, and he would have several months’ grace in which to re-establish British interests in Bengal without leaving the Coromandel criminally undefended.

Within a few weeks, a triumphant Clive was able to write to his father: ‘This expedition, if attended by success, may enable me to do great things. It is by far the grandest of my undertakings.  I go with great forces and great authority.’ His masters in Leadenhall Street he addressed in a rather more measured and less egotistical manner: ‘Honourable Gentlemen,’ he wrote. ‘From many hands you will hear of the capture of Calcutta by the Moors, and the chains of misfortunes which have happened to the Company in particular and to the nation in general.’

Every breast seems filled with grief, horror and resentment … Upon this melancholy occasion, the Governour and Council thought proper to summon me to this place. As soon as an expedition was resolved upon, I offered my services which at last was accepted, and I am on the point of embarking on board His Majesty’s squadron with a fine body of Europeans, full of spirit and resentment for the insults “and barbarities inflicted on so many British subjects. I flatter myself that this expedition will not end with the retaking of Calcutta only, and that the Company’s estate in these parts will be settled in a better and more lasting condition than ever.

The Select Committee at Madras also shared Clive’s ambitions: ‘The mere retaking of Calcutta should, we think, be by no means the end of the undertaking,’ they wrote to the directors in London in early October. ‘Not only should [the EIC’s Bengal] settlements and factories be restored, but all their privileges established in full, and ample reparation made for the loss they have lately sustained; otherwise we are of the opinion it would have been better that nothing had been attempted, than to have added the heavy charge of this armament to their former loss, without securing their colonies and trade from future insults and exactions.’

Two months were filled with detailed planning, refitting ships, loading cannon and preparing stores. The relief force consisting of 785 European troops, 940 sepoys and 300 marines, a greater naval and military force than had ever before been gathered together by the British in India, eventually set sail on 13 October. But the same strong monsoon winds that Watson knew would prevent the French from venturing out of port came close to sinking the entire expedition. As it was, the fleet was immediately scattered. Some ships were blown as far south as Sri Lanka, and even Watson’s flagship, the Kent, took six weeks to reach the point where Clive was able to see the waters of the Bay of Bengal take on the distinctive colour of Ganges silt.

It was not until 9 December that the first ships of the task force, taking advantage of low tides, turned into the Hughli. By this stage half of Clive’s soldiers had already succumbed to various diseases, including an outbreak of scurvy. Six days later, the Kent dropped anchor at Fulta, where the survivors of the Calcutta debacle had taken shelter on the edge of a malarial swamp, and where just under half of the ragged refugees had already died of fever and were now buried in “Two more of Watson’s ships turned up soon after; while waiting for the remaining two, the Marlborough and Cumberland, which carried the bulk of the expedition’s artillery and troops, Clive wrote to Raja Manikchand, the new Fort Keeper of Alinagar-Calcutta. He announced that he had come with a force of unprecedented size – ‘a larger military force than has ever appeared in Bengal’ and that ‘we are come to demand satisfaction’. But Clive’s threats had little effect. As Ghulam Hussain Khan commented, ‘the British were then known in Bengal only as merchants’, and no one at court ‘had any idea of the abilities of that nation in war, nor any idea of their many resources in a day of reverse’.

With no reply forthcoming, and disease weakening his ranks by the day, on 27 December Clive’s expedition cast anchor and sailed slowly upriver, still two ships short. They glided silently past coconut groves and through tangled mangrove swamps thick with lotus leaves and full of huge bats and tigers. As they approached the first serious obstacle, the Fort of Budge Budge, whose heavy guns commanded a bend in the river, they disembarked the sepoys, who had a tough march of sixteen hours, wading sometimes breast-high through water, at other times stumbling through jungle or marshy paddy.

Towards sunset, as they drew near the Fort, Raja Manikchand sprung an ambush, appearing suddenly out of the jungle, attacking from an unexpected direction and achieving complete surprise. The confused skirmish lasted an hour, with high casualties on both sides. Clive was rattled, and was on the verge of ordering a retreat. But the rapid file firing of the army’s new Brown Bess muskets, supported by field artillery, worked its dark magic. As Clive’s nephew Edward Maskelyne recorded, the Mughals ‘were much alarmed at the smartness of our fire, and startled at the appearance of the cannon which they thought it impossible for us to have transported over the ground we had marched the preceding night. Their loss is computed at 200 killed and wounded, 4 Jemidars and 1 elephant killed, and their commander [Raja Manikchand] shot thro the turban.’

When Manikchand retired, Watson’s ships were free to unleash broadsides on the Fort, which quickly silenced the Mughal guns. As the troops were being unloaded to begin the ground attack, ‘one Strahan, a common sailor, belonging to the Kent’, having drunk too much rum, staggered up the bank, waded over the moat and ‘took into his head to scale a breach that had been made by the cannon of the ships’. Here he was confronted by the garrison, ‘at whom he flourished his cutlass, and fired his pistol. Then having given out three loud huzzas, he cried out, “The place is mine.”’ His comrades rushed to save him and the garrison quickly melted into the night.

The fleet then proceeded further up the river, and two more of Siraj’s forts were abandoned without a fight.

As dawn broke on 2 January 1757, the squadron came within sight of Fort William. The marines were landed and a single broadside unleashed on the defences. There was a brief exchange of fire, leaving nine men dead, before Manikchand again withdrew: ‘The senseless governor of the place,’ wrote Ghulam Hussain Khan, ‘intimidated by so much boldness, and not finding in himself courage enough to stand an engagement, thought it prudent to decline a nearer approach, and he fled with all his might. The English general [Clive], seeing the enemy disappearing, took possession of the factory and the fort, raised everywhere his victorious standards, and sent the refugee gentlemen, everyone to his ancient abode, and everyone to his own home.

Many victories or successes are contingent upon an improbable number of unplanned fortuitous outcomes.