INDIA.] RISE OF CALCUTTA. 291 Nor was Bengal neglected. Considering the beauty and richness of that province, a proverb was already current among the Europeans, that there are a hundred gates for entering and not one for leaving it.* The Dutch, the Portuguese, and the English had established their factories at or near the town of Hooghly on one of the branches-also called Hooghly-of the Ganges. But during the reign of James the Second the imprudence of some of the Company's servants, and the seizure of a Mogul junk, had highly incensed the native Powers.. The English found it necessary to leave Hooghly, and drop twenty-five miles down the river, to the village of Chuttanuttee. Some petty hostilities ensued, not only in Bengal but along the coasts of India; several small factories of the Company were taken and plundered, nor did they speed well in their endeavours either for defence or reprisal. It was about this period that their settlement at Surat was finally transferred to Bombay. So much irritated was Aurungzebe at the reports of these hostilities, that he issued orders for the total expulsion of the Company's servants from his dominions, but he was appeased by the humble apologies of the English traders, and the earnest intercession of the Hindoo, to whom this commerce was a source of profit. The English might even have resumed their factory at Hooghly, but preferred their new station at Chuttanuttee, and in 1698 obtained from the Mogul, on payment of an annual rent, a grant of the land on which it stood. Then, without delay, they began to construct for its defence a citadel, named Fort William, under whose shelter there grew by degrees from a mean village the great town of Calcutta, -the capital of modern India. Perhaps no other city, excepting its contemporary, Petersburg, has ever in a century and a half from its origin attained so high a pitch of splendour and importance.† A letter is now before me which I once received from a Governor General of India, accus Anecdotes Orientales, vol. ii. p. 342. ed. 1773. It is remarkable how much these two cities resemble each other. Bishop Heber writes from Calcutta: "The whole is so like some parts of Petersburg that it is hardly possibly for me to fancy myself any where else." Journal, October 11. 1824. 66 66 tomed to all the magnificence of European Courts, but describing with eloquent warmth his admiration and astonishment at the first view of Calcutta," the City of "Palaces," as he declares it most truly termed. At nearly the same period another station, Tegnapatam, a town on the coast of Coromandel, to the south of Madras, was obtained by purchase. It was surnamed Fort St. David, was strengthened with walls and bulwarks, and was made subordinate to Madras for its government. Thus then before the accession of the House of Hanover these three main stations,-Fort William, Fort St. George, and Bombay, had been erected into Presidencies, or central posts of Government; not, however, as at present, subject to one supreme authority, but each independent of the rest. Each was governed by a President and a Council of nine or twelve members, appointed by the Court of Directors in England. Each was surrounded with fortifications, and guarded by a small force, partly European and partly native, in the service of the Company. The Europeans were either recruits enlisted in England or strollers and deserters from other services in India. Among these the descendants of the old settlers, especially the Portuguese, were called Topasses,—from the TOPE or hat which they wore instead of turban. The natives, as yet ill-armed and ill-trained, were known by the name of Sepoys,—a corruption from the Indian word SIPAHI, a soldier. But the territory of the English scarcely extended out of sight of their towns, nor had their military preparations any other object than the unmolested enjoyment of their trade. Far from aiming at conquest and aggrandisement, they had often to tremble for their homes. So lately as 1742 the "Mahratta Ditch" was dug round a part of Calcutta, to protect the city from an inroad of the fierce race of Sivajee. Even before the commencement of the eighteenth century it might be said that all rivalry had ceased in India between the Company's servants and the Dutch or Portuguese. The latter, besides their treaties of close alliance with England, had utterly declined from their ancient greatness and renown. The Dutch directed by far their principal attention to their possessions in Java INDIA.] LA BOURDONNAIS AND DUPLEIX. 293 and the adjoining islands. But another still more formidable power had already struck root on the Indian soil.— The French under Louis the Fourteenth had established an East India Company, in emulation of our own; like us, they had obtained a settlement on the Hooghly river; at Chandernagore, above Calcutta; like us, they had built a fort on the coast of the Carnatic, about eighty miles south of Madras, which they called Pondicherry. In Malabar and Candeish they had no settlement to vie with Bombay; but, on the other hand, they had colonised two fertile islands in the Indian Ocean ;-the one formerly a Dutch possession, and called Mauritius, from Prince Maurice of Orange; the second, discovered by the Portuguese, with the appellation of Mascarenhas, from one of their Indian Viceroys.* The first now received the name of Isle de France, and the second of Isle de Bourbon, and both, under the assiduous care of their new masters, rapidly grew in wealth and population. On the whole, the settlements of the French on the Indian coasts and seas were governed by two Presidencies, the one at Isle de France, the other at Pondicherry. It so chanced, that at the breaking out of the war between France and England in 1744 both the French Presidencies were ruled by men of superior genius. Mahé de La Bourdonnais commanded at Isle de France; a man of Breton blood, full of the generous ardour, of the resolute firmness, which have ever marked that noble race. Since his tenth year he had served in the Navy on various voyages from the Baltic to the Indian seas, and he had acquired consummate skill, not only in the direction and pilotage but in the building and equipment of a fleet. Nor was he less skilled in the cares of civil administration. It is to him that the Mauritius owes the first dawn of its present prosperity. In the words of an eye-witness: "Whatever I have seen in that island most usefully "devised or most ably executed was the work of La *This was, I conceive, Don Pedro de Mascarenhas, the eighth Viceroy. Camoens has addressed to him some spirited lines (Lusiad, canto x. stanzas 55-57.), which, however, I can only admire through a translation, Bourdonnais.” "* Ever zealous for his country's welfare, he was yet incapable of pursuing it by any other means than those of honour and good faith. Dupleix was the son of a Farmer General, and the heir of a considerable fortune. From early youth he had been employed by the French East India Company, and had gradually risen to the government of Pondicherry and of all the subordinate factories on the continent of Hindostan. During his whole career he had zealously studied the interests of the Company, without neglecting his own, and the abilities which he had displayed were great and various. The calculations of commerce were not more habitual or more easy to him than the armaments of war or the wiles of diplomacy. With the idea of Indian sovereignty ever active in his mind, he had plunged headlong into all the tangled and obscure intrigues of the native Powers. Above all he caballed with the native NABOB or deputed Prince of Arcot, or, as sometimes called, of the Carnatic, (Arcot being the capital, and Carnatic the country,) and with his superior the Soubahdar or Viceroy of the Deccan, more frequently termed the NIZAM. Beguiled by a childish vanity, he was eager to assume for himself, as they did, the pompous titles of NABOB and BAHAUDER, which, as he pretended, had been conferred upon him by the Court of Delhi. It would almost seem, moreover, as if in this intercourse or this imitation he had derived from the neighbouring Princes something of their usual duplicity and falsehood, their jealousy and their revenge. His breach of faith on several occasions with his enemies is even less to be condemned than his perfidy to some of his own countrymen and colleagues. But fortunate was it perhaps for the supremacy of England in the East, that two such great commanders as Dupleix and La Bourdonnais should by the fault of the first have become estranged from any effective combination, and have turned their separate energies against each other. On the declaration of war in 1744 an English squadron * Bernardin de St. Pierre (Préambule à Paul et Virginie). He adds, bitterly: "Oh vous qui vous occupez du bonheur des hommes "n'en attendez point de recompense pendant votre vie !" INDIA.] THE FRENCH TAKE MADRAS. 295 under Commodore Barnet had been sent to the Indian seas. M. de La Bourdonnais, on his part, exerting his scanty means with indefatigable perseverance, succeeded in fitting out nine ships, but nearly all leaky and unsound, and he embarked upwards of 3,000 men, but of these there were 400 invalids and 700 Caffres or Lascars. On the 6th of July, New Style, 1746, the two fleets engaged near Fort St. David, but the battle began and ended in a distant cannonade. Next morning the English stood out to sea, while the French directed their course to Pondicherry. The object of La Bourdonnais was the capture of Madras, and he made a requisition on Dupleix for some stores and sixty pieces of artillery. But the jealous mind of Dupleix could ill brook contributing to his rival's success. He refused the stores, allowed only thirty cannon of inferior calibre, and sent on board water so bad as to produce a dysentery in the fleet.* Not disheartened, however, by these unexpected difficulties, La Bourdonnais appeared off Madras in September 1746, and proceeded to disembark his motley force. The city, though at this period rich and populous, was illdefended; one division, called "the Black Town," only covered by a common wall; the other, "the White Town," or Fort St. George, begirt with a rampart and bastions, but these very slight and faulty in construction. There were but 300 Englishmen in the colony, and of them only 200 were soldiers. Under such circumstances no effective resistance could be expected; nevertheless the garrison sustained a bombardment during three days, and obtained at last an honourable capitulation. It was agreed that the English should be prisoners of war upon parole, and that the town should remain in possession of the French until it should be ransomed, La Bourdonnais giving his promise that the ransom required should be fair and From the commencement of hostilities in 1746 I find a sure and faithful guide in Mr. Orme. (History of Military Transactions, volumes, ed. 1803.) Mr. Mill's narrative is much less minute, but drawn in some measure from other materials, and with a different point of view. The Life of Clive by Sir John Malcolm (3 vols. ed. 1836), though ill-digested, is fraught with many interesting facts and letters, and the article upon it by Mr. Macaulay, (Edinburgh Review, No. cxlii) is equally accurate and brilliant. |