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Meanwhile things were happening which paved the way for Hastings' future greatness. It was known in Calcutta that France and England were again at war; and there was but too good reason to fear that Suraj-ad-daula, in spite of his new alliance with his English neighbours, was already seeking French aid for their destruction. His intrigues with Law and Bussy certainly looked that way, and his attempt to stop a hostile movement against the French settlement of Chandarnagar, was readily construed by the the Calcutta Council to the same effect. Be that as it mayand in those days the web of Indian politics was more hopelessly tangled than ever-the arrival of succours from Bombay and Madras emboldened the English in Bengal to grasp the nettle danger without more ado. The treaty with the French was cut short; Clive and Watson opened fire upon the defences of Chandarnagar; and in a few days, before the angry Viceroy had marched far to its relief, our troops had become masters of the foremost French possession in Bengal.

Erelong a plot for the dethronement of Surajad-daula was quietly brewing at Calcutta and Murshidabad. The wretched Viceroy, conscious of impending evil, knew not whom to trust, nor

VICTORY OF PLASSY.

31

whence to seek help against his many foes. At one moment he was imploring Bussy to hasten up to his rescue, at another he was sending the most civil messages to Clive, the man of all others he most dreaded. At the head of the Murshidabad plotters was Mír Jáfar, his own commanderin-Chief, a brother-in-law of Aliverdi Khán. His minister of finance, and Jaggat Sett, the foremost banker of Bengal, were in the plot. Clive's strong will and reckless daring overbore the scruples of his colleagues in the council, and with their help the plot grew and prospered. What part Hastings took in it does not plainly appear; but we may take it for granted that Watts's ablest subaltern at Kásimbazár was called into counsel over a matter which so nearly concerned himself.

At last, when all seemed ripe for action, Clive, in the burning month of June, led out his little army from Chandarnagar, on that famous enterprise which was to make the East India Company virtual masters of the largest, richest, and most populous province of the old Moghal Empire.

The victory of Plassy on the 23rd June, 1757, threw the future of India, as it were, into English hands. A few days later, Clive marched into Murshidabad, and installed the successful traitor,

Mír Jáfar, on the vacant masnad of Bengal. The seizure and death of the fugitive Suraj-addaula completed Mír Jáfar's good fortune. Mindful of Hastings' past services, the victor of Plassy sent him on special duty to Murshidabad, or, as the English then called it, Muxadavad. Some months later, when Clive became Governor of Fort William, Hastings succeded Scrafton as Resident at the court of the new Nawáb.

CHAPTER IV.

1758-1760.

HASTINGS' new office was no sinecure.

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As Resident at Murshidabad, he had to watch over the well-being of the English party at Kásimbazár; to see that Mír Jáfar fulfilled his engagements with the Calcutta Council; to keep the peace, he could, between the new Nawab and his chief officers; to discover and thwart the numerous intrigues which that time of general disorder, distrust, and ferment brought to an easy birth. It was not long before Mír Jáfar Khán began to plot against Rai Dulab Rám, and some other Hindu nobles, whose wealth might enable him to replenish a treasury exhausted by the payments due to his English friends as the price of his own elevation to the throne of Bengal.

For a time Hastings seems to have misread the real drift of the Nawáb's relations with Dulab Rám, the head of a powerful family of bankers and financiers named Sett. One evening in August, 1758, a number of Sepoys forced their

way into the Nawab's palace, clamouring loudly for their long withheld arrears of pay. To Hastings this was represented as a plot brewed by Dulab Rám against his master's life, and as such he repeated it to Clive himself. But his shrewd chief had not threaded the nazes of Indian

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roguery in vain. "You have not yet been long enough at the Durbar," he writes to Hastings, "to make yourself acquainted with the dark designs of the Mussulmans. The moment I perused your letter, I could perceive a design in the Nabob and those about him against Roy Doolub, and you may be assured what is alleged against him and his letters to Coja Huddee is a forgery from beginning to end. Roy Doolub is not such a fool as to give anything under his own hand." Besides, he would never dare to intrigue against a prince of our own selecting, with the knowledge that his own fate was in Clive's hands. "How easy is it," exclaims the writer, with pos sible reference to his own success in that line,†

*Durbar, or rather Darbár, answers to our "Court." For this letter of Clive's, see "Gleig's Life of Hastings," Vol. 1., Chap. iv.

+ The reader may remember that Clive had forged the signature of his colleague, Admiral Watson, to one copy of the treaty with Mir Jâfar, for the purpose of deceiving the traitor, Amin Chand.

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