The Black Hole of Calcutta

The Black Hole of Calcutta

By the end of the seventeenth century effective power in the Mogul empire had fallen into the hands of the nawabs, or provincial governors, while the British and the French were building up their competing commercial empires in India. The British had established a port and trading base at Calcutta in the 1690s and built Fort William to guard it. Some years later they began to strengthen the defences against the French.

This offended the new Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-daula, who succeeded his grandfather in the capital of Murshidabad in 1756, when he was in his twenties. He sent orders to the governor of Calcutta to stop the work on the fortifications and when the British took no notice, the nawab marched on Calcutta with a massive army, said to have numbered 50,000 men with 500 elephants and fifty cannon. The army arrived on June 16th, and began to move slowly through the outlying areas of Calcutta, overwhelming all resistance. The governor and many of his staff and the British residents ran for safety to the ships in the harbour, leaving women and children behind and a garrison of only 170 English soldiers to defend the fort under the command of John Zephaniah Holwell, who was the Company’s zemindar, responsible for tax collection and keeping law and order.

 Siraj’s final attack in force came on the morning of June 20th, a Sunday. Holwell had no military experience, the situation was hopeless in any case and by the afternoon he was forced to surrender in return for what he thought was a guarantee of quarter.

The Black Hole, inclosed by railing, in 1908.

That night, as he recorded, there occurred a horror which became a legend in the history of the Raj.

A total of 146 British prisoners, including two women and several wounded men, and Holwell himself, were herded at sword-point for the night into the fort’s ‘black hole’, a little lock-up the British had built for minor offenders. It measured only 18ft by 14ft 10in and had two small windows. The heat at that time of year was suffocating and the prisoners trampled on each other to get near the windows and fought over the small supply of water they had been left, while begging for mercy from the guards, who laughed and jeered at them while they prayed and raved in vain. At 6am the next morning when the door was unlocked, the corpses were piled up inside and only twenty-three of the prisoners were still alive. A pit was hastily dug for the dead and the bodies were dumped in it.

According to a calculation by Professor Brijen Gupta in the 1950s, the total of prisoners shut in the black hole was probably sixty-four, of whom twenty-one came out alive. 

The Battle of Plassey

The British victory at Plassey in Bengal, on 23 June, 1757, was a crucial event in the history of India.

Though it was more of a skirmish than a battle, the British victory under Robert Clive at Plassey in Bengal was a crucial event in the history of India. The young Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ad-daula, had taken Calcutta from the East India Company with a huge army in June 1756, when the notorious Black Hole episode occurred. It was not until August that the news reached the Company in Madras and not until October that Clive, now 32 years-old, left for Calcutta at the head of a mixed European-Indian force of some 2,500 men. He drove Siraj’s army out early in January 1757.

Clive decided that the best way to secure the Company’s interests in Bengal was to replace Siraj with a new and more pliant nawab. He found a candidate in a discontented elderly general named Mir Jafar. After complicated conspiratorial discussions and the promise of enormous bribes to all concerned, a secret agreement was smuggled into the women’s quarters of Mir Jafar’s house, which was being watched by Siraj’s spies, and Mir Jafar signed it.

Siraj knew or suspected there was a conspiracy against him, despite Clive’s earnest protestations to the contrary, and moved south to Plassey.

On 13 June, Clive moved north with some 2,000 Indian sepoys and 600 British infantry of the Thirty-Ninth of Foot plus close to 200 artillerymen with ten field pieces and two small howitzers. Ambiguous messages were coming in from Mir Jafar and Clive was moving into a dangerous situation against heavy odds. He seems to have had a crisis of confidence and summoned his officers to a council of war on 21 June. The majority, including Clive, voted against action. At that point, according to his friend Robert Orme, Clive retired into a grove of trees where he stayed for an hour in meditation. On his return he gave orders for the army to move on to Plassey.

The confrontation came on a cloudy morning north of the village of Plassey on the bank of the Hughli river. Clive’s army was drawn up in three divisions, as was the Nawab’s army of perhaps 40,000 men with its war-elephants and more than 50 cannon. One division was commanded by Mir Jafar. After an opening cannonade, a crash of thunder at noon heralded a torrential downpour of rain that lasted half an hour. The British artillerymen quickly covered their cannon and ammunition with tarpaulins, but the enemy failed to do the same and their artillery was put out of action, so that when the Nawab’s army moved forward, assuming that Clive’s cannon were also out of action, it was met with a withering storm of fire. The enemy withdrew and Siraj, , lost his nerve when Mir Jafar advised retreat. When Clive’s army attacked again, Siraj fled on a fast camel. His demoralized army followed suit and when the British entered the enemy camp at about 5pm, they found it abandoned.

Clive of India meeting Nabob Meer
Jaffier after the Battle of Plassey, 1757

According to Clive, he lost 18 men, while he estimated the nawab’s dead as around 500.

Siraj-ad-daula was killed by his own people and Mir Jafar replaced him. Clive, who was now effectively master of Bengal, skilfully bolstered Mir Jafar’s apparent authority while keeping him on leading strings. The skirmish at Plassey was critical to the East India Company’s triumph over its French rivals and, in the longer term, to the establishment of British rule in India. 

THE BATTLE OF BUXAR 1764 OCTOBER 22

The Battle of Buxar was fought on 22 October 1764 between the forces under the command of the British East India Company, led by Hector Munro, and the combined armies of Mir Qasim, Nawab of Bengal till 1763; the Nawab of Awadh; and the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II.[4] The battle was fought at Buxar, a "small fortified town" within the territory of Bihar

The British army engaged in the fighting numbered 7,071[5] comprising 859 British, 5,297 Indian sepoys and 918 Indian cavalry.

 The alliance army's numbers were estimated to be over 40,000. According to other sources[who?], the combined army of the Mughals, Awadh and Mir Qasim consisting of 40,000 men was defeated by a British army comprising 10,000 men.The lack of basic co-ordination among the three disparate allies was responsible for their decisive defeat.

Mirza Najaf Khan commanded the right flank of the Mughal imperial army and was the first to advance his forces against Major Hector Munro at daybreak; the British lines formed within twenty minutes and reversed the advance of the Mughals. According to the British, Durrani and Rohilla cavalry were also present and fought during the battle in various skirmishes. But by midday, the battle was over and Shuja-ud-Daula blew up large tumbrils and three massive magazines of gunpowder.

Munro divided his army into various columns and particularly pursued the Mughal Grand Vizier Shuja-ud-Daula the Nawab of Awadh, who responded by blowing up his boat-bridge after crossing the river, thus abandoning the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and members of his own regiment. Mir Qasim also fled with his 3 million rupees worth of Gemstones and later committed suicide. 

Mirza Najaf Khan reorganised formations around Shah Alam II, who retreated and then chose to negotiate with the victorious British.

Historian John William Fortescue claimed that the British casualties totalled 847: 39 killed and 64 wounded from the European regiments and 250 killed, 435 wounded and 85 missing from the East India Company's sepoys .  The victors captured 133 pieces of artillery and over 1 million rupees of cash. Immediately after the battle Munro decided to assist the Marathas, who were described as a "warlike race", well known for their relentless and unwavering hatred towards the Mughal Empire and its Nawabs and the Sultanate of Mysore.

Treaty of Allahabad

Shah 'Alam conveying the grant of the Diwani to Lord Clive

A member of the East India Company.
The Treaty of Allahabad was signed on 12 August 1765,[1] between the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II, son of the late Emperor Alamgir II, and Robert, Lord Clive, of the East India Company, as a result of the Battle of Buxar of 22 October 1764. The Treaty marks the political and constitutional involvement and the beginning of British rule in India.[2] Based on the terms of the agreement, Alam granted the East India Company Diwani rights, or the right to collect taxes on behalf of the Emperor from the eastern province of Bengal-Bihar-Orissa.

Thus East India Company got appointed as the imperial tax collector for the Eastern province (Bengal-Bihar-Orissa). These rights allowed the Company to collect revenue directly from the people of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. In return, the Company paid an annual tribute of twenty-six lakhs of rupees (equal to 260,000 pounds sterling) while securing for Shah Alam II the districts of Kora and Allahabad. The tribute money paid to the emperor was for the maintenance of the Emperor's court in Allahabad. The accord also dictated that Shah Alam be restored to the province of Varanasi as long as he continued to pay certain amount of revenue to the Company. Awadh was returned to Shuja-ud-Daulah, but Allahabad and Kora were taken from him. The Nawab of Awadh also had to pay fifty-three lakhs of rupees as war indemnity to the East India Company.

The Nawab of Awadh, Shuja ud Daulah, was made to pay a war indemnity of 5 million rupees to the Company. Moreover, the two signed an alliance by which the Company promised to support the Nawab against an outside attack provided he paid for services of the troops sent to his aid.