Essay on CliveAllyn and Bacon, 1892 - 113 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
Arcot arms army battle Bengal British Calcutta Carnatic chief Chinsurah Chunda Sahib command conquerors courage Delhi Duke Dupleix East India Company edition empire enemies England English essays Europe European excited fled force Fort St Fort William fortune France French functionaries garrison George George Grenville governor hands High School Hindoo honor Hoogley hundred sepoys hundred thousand pounds India House instantly jewels Jung lish Lord Clive Lord William Bentinck Macaulay Madras Mahrattas Meer Jaffier ment military mind Mogul Moorshedabad Mussulman Nabob Nabob of Oude native never Nizam officers Omichund Orissa Parliament Patna Plassey politics Pondicherry possessed pounds sterling present princes Professor provinces pupil Rajah Sahib revenue rich scarcely seems selected sent sepoys servants settlement Sir John Malcolm soldiers soon sovereign spirit subjects success Sulivan Surajah Dowlah talents thousand pounds sterling throne tion took Trichinopoly triumph troops viceroys victorious wealth whole
Popular passages
Page 218 - Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never under tyranny like this. They found the little finger of the Company thicker than the loins of Surajah Dowlah.
Page 187 - England by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans. The number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six. When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were joking; and, being in high spirits on account of the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion.
Page 196 - ... thing to engage an army twenty times as numerous as his own. Before him lay a river over which it was easy to advance, but over which, if things went ill, not one of his little band would ever return. On this occasion, for the first and for the last time, his dauntless spirit, during a few hours, shrank from the fearful responsibility of making a decision. He called a council of war. The majority pronounced against fighting ; and Clive declared his concurrence with the majority. Long...
Page 188 - But these things — which, after the lapse of more than eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror — awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the savage Nabob. He inflicted no punishment on the murderers. He showed no tenderness to the survivors. Some of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be got, were suffered to depart; but those from whom it was thought that anything could be extorted were treated with execrable cruelty. Holwell, unable to...
Page 234 - Tender and delicate women, whose veils had never been lifted before the public gaze, came forth from the inner chambers in which Eastern jealousy had kept watch over their beauty, threw themselves on the earth before the passers-by, and, with loud wailings, implored a handful of rice for their children. The Hoogley every day rolled down thousands of corpses close to the porticoes and gardens of the English conquerors. The very streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead.
Page 198 - Dowlah's service fell. Disorder began to spread through his ranks. His own terror increased every moment. One of the conspirators urged on him the expediency of retreating. The insidious advice, agreeing as it did with what his own terrors suggested, was readily received. He ordered his army to fall back, and this order decided his fate. Clive snatched the moment, and ordered his troops to advance. The confused and dispirited multitude gave way before the onset of disciplined valour. No mob attacked...
Page 198 - With the loss of twenty-two soldiers killed and fifty wounded, Clive had scattered an army of near sixty thousand men and subdued an empire larger and more populous than Great Britain.
Page 164 - The highlands which border on the western sea-coast of India poured forth a yet more formidable race — a race which was long the terror of every native power, and which, after many desperate and doubtful struggles, yielded only to the fortune and genius of England.
Page 184 - His favorite pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exertion; and, though voluble in dispute, and singularly pertinacious in the war of chicane, he seldom engages in a personal conflict, and scarcely ever enlists as a soldier. We doubt whether there be a hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East Indian Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign yoke.
Page 187 - The jailers in the mean time held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims. At length the tumult died away in low gaspings and meanings. The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be opened, But it was some time before the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on each side the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate had already begun to do its loathsome work. When...