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Updated: June 18, 2025
Watts, the English affairs were conducted by Omichund who, aided by the Sets, or native bankers, whom Suraja-u-Dowlah had plundered and despoiled, got up a conspiracy among the nabob's most intimate followers. The history of these intrigues is the most unpleasant feature in the life of Clive. Meer Jaffier, the nabob's general, himself offered to Mr.
All the English authorities placed their signatures to the real treaty, but Admiral Watson indignantly refused to have anything to do with the fictitious one; or to be a party, in any way, to the deceit practised on Omichund. In order to get out of the difficulty, Clive himself forged Admiral Watson's signature to the fictitious treaty.
Never did an English officer make such a bargain for himself. But even this is not the most dishonorable feature of the transaction. Omichund had, for some time, been kept in the dark as to what was going forward; but, obtaining information through his agents, he questioned Mr. Watts concerning it.
The fate of the different actors on the Indian side was soon decided. Meer Jaffier was duly invested with the Nabob's authority over Bengal, Behar, and Orissa; Omichund, on learning the shameful trick of the Red Treaty, went mad and died mad; Surajah Dowlah was soon captured and promptly killed by Meer Jaffier: the Blackhole was avenged. Clive had now reached the pinnacle of his greatness.
The sum was so vast that it was only by imposing the most onerous taxation upon his people that he was enabled to pay it, and the discontent excited proved his destruction. Omichund had no greater reason for satisfaction, at the part which he had played in the ruin of his country.
Clive, to his great astonishment, found that Admiral Watson entertained different views from his about the honor of an English soldier and gentleman. However convenient it might be to bamboozle Omichund with a sham treaty, Admiral Watson declined to be a party to the trick by signing his name to the fraudulent document.
Having agreed to these conditions, the nabob, upon the 11th of February, retired with his army to his capital; leaving Omichund with a commission to propose to the English a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, against all enemies. This proposal was a most acceptable one, and Clive determined to seize the opportunity to crush the French.
His predecessors had, it is true, been guilty of wrongs as glaring the treachery of Lord Clive to Omichund in 1757, and the abandonment of Ramnarain to Meer Causim under the administration of Mr. Vansittart, are stains upon the British character which no talents or glory can do away.
The gross deceit played on Omichund, as described by Macaulay in his Essay on Lord Clive, stands nearly alone in our public conduct in India, but other transactions have been unworthy of our character for high-minded integrity.
Clive, and the members of the council, however, although willing to gratify their own extortionate greed, at the expense of Meer Jaffier, determined to rob Omichund of his share. In order to do this, two copies of the treaty with Meer Jaffier were drawn up, on different coloured papers. They were exactly alike, except that, in one, the amount to be given to Omichund was entirely omitted.
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