Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
The victory of Plassey and the large compensation paid for the destruction of Old Calcutta and its church induced thousands of natives to flock to the new capital, while the number of the European troops and officials was about 2000.
Then their power also was broken; and in 1818 Britain stood forth as the sovereign ruler of India. This was only sixty years after the battle of Plassey had established British influence, though not British rule, in a single province of India; only a little over thirty years after Warren Hastings returned to England, leaving behind him an empire still almost limited to that single province.
A few days after Plassey, Colonel Clive sent for Charlie. "Marryat," he said, "I must send you back, with two hundred men, to Madras. The governor there has been writing to me, by every ship which has come up the coast, begging me to move down with the bulk of the force, as soon as affairs are a little settled here. That is out of the question. There are innumerable matters to be arranged.
The Nabob lay with a mighty power a few miles off at Plassey. Meer Jaffier delayed, and returned evasive answers to the remonstrances of the English general. "Clive was in an anxious and painful situation.
During the fifteen years following the battle of Plassey there is no denying that the political power of the British in India was a mere curse to the native population, and led to the complete disorganisation of the already decrepit native system of government in the provinces affected. It was vain for the directors at home to scold their servants. There were only two ways out of the difficulty.
But the greatest danger that threatened the English arms was, curiously enough, due to Clive himself. On the eve of Plassey he held a council of war at which it was discussed whether they should fight at once or postpone fighting to what might seem a more seasonable opportunity. Clive at this council departed from his usual custom.
Considering the great disparity of numbers, the loss to Clive's force was ridiculously small. Indeed, as Sir Alfred Lyall justly observes in his interesting review of The Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India, the so-called battle of Plassey was a rout rather than a battle.
Having compelled him to expel Law and the French, first from Moorshedabad and then from his dominions, he pressed fresh demands upon him; until the unfortunate prince, driven to despair, and buoyed up with the hope that he should receive assistance from Bussy, who had just expelled the English from their factory at Vizapatam, ordered Meer Jaffier to advance, with fifteen thousand men, to reinforce Rajah Dulab Ram at Plassey.
Native poems still tell of the gallantry with which he commanded the Hindu soldiers of the Nawab. He was one of the first to fall at Plassey, and though it cannot be said that his death caused the loss of the battle, it is certain that it put an end to all chance of the victory being contested. Law was at his wits' end.
With that of Rossbach began the re-creation of Germany, with that of Plassey the influence of Europe told for the first time since the days of Alexander on the nations of the East; with the triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham began the history of the United States."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking