British involvement in India began in 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to a group of businessmen calling themselves The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies. This evolved into the Honourable East India Company (shortened to John Company or the Company), which virtually became a sovereign state with the right to declare war on non-Christian nations should it so wish. Business with the Indian subcontinent was highly profitable, but the Company was not the only one with fingers in the pie. Its rivals were the Portuguese, the Dutch, and, of course, the French. Friction and occasional fighting between the Europeans was more usual than between the traders and the locals, who were achieving more and more autonomy as the once-powerful Mogul Empire slid into decline.

The Company raised its own troops to protect its factories (the term used for its trading centres) against its rivals and native princes hostile to its interests, and supported those with whom it was on good terms. The Company’s growing holdings in land and increased influence in Indian affairs meant that it had to raise still more troops until it possessed three armies, located in Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, to say nothing of its own navy.

British officers in the Honourable East India Company commanded the native troops, the service appealing to them partly because they did not have to purchase their commissions, and partly because of the good lifestyle that they could have at little cost in India. The Company also raised European regiments. The men who joined them were a hard lot, often with good reason to exile themselves for life, but they received better pay than the Regular Army could offer and they lived well.

The rise of Robert Clive

Robert Clive arrived in India to work as one of the Company’s clerks. He hated it so much that he tried to blow his brains out with a pistol. The pistol misfired, which was fortunate for future British interests in India. In 1743 Clive was in Madras when the French took the city. He escaped and, disgusted with the Company’s lackadaisical attitude to military matters, obtained a commission in its army with the object of shaking things up. Clive was capable of inspiring great loyalty. At one point, during the siege of Arcot, his sepoys (Indian soldiers) said that they would give their rice ration to the Europeans, whose health had begun to break down, and subsist on the thin gruel that came from its straining, but Clive would not permit it.

In July 1751 a French puppet ruler named Chanda Sahib laid siege to the British garrison of Trinchinopoly. Clive, with only 200 Europeans and 300 sepoys, sought to draw Chanda off by occupying his fort at Arcot. He succeeded. Chanda came steaming up with 10,000 followers. The fort was in such a ramshackle state that most people wouldn’t have bothered about it, but Chanda took its loss personally because it happened to be in his capital. He was unable to make any impression on the defences, although after two months he had reduced the garrison to 120 Europeans and 200 sepoys, and little food remained. Chanda asked for a meeting with Clive under a flag of truce, and told Clive to give up or he would put everyone in the fort to the sword. Clive made a number of very pointed personal comments about Chanda and his father, as well as stating bluntly that if he thought that the ragbag of scruffs he called an army was capable of storming a breach that British soldiers held he had better do some serious thinking. No records exists of Chanda’s reply, but probability suggests the local equivalent of: ‘Right, you’ve asked for it!’

Chanda led his attack with a herd of elephants with iron plates strapped to their heads to batter down the gates. Iron plates or not, elephants presented a large target and thick though their hides may have been, they disliked the pain inflicting by musket balls whacking into them. Out of control, the elephants turned and bolted through the mob behind, trampling some and scattering the rest. Chanda’s next assault was by raft across the fort’s moat. Clive personally directed a gun and, using grapeshot, quickly cleared the raft. Having sustained 400 casualties, Chanda’s army disbanded itself. The fort’s defenders lost six men. British prestige throughout India soared, while that of the French took a nose-dive.

Five years later, British interests took a severe knock. Suraj-ud-Daula, the Nawāb of Bengal, took exception to the growth of the Company’s power on his doorstep. In June 1756 he captured Calcutta, which the Company had founded as the focal point of its activities. A number of European captives died in unpleasant circumstances after being incarcerated in what became known as the notorious Black Hole of Calcutta (a dungeon). An expedition commanded jointly by Clive and Admiral Charles Watson (probably a Company officer) left from Madras. This included the 39th Foot (1/The Dorsetshire Regiment), the first British regiment to serve in India and the first in a long line of British regiments that the Company hired to strengthen its own armies. The expedition recaptured Calcutta on 2 January 1757.

In March, Clive captured the French post at Chandernagore, enabling him to march inland against Suraj-ud-Daula without fearing for his lines of communication. The two armies met at Plassey, a village on the Bhagirathi River, on 23 June. Clive had 2100 sepoys, 800 Europeans including part of the 39th Foot, and 10 guns. The Nawāb had 53,000 men, including a small French contingent, and 53 guns. Clive’s troops concentrated in and around a grove of trees. The Nawāb’s almost encircled them. Apparently, it wasn’t going to be much of a contest. This, however, was India, and nothing was quite what it seemed; if it had been, Clive was unlikely to have offered battle in such circumstances. He knew, for example, that most of Suraj’s commanders were conspiring against the Nawāb. He was also in regular correspondence with the most important of them, Mir Jafar, who urged Clive to attack. The battle began with an exchange of artillery fire, the British faring the better. Then a tropical rainstorm broke over the battlefield. Clive ordered his gunners to keep their powder dry. The Nawāb’s gunners failed to do this, the result being that their guns were useless when the storm passed. A cavalry charge mounted against the British position was blown to pieces. Clive, observing a definite lack of enthusiasm in the opposing ranks, ordered a general advance. He repulsed an infantry counter-attack at the same time as Mir Jafar pointedly kept his troops inactive. The Nawāb’s army then began shredding away from the field until nothing remained of it save the French element, which continued to fight to the last.

Clive’s troops sustained the loss of five killed and 45 wounded, while the Nawāb’s army had 500 killed and wounded plus five guns captured. Suraj was murdered soon after and Mir Jafar succeeded him. The battle, one of the most important in Indian history, effectively gave Bengal to the Company.

The French fight back in 1758

French reinforcements under Baron Thomas Lally reached Pondicherry, the principal French base in India. An energetic commander, Lally besieged and captured the British Fort St David to his south and in December laid siege to Madras. The following month a British relief force defeated his army at Masulipatam and forced him to abandon the siege. A year later, at the Battle of Wandiwash, Lally sustained a further defeat at the hands of General Sir Eyre Coote. He withdrew to Pondicherry, where the British besieged him and he surrendered in January 1761.

Although the Treaty of Paris restored Pondicherry to the French in 1763, the Compagnie des Indes was dissolved in 1769. As Dutch and Portuguese operations had already been severely restricted, British interests in India no longer had any major European challengers.