Dupleix was recalled to France in disgrace; and the British
were left to enjoy the favor of the nawab who owed his throne to Clive.
[Sidenote: Plassey]
[Sidenote: British Success in India]
Clive's next work was in Bengal. In 1756 the young nawab of Bengal,
Suraj-ud-Dowlah by name, seized the English fort at Calcutta and locked
146 Englishmen overnight in a stifling prison--the "Black Hole" of
Calcutta--from which only twenty-three emerged alive the next morning.
Clive, hastening from Madras, chastised Suraj for this atrocity, and
forced him to give up Calcutta. And since by this time Great Britain
and France were openly at war, Clive did not hesitate to capture the
near-by French post of Chandarnagar. His next move was to give active
aid to a certain Mir Jafir, a pretender to the throne of the unfriendly
Suraj-ud-Dowlah. The French naturally took sides with Suraj against
Clive. In 1757 Clive drew up 1100 Europeans, 2100 sepoys, and nine
cannon in a grove of mango trees at Plassey, a few miles south of the
city of Murshidabad, and there attacked Suraj, who, with an army of
68,000 native troops and with French artillerymen to work his fifty-
three cannon, anticipated an easy victory.
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