1685] OMNIPRESENCE OF DEATH 391 time to time a supply of theological literature calculated to improve the mind and exercise a cooling effect on dispositions susceptible to a tropical sun. In 1667 it sent out a new schoolmaster, Mr. Ralph Orde, with a liberal salary and appointments, telling its agents that "he is to teach all the children to read English, and to write and cipher, gratis; and if any of the other nations, as Portuguese, Gentoos, or others, will send their children to school, we require that they be also taught gratis, and you are to appoint some convenient place for this use; and he is likewise to instruct them in the principles of the Protestant religion; and he is to diet at our table." In the same letter the Madras agents were told that they might give two rupees apiece to such as should be able to repeat the catechism by heart, "for their encouragement". Elsewhere has been observed that by far the greatest and most impressive fact in the Company's service, greater and more impressive than trade and profits, wealth and honours, although a fact constantly disregarded in the temerity and pride of youth, was the awful omnipresence of death. Stupendous as the price was, cheerfully was it paid. Not even the huge bills of mortality which were published by report from time to time had power to restrain men from daring in the East the perils of disease and pestilence. 1 The Company in one instance objected to Mr. Sturdivant, nominated by Dr. Layfield, because it was reported "he hath a straggling humour, can frame himself to all company as he finds men affected, and delighteth in tobacco and wine". No man this for the pious merchant adventurers ! "We are here," wrote Fryer, "but as exotic plants. . . not agreeable to the soil. For in five hundred, one hundred survives not; of that one hundred, one quarter get not estates; of those that do it has not been recorded above one in ten years has seen his country." As the modern Anglo-Indian poet has sung : We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town; Follow after, follow after! We have watered the root, CHAPTER XIV. Sir Josiah overrides Tribulation. IN the fatal year of the Monmouth rising, the Bloody Circuit and the Edict of Nantes, the East India Company resolved upon a bold step, impelled by the worthlessness of imperial firmans in the case of its factories in Bengal. Although its servants had, with much trouble and expense, obtained Aurangzeb's written permission to trade at Hugli, yet the oppression and insults of the local governor soon rendered that trade all but worthless; the ships sailed from Hugli to Madras with empty holds. The alternative, then, was flight or fight. The Dutch had a Bengal factory, so had the French; but both, more prudently, had established these at the mouth of the Hugli river, instead of going up country into the very jaws of a Mogul garrison, as the Company's servants had done. If the Company retreated, its business would fall wholly, perhaps permanently, to its rivals. The directors long canvassed the matter. At last, at a memorable meeting held in London, 14th January, 1686, they resolved not to retreat; they would measure swords with the "infidels of Northern India," who, in the opinion of the servants in the East, "have been trampling upon us and extorting what they please of our estate from us by the be sieging of our Factorys and stopping of our boats upon the Ganges". There was only one argument to use: "They will never forbare doing so till we have made them as sensible of our Power as we have of our Truth and Justice". This signified an appeal to the sword-perhaps hostilities against the whole Mogul Empire; but John Child had approved it, and the Court were now "after many deliberations firmly of the same opinion and resolve with God's blessing to pursue it". An expedition, consisting of ten ships of from seventy to twelve guns each, was fitted out in England against the offending Nawab of Bengal. This expedition, which had the warm approval of the royal shareholder, James,' was temporarily commanded by Captain Nicholson, until it reached the Ganges, when the Company's Bengal agent, Job Charnock, was to take command both as admiral and commander-in-chief. On board this fleet were embarked six full companies of infantry, but with no officers save lieutenants, it being intended that the members of the Bengal Council, to whose fiery protestations the whole enterprise was due, should act as the necessary colonels, majors and captains. The force was to be joined by a company from Priaman, by a detachment from Madras and by the seamen from the fleet, altogether to form an effective regiment of ten companies or 1,000 men. As for the 1 Letter from the Secret Committee.-Hedges' Diary. 'James was a leading adventurer, "indeed," says Hunter, "his Majesty's Indian stock proved one of his most valuable assets at St. Germains three years later ". 1686] FIGHTING IN BENGAL 395 fleet, reinforced by the Company's other ships, its total would reach nineteen sail. It was with this insignificant land force that the East India Company proposed to chastise the aged and insolent Shaista Khan, Nawab of Bengal, with his army of 40,000 soldiers. Still more insignificant it was destined to be by the time it reached the scene of conflict, where, high up the Ganges, hemmed in by his dusky enemies, perhaps the bravest and most tenacious of all the Company's servants in India lay awaiting this succour from home. When Nicholson's force finally entered the Hugli, to strengthen the factory garrison, it had dwindled to no more than 300 soldiers. With this army Charnock was expected to begin his campaign against the offending Nawab. It was perhaps lucky that the high-spirited declaration of war which had been prepared in Leadenhall Street never came to the eyes or ears of Shaista Khan or he might have done something more than merely "surround" the Hugli factory with a few hundred horse and three or four thousand foot. On 28th October, 1686, the collision came. A trio of Company's soldiers were set upon in the bazaar by the natives. In the subsequent sharp and bloody conflict Charnock was overwhelmingly victorious, but his position, cut off by a hundred miles from his fleet at the river's mouth, was too dangerous to be kept. He therefore temporised with the local Hugli governor, shipped the Company's servants and merchandise on board his light river craft and made his way down stream |