[208] In the indecisive action between Sir G. Pocock and M. D'Aché, one of the enemy's vessels was stranded. It was reported at Moorshedabad that two were taken.
[210] The date of Clive's private letter to Mr. Watts is the 22d June, four days previous to the date of the above public letter and of his answer to it, in which he accepted the government.
[212] This probably alludes to the diamond-hilted sword which the Court of Directors voted Clive for his services in the Carnatic.
[213] Mr. Mill, when noticing the Council's request to Clive, observes, "Convinced that he alone had sufficient authority to overcome the Nabob into the performance of his obligations, the Council (including the four gentlemen who were appointed governors) came to a resolution highly expressive of their own disinterestedness and patriotism, but full of disregard and contempt for the judgment and authority of their superiors."--Mill, vol. iii. p. 244.
Clive's first object, after he accepted the Government of Bengal, was to give what aid he could to Fort St. George. The view he took of the dangers of that settlement, and the measures he adopted to afford it relief, are thus described by a contemporary historian.[214]
"No one doubted that Madras would be besieged, as soon as the monsoon had sent the squadrons off the coast, if reinforcements should not arrive before. But Clive did not entertain the surmise that it could be taken whilst it had provisions; and, as troops were known to be on the way from England, if the ships in which they were embarked should lose their passage in this year, they would probably arrive in the first months of the next. Nevertheless it was necessary, if possible, to alleviate the inequality between the English and French force in Coromandel.
"But the preference which each of the Company's Presidencies was naturally inclined to give to its own safety, as the only ground on which the property and fortunes of the whole community were established, suggested apprehensions that Madras, in the same manner as it had been treated by the Presidency of Calcutta, would, whatever might be the necessity of Bengal, detain on their own service whatsoever troops might be sent to their assistance; and, although little was to be immediately apprehended in Bengal from the French, yet the entire estrangement of the Nabob, and the hazard of all that remained due from him, were to be expected, if he saw the English force too considerably diminished, without the immediate power of recall, to oppose either his own attempts against them, or to afford the assistance he might want, whether in the maintenance of his authority against his own subjects, or the defence of his territory against foreign enemies.