History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c83.s5: § 8. The English sack Hughli, 1686.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v5.c83.s5
- Language
- English
§ 8. The English sack Hughli, 1686.
v5.c83.s5.1
We shall now proceed to the history of the contest between the Mughal Government and the English traders in Bengal. The Indian merchants and brokers employed by the E. I. Co. at Qasimbazar (Bengal) made a large claim against Job Charnock, the chief of the factory there and his colleagues. The Indian judge of the place decreed the sum of Rs. 43,000 against the Englishmen (1684-85). On appeal the judgment was confirmed by the provincial governor, who, in default of payment, summoned Charnock to appear before him at Dacca. As Charnock refused to comply with the order, his factory was invested by Mughal troops (August 1685). But in April next, he escaped to Hughli and took the chief direction of English affairs in Bengal. The war began in six months' time from this event.
v5.c83.s5.2
By October 1686 the English forces at Hughli had increased to nearly 400 men,—Englishmen, Portuguese half-breeds, and Rajput mercenaries, with two men-of-war and two frigates. Shaista Khan, the governor of Bengal, on his part, had not been negligent. He had concentrated 300 horse and 3,000 foot at Hughli to guard the town from any surprise by the English, whose assembling of force had become known. Abdul Ghani, the faujdar of the town, stopped the trade of the English, forbade the supply of provisions to them, and placed the local market out of bounds for English troops. On the 28th of the month, three English soldiers, in trying to enter the market in defiance of this order, were wounded and carried prisoner to the faujdar. An advance made by Captain Leslie from the English factory (near Golghat) to rescue them was beaten back with loss, and the thatched huts surrounding the factory were set on fire to arrest their progress. The Mughal battery, midway between the faujdar's residence and the factory, opened fire on the enemy's shipping in the river. But reinforcements soon arrived from the English camp three miles down the river, took the battery spiking the guns, and advanced further, sacking and burning the faujdar's house and the town lying beyond it. In the evening the English ships came abreast of Hughli, captured a ship of the Mughal's, and "kept firing and battering most part of the night and next day, and making frequent sallies on shore, burning and plundering all they met with." Long before this the faujdar had fled away in disguise in a boat.
v5.c83.s5.3
∗ In England at that very time (reign of William III.) the highest officers, including the Attorney-General (Seymour) and the prime minister (Leeds) took bribes. But they were punished when detected, while in Mughal India the receiving of presents and perquisites was considered legitimate. [Macaulay's History, iv. ch. 20 and 21.]
v5.c83.s5.4
without making any attempt to defend the panic-stricken city or save the people from outrage. On the Indian side sixty soldiers were killed and four or five hundred houses burnt down together with a great number of barges and boats.
v5.c83.s5.5
The Hughli faujdar sought the mediation of the Dutch (whose factory was at Chinsura) and opened negotiations with the English in order to gain time for the arrival of reinforcements. The English agreed, and made use of this truce to pack their store of saltpetre and prepare for evacuating the place with all their officers and stores. But they continued to seize Mughal ships at sea and made an alliance with the Muslim zamindar of Hijli, who was in rebellion against the Delhi Emperor.
v5.c83.s5.6
Shaista Khan, on hearing of the sack of Hughli by the English, decided to crush these disturbers of public peace. Vast detachments of cavalry were sent to Hughli and the English factors at Patna were ordered to be seized. On 20th December, the English withdrew from Hughli with all their property, and falling 24 miles down the river halted at Sutanati (modern Calcutta), and from that base continued their negotiations with the subahdar at Dacca for securing land for a fortified trade-settlement and an imperial order allowing them to carry on their commerce free of duty! Shaista Khan temporised, and used the month's time thus gained to complete his armed preparations, and then threw off the mask.
v5.c83.s5.7
§ 9. The English renew war and seize Hijli, 1687.
v5.c83.s5.8
The war was renewed in February 1687. The English burnt down the imperial salt-warehouses near Matiaburuj and then stormed the forts at Thana (modern Garden Reach, south-west of Calcutta). Sailing down the river they seized the island of Hijli, on the east coast of the Medinipur district (Contai sub-division),—a swamp of deadly malaria, but rich in fruits corn and game, and the seat of salt manufacture by evaporating sea-water. At the end of February the English were established in this island, the local Mughal commandant having evacuated the fort without a blow. Here all the English land and sea forces in the Bay of Bengal were assembled.
v5.c83.s5.9
Next March a body of 170 English soldiers and sailors landed at Balasore, took the Mughal fort, and burnt the two towns called Old and New Balasore, after looting them for two days. The Indian shipping in the docks were burnt, and two vessels belonging to Prince Azam and Shaista Khan were seized as prizes.
v5.c83.s5.10
About the middle of May 1687, Abdus Samad, a lieutenant of Shaista Khan, arrived before Hijli with 12,000 men to expel the English. The invaders had been daily losing men from disease, both on land and in the ships, during the trying months of March and April, and their provisions had now run very short. From the mainland in the west the heavy Mughal batteries began to fire across the Rasulpur river upon the English position in the island and drove the English ships from their anchorage. On 28th May a body of 700 Mughal cavalry and 200 gunners crossed the river three miles above Hijli town, suprised an English battery on the island, and pushing further south seized that town itself and set it on fire. The English held only the small weakly-walled fort. Their losses in the meantime had been terrible: 200 soldiers had perished and only a hundred, weakened by fever, survived, the forty officers had sunk to five only. Yet, for four days they held the fort, and the two batteries guarding the road to the landing place, against overwhelming odds, and in spite of their being hemmed round on all the three landward sides. On 1st June their reinforcements arrived, and next day they made a successful sortie, beating the enemy back from their guns.
v5.c83.s5.11
On 4th June Abdus Samad sued for peace. On the 11th the English evacuated Hijli fort, carrying off all their ammunition and artillery, their drums beating and their banners flying. But the indemnity and fresh commercial privileges which they had demanded and Abdus Samad had promised, were refused by the subahdar of Dacca. On 16th August Shaista Khan issued a letter in which he rebuked the English for their recent acts of violence, but permitted them to build a fort at Uluberia (about 20 miles south of Calcutta) and renew their trade at Hughli. So, Charnock returned with his ships and halted at Sutanati (September 1687), where the first buildings of Calcutta were projected.
v5.c83.s5.12
But in the meantime the English had also made war on the Mughal shipping on the Bombay Coast. Shaista Khan, on hearing of this fresh provocation, felt himself no longer bound to observe the terms which he had recently offered to Charnock. He ordered the English to return to Hughli, forbade any building at Sutanati, and demanded large sums as war-compensation. Charnock, however, sent an embassy to Dacca, seeking permission to remain at Sutanati and to buy land there for an English factory.
v5.c83.s5.13
These new negotiations spread over a year after the landing at Calcutta in September 1687. Next year Captain Heath arrived from England, replacing Charnock as Agent in Bengal. The new chief decided to withdraw from Bengal proper, and on 8th November 1688 sailed away from Sutanati with all the men and property of the Company, while the officers of the branch-factories in the interior of Bengal were abandoned to their fate.
v5.c83.s5.14
§ 10. English atrocities at Balasore, 1688.
v5.c83.s5.15
Sailing to Balasore with 300 soldiers, Captain Heath, on 29th November, stormed the Mughal fortification (called Point of Sand) at the easternmost point of Old Balasore, capturing its artillery and stores. Next day he seized New Balasore (further inland, to the west) and committed great excesses, ill-treating Christians and non-Christians, men and women alike. But before this the merchants and servants of the English factory, in the heart of New Balasore, had been seized and removed far inland by the Mughal faujdar, and Heath could not rescue them. After some time spent in indecision and halting peace talk, the Captain sailed away on 23rd December. Arriving before Chatgaon about 18th January 1689, he planned to wrest that fort from the Mughal officers and make it the safe and independent base desired by the English for their trade in Bengal. A council of war dissuaded him from this mad project, and at last in utter disgust Heath sailed away for Madras (17th Feb.), abandoning all his Bengal projects.