Explain the battle of Plassey in 120-150 words
Answers
Battle of Plassey, (23 June 1757). Victory for the British East India Company in the Battle of Plassey was the start of nearly two centuries of British rule in India. For an event with such momentous consequences, it was a surprisingly unimpressive military encounter, the defeat of the Nawab of Bengal owing much to betrayal.
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Explanation:
Though it was more of a skirmish than a battle, the British victory under Robert Clive at Plassey in Bengal was a crucial event in the history of India. The young Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ad-daula, had taken Calcutta from the East India Company with a huge army in June 1756, when the notorious Black Hole episode occurred. It was not until August that the news reached the Company in Madras and not until October that Clive, now 32 years-old, left for Calcutta at the head of a mixed European-Indian force of some 2,500 men. He drove Siraj’s army out early in January 1757.
Clive decided that the best way to secure the Company’s interests in Bengal was to replace Siraj with a new and more pliant nawab. He found a candidate in a discontented elderly general named Mir Jafar. After complicated conspiratorial discussions and the promise of enormous bribes to all concerned, a secret agreement was smuggled into the women’s quarters of Mir Jafar’s house, which was being watched by Siraj’s spies, and Mir Jafar signed it.
Siraj knew or suspected there was a conspiracy against him, despite Clive’s earnest protestations to the contrary, and moved south to Plassey. On 13 June, Clive moved north with some 2,000 Indian sepoys and 600 British infantry of the Thirty-Ninth of Foot plus close to 200 artillerymen with ten field pieces and two small howitzers. Ambiguous messages were coming in from Mir Jafar and Clive was moving into a dangerous situation against heavy odds. He seems to have had a crisis of confidence and summoned his officers to a council of war on 21 June. The majority, including Clive, voted against action. At that point, according to his friend Robert Orme, Clive retired into a grove of trees where he stayed for an hour in meditation. On his return he gave orders for the army to move on to Plassey.