The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

by William Dalrymple

One woman, however, was spared. Both Miran and his father asked for the hand of the famously beautiful Lutf un-Nissa. ‘But she declined and sent this reply: “having ridden an elephant before, I cannot now agree to ride an ass.”’87 The same day that the remains of Siraj ud-Daula were paraded through the streets, 7 July, exactly 200 days since the task force had set off up the Hughli to Fulta, Clive finally got his hands on his money. It was one of the largest corporate windfalls in history – in modern terms around £232 million, of which £22 million was reserved for Clive. He immediately despatched his winnings downstream to Calcutta. ‘The first fruit of our success was the receipt of Rs75 lakh, nearly a million sterling,* which the Souba paid and was laid on board 200 boats, part of the fleet which attended us in our march up, escorted by a detachment from the army,’ wrote Luke Scrafton, one of Clive’s assistants. As soon as they entered the great river, they were joined by the boats of the squadron, and all together formed a fleet of three hundred boats, with music playing, drums beating, the colours flying, and exhibited to the French and Dutch, whose settlements they passed, a scene far different from what they beheld a year before, when the Nabob’s fleet and army passed them, with the captive English, and all the wealth and plunder of Calcutta. Which scene gave them more pleasure, I will not presume to decide. Clive’s winnings in 1757 was a story of personal enrichment ...