Who was King Bhoja ?

A polymath, he wrote treatises on architecture, medicine and veterinary sciences.

His Bhojeshwar Shiva temple was recently partially restored by Archaeological Survey of India.

His reputation was so great that 500 years after him, Krishna Deva Raya of Vijayanagara also called himself Abhinava Bhoja or the new Bhoja.

Stories from Bhojaprabandha like Akbar-Birbal or Tenali Rama stories have regaled Indians for centuries.

Combatants at the Battle of Plassey: The British East India Company against Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa and a small French force.

The British were assisted by traitors in the Nawab’s high command.
Generals at the Battle of Plassey: Colonel Robert Clive against Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal.

Clive’s army at Plassey comprised 950 European Troops (including 250 men of His Majesty’s 39th Foot), 2,100 native troops being sepoys and topazes, 60 sailors and 100 artillerymen, with eight 6 pounder guns and two howitzers

Siraj-ud-Daulah’s army comprised 35,000 infantry, 15,000 cavalry and 53 pieces of cannon, being 18, 24 and 32 pounders. A small French force commanded by St Frais provided supervision for the artillery and manned some guns.

The native Indian soldiers were armed with bows, swords and spears. There were some firearms, mainly firelocks. Siraj-ud-Daulah’s cavalry was largely recruited from the Afghans and Pathans of the north-west, tough and seasoned soldiers fighting with swords and spears.

The significant component of warfare in India in the 1750s became the disciplined French and British infantry and artillery. There were few of these troops and, while effective in the field against the native levies, they were susceptible to disease and quickly became casualties.

The answer for the French and the British to the small number of European troops and their vulnerability to tropical disease was to recruit native sepoys, arm them with muskets and train them in European battle drill.

The purpose of the various European nationalities in India was initially to trade and there was a reluctance to become involved in the raising, training and paying large bodies of troops, until it became clear that this was unavoidable if a presence was to be maintained in India.

The French and British quickly became a major force in Indian warfare, due to their advanced technology and discipline, both cultural and military and the urge to dominate India.

Malleson states that the rate of fire for Indian gunners in the 1750s was around 1 shot every fifteen minutes. The European rate of gunfire, 2 or 3 rounds a minute, came as a shock.

European cannon had screw mechanisms to adjust the elevation of the barrel, an essential sophistication that was missing from the Indian guns.

Malleson states that the battle tactics of Indian commanders tended to be based on the erroneous assumption that once European guns were discharged there was a period of fifteen minutes during which an attack could be launched, while the guns were reloaded.

Other features of French and British tactics that came as a surprise were disciplined volley firing and the aggression of European infantry assaults.

(In these early days there were no European cavalry or sepoy cavalry in India and the French and English relied on native horsemen such as the Mahrattas, although none were present at Plassey)

The combination of these tactical characteristics with the adept and ruthless leadership shown by Robert Clive and other British officers and by some of the French officers, such as M.

Paradis, explain how battles were won by small numbers of European troops and sepoys fighting large native armies.

The Indian armies were feudal levies so that the death of a leader was liable to cause his followers to melt away, in part because of a collapse of morale, but also because they no longer considered themselves under an obligation to fight.

Although Britain and France were repeatedly at war in Europe and North America during the 18th Century, in India most of the fighting was against local native rulers supported by either the English or the French and not directly between the two rival European powers

In Bengal, the Nawabs were concerned to maintain the presence of the French as a counterbalance to the increasingly ambitious and aggressive English East India Company.

The English, on the other hand, were keen to evict all the rival European companies from Bengal, especially the French.
The European troops and sepoys raised by the East India Companies of Britain and France were equipped and armed in the same way as their national infantry.

The weapons carried were a musket and bayonet and small sword, known in the British army as a ‘hanger’. On campaign, each soldier carried around 25 musket rounds, made up in paper cartridges, in a leather pouch hung from a shoulder belt.