Of Siráj-ud-daulá something must be said. The province which he ruled from his then capital of Murshidábád had been one of the great fiefs which the dissolution of the Mughal Empire had affected. The family which had ruled it in 1739 had had the stamp of approval from Delhi. But when the invasion of Nadír Sháh in that year overthrew for the time the authority of the Mughal, an officer named Alí Vardí Khán, who had risen from the position of a menial servant to be Governor of Bihár, rose in revolt, defeated and slew the representative of the family nominated by the Mughals in a battle at Gheriá, in January, 1741, and proclaimed himself Súbahdár. Alí Vardí Khán was a very able man. Having bribed the shadow sitting on the throne of Akbar and Aurangzeb to recognize him as Súbahdár of Bengal, Bihár, and Orissa, he ruled wisely and well. On his death in 1756 he had been succeeded by his youthful grandson, the Siráj-ud-daulá, who, as we have seen, had come, so fatally for himself, under the influence of Clive.
For all the actions of Clive at this period prove that he was resolved to place matters in Bengal on such a footing as would render impossible atrocities akin to that of the Black Hole. Were he to quit Bengal, he felt, after accomplishing the mission on which he had been sent, and that mission only, what security was there that the Súbahdár would not return to wreak a vengeance the more bitter from the mortifications he had had to endure? No, there
