Word: plassey
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...CLIVE OF PLASSEY -A. Mervyn Davies - Scribner ($3.75). Most people remember Robert, Lord Clive as a figure in Henty's With Clive In India. There was little else to read about him until last week A. Mervyn Davies, onetime British diplomat and author of Warren Hastings filled the gap with a solid, non-spark, thoroughly readable, 522-page biography, Clive of Plassey...
Clive rose from a penniless, friendless and unfriendly clerk of the East India Company to a military hero. Arcot and Plassey were his smashing victories. At Arcot, Clive's little army of 500 defeated an opposing army of 10,000. At Plassey, Clive's 3,200 men routed 50,000. William Pitt described him in Parliament as "the heaven-born general...
Author Davies rates Clive's military audacity higher than his strategy, denies that Plassey was the decisive battle many have called it. He does not deny Clive repaid himself handsomely for his trouble. First fruits of Plassey for Clive were $1,170,000. Clive's fortune when he returned to England shortly after was estimated at $6,000,000, one of the largest in the country. His wife's jewels were valued at $100,000 "at the very least." One Indian prince granted Clive $150,000 a year. Said witty Horace Walpole: "If a beggar asks charity...
...Clive's wife and though this no doubt brings more fans to the box-office it can hardly be said to add to the strength of the picture. The famous events in the history are told with dramatic force which make the Black Hole and the Battle of Plassey step out of the cold of black and white into vivid animation...
...destiny lay in India. Its virtue is that no account of such a career could be more than occasionally dull. Ronald Colman (minus the mustache which has long been his trademark) and Loretta Young manage to give lively performances without losing 18th Century decorum. During the battle of Plassey, with armored elephants charging like tanks, during dive's bitter reply to his detractors on the floor of the House of Commons, Clive of India ceases to be merely interesting and reflects the brilliance and the color of Its hero. Good shot: the Black Hole of Calcutta,* photographed from above...
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