CALCUTTA I (the Black Hole), 20 June 1756. Siraj-ud- Daula, Nawab of Bengal, with 50,000 men plus some French artillerymen attack a tiny (515) British garrison and, after taking 7,000 casualties accepted the surrender of the Englishmen. Following the battle, 146 prisoners were confined in an 18' by 14' cell with almost no ventilation for an agonizingly hot night. In the morning only 23 were left alive in the "Black Hole of Calcutta".

CALCUTTA II, 2 January, 1757. 3,500 Bengalis flee before Clive's force of 1,800 (with naval support) as Calcutta is recaptured.

CALCUTTA III, 5 February, 1757. Lt-Colonel Clive with around 1,800 men fight a hot little action against 40,000 Bengalis under Sulaj-un-Dula. The result was a marginal victory for the British as the Nawab was forced to march Westward to meet an invasion from Afghanistan.

CHANGERNAGORE, 23 March 1757. Clive's force of 2,300 and naval units under Watson take the town of Chandernagore from a French force of 770 Europeans and 2,000 Bengalis.

PLASSEY, 23 June 1757. 50,000 Bengalis and allies attack Clive's defensive position of 2,800 and are decisively defeated in, perhaps, the most important battle of the period. Clive was given a peerage as Baron Clive of Plassey.

BAY OF BENGAL, 29 April, 1758. Seven British sail of the line take on 9 French in an indecisive naval battle.

MASULIPATAM, 8 April, 1759. A British force under Forte of 6,000 (mostly Indian levees) take an important fort from a FrancoIndian force of 2,600.

FORT ST. DAVID, 2 June, 1758. A French force of around 5,000, commanded by Comte Thomas-Arthur Lally de Tollendal take Fort St. David from the British garrison (around 2,500 including sailors) after a short siege.

CONDORE, 7 December, 1758. 8,000 British and native troops defeat a French force of 6,500 (mostly native sepoys).

MADRAS, l3 December, 1757-17 February 1759. Lally, with 7,300 men, besiege the British stronghold of Madras. The defenders, with around 4,000 men, hold out and the siege is abandoned after 2 months.

PONDICHERRY II, 10 September, 1759. Another indecisive naval battle between a British force of 10 sail of the line and a French force of I I sail.

BADARA, 25 November, 1759. A British force of 1,200 rout a Dutch force of 700 Dutch and 800 Malays in the last action of the Dutch in India.

PONDICHERRY III, 15 January 1761. A British army of 6,000 (with off shore naval support) plus 1,200 lndian cavalry commanded by Colonel Eyre Coote (an Irishman) defeat a French force of 3,000 with 8,000 Mysorean allies commanded by Comte Thomas-Arthur Lally de Tollendal (an Irishman). During the 3 month siege Lally made a desperate attack on the British works that almost succeeded. With this defeat, coming the year after the French lost their empire in Canada, the Bourbon's effective presence in India was over.

KATVA, 19 July 1763. Outnumbered almost 4 to I a British force of 2,400 rout a Bengah force of 9,000.

PATNA I, Taking advantage of Clive's absence (he was in England at the time) a Bengali force of 10,000 crushes a small British/sepoy force of 2,800 under Major Thomas Adams in one of the few defeats for the English in India.

SOOTY, 2 August 1763. Major Adams seeks revenge for Patna and with 4,000 troops attacks Mir Kasim's 30,000 Bengalis in a bloody but marginal victory for the British.

OONDWAY NULLAH, 5 September, 1763. Major Adams and 5000 men utterly rout a Bengali army of 30,000.

PATNA II, 6 November 1763. Major Thomas Adams, in his last battle, takes the town of Patna with 4,300 men with bloody hand to hand fighting against Mir Kasim's 6,000 Bengali's. Before the battle Nfir Kasim had brutally murdered 150 British soldiers. Several months following the battle Adams was promoted to BrigadierGeneral but was unable to accept since he had died in the interval.

TROOP TYPES

NATIVE TROOPS

The allies and enemies of the Europeans in India used a variety of troop types all of which were quite antiquated compared to the British and French and possessed what, in wargaming terms, would be called irregular morale. Foot troops included skirmish style units, roughly analagous to jagers, some armed only with bows but some with flintlocks and some with the more primitive and unreliable matchlocks. Some sepoy units, along Western lines, were eventually raised by some Princes when it became clear that the fire-power and discipline of the Europeans was superior to most Indian armies. Finally a great proportion of the Indian foot was untrained levees armed with whatever they happened to have on hand. Swords, spears, some bows and/or matchlocks.

Native cavalry units varied almost as much. The largest proportion was levee or mercenary light horse fighting in a loose, skirmish style. Heavier, more disciplined units were also occasionally seen. Some princes are mentioned as having Persian Horse Guards as their personal bodyguards and it may be surmised that these were armed with lances and had some body armour. Even these relatively elite troops were incapable of delivering a tight, controlled charge and were usually beaten by their European counterparts.

The artillery of the Indian prince tended to the outrageously heavy variety and would fall into the category of heavy siege guns. There is documentation of a single piece that weighed 51 tons and was built to shoot a ball weighing over 1400 pounds! The down side of these big guns was, however, that they needed large teams of bullocks (steers) at the very least to move them or at worst elephants. They were also notoriously slow to reload and thus had a very low reload rate compared to their European opponents/allies. Small swivel guns mounted on camels or elephant howdas was the antithesis to this oversized ordnance and rockets were also used, particulary by the Mysoreans, mainly to frighten horses.

Elephants, that grand symbol of Indian warfare, were very much in evidence during the Seven Years War period in India but the days of the massed elephant charge were almost over. The advent of the lighter and faster firing European style artillelry had seen to that. However, it was still obligatory of an Indian prince to be elephantborne in battle and this practise was sometimes copied by the French and British generals as well. The practical advantage of height above the battle, and increased visibility, was often counteracted by increased vulnerability to missile fire. Also, elephants being what they are, the great beasts would sometimes panic at the worst possible moment during the battle and launch an angry rampage through friendly troops, such as happened at Plassey, that could have very dire consequences.

EUROPEAN TROOPS

The French "Compagnie des Indes" raised troops of Europeans along the lines of the French army begining in 1721. 'Me number of these troops does not seem to ever have been very large and apparently were essentially line musketeers and even though some mention of "guards" and "grenadiers" is made it is doubtful that these were more than a handfull. The designation of "guard" may have been done, in some instances, simply to impress the natives. A small (12 men) company of cavalry existed (the Grenadiers a Cheval) as well as a few artillery batteries. By the Seven Years War a troop of approximately 200 European style "hussars" also existed.

To supplement these troops the Compagnie also raised units of sepoys, units of native troops trained, at least ostensibly, to fight European style. Originally these troops were little more than levees and were lucky to be armed with matchlocks but by the Seven Years War most were armed with musket and bayonet and possessed of some degree of training. Their performance in battle was not as good as their British trained counterparts.

At the start of the Seven Years War the French government dispatched one battallion each from two regular infantry regiments to India. One was from the Lorraine regiment and the other from Lally of the famous Irish "Wild Geese". A unit of 5CK) French marines also participated in a few battles having been left in India by a retiring French fleet after the naval battle of Pondicherry.

Like the French, the British "East India Company" (EIC) also raised regular battalions of Europeans along the lines of the regular army. These battallions were trained and organized like the regulars but were not considered to be quite as good. Their discipline and musket fire, however, was good enough to break the back of most charges that native (and French for that matter) enemies threw at them. At Wandiwash there appears to have been a unit of about 80 mounted infantrymen.

The British also raised sepoy units of local natives. Robert Clive was the first to give them the training that elevated them above the status of levee bagagge-train guards and propel them into the realm of discipline and musketry drill. This training paid off as the sepoy battallions distinguished themselves during the Second Carnatic War and at Plassey.

As for the regulars, three main battalions appear to have participated during the Seven Years War period: the 39th foot ("Primus in India" with the battle honor "Plassey"), the 79th foot (Draper's battalion), and the 84th foot (Coote's battalion).

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