Clive, ROBERT, the creator of our Indian empire, was born at the manor-house of Styche, near Market-Drayton, 29th September 1725. He was the eldest of thirteen children; his father, a lawyer and small landowner, of a very old Shropshire family. The boy was brought up by an uncle near Eccles. There, and at all his four schools—Lostock, Market-Drayton, Merchant Taylors', and Hemel-Hempstead—he proved a much better fighter than scholar, a thorough young dare-devil; and in 1743 he was packed off to India as a writer in the service of 'John Company.' He reached Madras penniless, and the drudgery of his life there moved him to suicide. But the pistol snapped twice, and he flung it from him, exclaiming: 'It appears I am destined for something; I will live.'
The capture of Madras by the French (1746), Clive's escape thence to Fort St David (the scene of his gallant duel with the card-sharper), his share in its defence, in the fruitless siege of Pondicherry (1748), and in the storming of Devikota (1749)—these events bring us up to the August of 1751, and Clive's daring dash upon Arcot. He seized it, and held its enormous citadel for eleven whole weeks against 7000 natives and 120 French soldiers. His own little force was reduced to 80 Englishmen and 120 sepoys (splendid fellows these); but, after a last desperate assault, the siege was raised (14th November), and Clive followed up his success by the victories of Arni and Kaveripak, and the capture of Kovilam and Chingalpat.
In February 1753 he married Margaret Maskelyne, sister to the astronomer, and immediately after sailed with her for England, where he was presented with a diamond-hilted sword, cleared his father's estate from encumbrances, stood for St Michaels, but was unseated, and otherwise got through a very fair fortune.
So in October 1755 he was back in India, and a twelvemonth later was summoned, with Admiral Watson, from Madras, to avenge the atrocity of the Black Hole. Calcutta was soon retaken; Chandernagore, the French settlement, captured; and at Plassey, on 23d June 1757, Clive's 3200 men (two-thirds of them sepoys) encountered Suraj ud Dowlah's 50,000 with 40 to 50 French gunners. The battle took eight hours to win, that truly 'decisive battle of the world.' But its lustre was sullied by the only two blots on Clive's memory. In his dealings with Mir Jaffier, the would-be next nawab of Bengal, he had imposed on a go-between, the merchant Omichand, with a fictitious treaty, to which he had forged his colleague Watson's signature; and now from Mir Jaffier he accepted a present of upwards of £200,000. Both actions are defended by Malcolm, both sternly condemned by Macaulay and Malleson.
For three years sole ruler in all but name of Bengal, Clive, in 1760, with a fortune of more than £40,000 a year, returned to England, to be hailed by Pitt as 'a heaven-born general'; in India he was known as Sabat Jung, 'the daring in war.' In 1761 he entered parliament as member for Shrewsbury; in 1762 was raised to the Irish peerage as Baron Clive of Plassey; in 1764 was created a Knight of the Bath. But meanwhile in India the Company's affairs, through the dishonesty of its servants, high and low, had fallen into the utmost disorder; and Clive was the only man who could set them right. He arrived at Calcutta in May 1765, and at once applied himself wisely and firmly to reform the civil service and re-establish military discipline. This second governorship, lasting but twenty-two months, marks the beginning of our Indian administration, as Plassey of our military supremacy.
Early in 1767 Clive quitted India, never to return; in all he had spent there less than a dozen years. This time he came back to England poorer than when he last left it; but this time he came back to encounter a storm of obloquy. The energy with which he had cleansed that Augean stable had raised up a host of influential enemies, who employed their influence to gratify their enmity, to stir up ill-feeling against him. His early proceedings in India were in 1772 made the subject of animadversion in parliament, and next year matter for the inquiry of a select committee. He was examined and cross-examined more like a sheep-stealer than the Baron of Plassey. Indignation at treatment so unmerited found vent at last in the exclamation: 'By heaven, Mr Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.' The censure implied in the ultimate resolution was hardly wiped out by its rider, that he 'did at the same time render great and meritorious services to his country' (21st May 1773). Sickness, opium, mental depression—on 22d November 1774 Clive died by his own hand. He is buried in the church of Moreton Say, the parish that gave him birth.
Clive's eldest son, Edward (1754–1839), was governor of Madras 1798–1803, and in 1804 was made Earl of Powis, having in 1784 married the daughter of the last Herbert Earl of Powis.
See ARCO, DUPLEX, INDIA; Sir John Malcolm's Life of Clive (3 vols. 1836), with Macaulay's essay thereon; two works by Malleson (1882 and 1893); Sir Charles Wilson's Clive (1890); Sir A. J. Arbuthnot's Clive (1899); and Browning's Dramatic Idylls (2d series, 1880). For the conflicting accounts of the manner and place of Clive's death, whether by penknife, razor, pistol, or poison; whether at his mansion in Berkeley Square, or his Shropshire seat, Walcot Park, see Horace Walpole's Letters to the Countess of Ossory (i. 155); the Gentleman's Magazine for September 1848, p. 227; and several articles in Notes and Queries for 1888.