The Battle of Buxar 1764

The Strategic Context: The British Expansion in Bengal

The Battle of Buxar was the culminating engagement of a long struggle for the control of Bengal, the richest and most populous province of the declining Mughal Empire. The British East India Company had established its first factory at Hughli in the 1650s, and the Company had gradually extended its commercial operations in the province over the next century. The transformation of the Company from a trading corporation to a territorial power occurred in the mid-eighteenth century, particularly after the Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the Company’s forces under Robert Clive defeated the Nawab of Bengal and effectively placed Bengal under British control.

The Nawab who succeeded Siraj-ud-Daulah after the Battle of Plassey, Mir Jafar, was a creature of the Company, and the Company’s effective control of Bengal was secured by the Treaty of Allahabad of 1757 and by a series of subsequent arrangements with the new nawabs. The third nawab, Mir Qasim, attempted to reassert the independence of Bengal by reforming the administration, by transferring his capital from Murshidabad to the more defensible city of Monghyr, and by building up a substantial army with the assistance of European military officers. The conflict between Mir Qasim and the Company came to a head in 1763, when the Company’s agents attempted to evade the new customs regulations, and a brief war followed in which Mir Qasm was defeated and forced to flee to Awadh.

The Coalition Against the Company

Mir Qasim’s flight to Awadh resulted in the formation of a coalition of Indian powers against the Company. The Nawab of Awadh, Shuja-ud-Daulah, who had been an ally of the Company after the Battle of Plassey, now joined Mir Qasim in opposing the Company, and the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II, who had been seeking to recover his authority in northern India, also joined the coalition. The three Indian powers agreed to a joint campaign against the Company, and the combined army, perhaps fifty thousand strong, advanced into Bihar in the autumn of 1763.

The Company’s response was vigorous. The new governor of Bengal, Henry Vansittart, ordered the Company’s forces in Bihar to take the offensive, and the small British force at Patna, under the command of Captain John Carnac, was instructed to confront the Indian army. Carnac, who was a competent officer, fought a number of successful engagements against the Indian army, and the Indian coalition, weakened by internal dissensions, was forced to withdraw across the Ganges. The campaign of 1763 ended with the British in possession of Bihar, but the situation remained unstable, and a final engagement was clearly inevitable.

The British Commander and the Army

The British force that fought at Buxar was commanded by Major Hector Munro, who had been sent to Bengal in 1764 with reinforcements from Madras. Munro was a tough and experienced officer who had served in the Carnatic wars, and he brought with him a substantial body of fresh troops, including several battalions of Sepoy infantry and a small but well-served European artillery train. The total British force, including the garrisons of the principal stations, was perhaps seven thousand men, of whom roughly a third were Europeans.

The Indian army that opposed Munro at Buxar was substantially larger, perhaps forty to fifty thousand men, but it was weakened by the lack of effective cooperation between the three Indian commanders. Mir Qasim commanded the contingent of the former Nawab of Bengal, Shuja-ud-Daulah commanded the Awadh contingent, and Shah Alam II commanded the Mughal contingent. The three contingents were drawn up in separate positions, and the lack of a unified command was a major handicap in the engagement.

The Battle

The battle opened on the morning of 22 October 1764 with a vigorous British attack on the Indian position. The British Sepoy infantry, supported by the European artillery, advanced in line against the Indian centre, and the Indian cavalry, which had been expected to overwhelm the British infantry, was repeatedly repulsed by the disciplined volleys of the Sepoy battalions. The Mughal contingent under Shah Alam II was the first to give way, and the Awadh contingent under Shuja-ud-Daulah soon followed. Mir Qasim’s contingent held its ground for a time, but it was eventually overwhelmed by the British attack.

The Indian losses in the battle were substantial, and the three Indian commanders were forced to flee the field. Shah Alam II took refuge with the British force, and the emperor subsequently entered into negotiations with the Company that resulted in the Treaty of Allahabad. Shuja-ud-Daulah fled to Awadh, where he was eventually forced to negotiate a separate peace with the Company. Mir Qasim fled to the protection of the Afghan chief Ahmad Shah Abdali, and the former Nawab of Bengal disappeared from history.

The Outcome and the Treaty of Allahabad

The British victory at Buxar was decisive, and it confirmed the Company’s effective control of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. The Treaty of Allahabad, signed in August 1765, was the formal confirmation of this control. By the terms of the treaty, Shah Alam II granted the Company the diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, the right to collect the land revenue of the three provinces. The emperor was assigned a substantial allowance from the revenues of the three provinces, and he was permitted to reside at Allahabad under the protection of the Company. Shuja-ud-Daulah was confirmed as Nawab of Awadh, but he was required to pay a substantial indemnity to the Company and to cede the districts of Kora and Allahabad to the emperor.

The Treaty of Allahabad was events in the history of British India. The grant of the diwani gave the Company the financial resources to extend its authority over much of the subcontinent in the following decades, and the political relationship between the Mughal emperor and the Company, established by the treaty, was the framework within which the Company subsequently extended its territorial control. The decline of the Mughal Empire, examined on the Mughal decline page, was effectively completed by the treaty, for the emperor was now a dependent of the Company, and the formal dissolution of the dynasty in 1857 was simply the final confirmation of a relationship that had been established nearly a century earlier. The battle is also notable as the last of the great set-piece engagements of the Indian military tradition, and it marks a turning point in the Mughal military overview of the period.

Sources

• P.J. Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead (NCHI II.2, 1987), ch. 3.