Lord Clive felt the strength of his position. He refused to go to India so long as his enemies had preponderating power in the Court of Directors; an overwhelming majority of the proprietors seconded his wishes, and the Sullivan party, lately triumphant, was deprived of power. Having been nominated governor-general and commander-in-chief of the British possessions in Bengal he sailed for India, and reached Calcutta in May, 1765. He at once assembled the council, and announced his determination to enforce his two great reforms--the prohibition of receiving presents from the natives, and the prohibition of private trade by the servants of the Company. The whole settlement seemed to be set, as one man, against these measures; but Clive declared that if the functionaries in Calcutta refused obedience, he would send for some civil servants from Madras to aid him in conducting the administration. As he evinced the strength of his resolution by dismissing the most factious of his opponents, the rest became alarmed and submitted to what was inevitable. Scarcely had the governor-general quelled the opposition of the civil service when he had to encounter a formidable mutiny of the officers of the army, occasioned by a diminution of their field allowances. Two hundred English officers engaged in a conspiracy to resign their commissions on the same day, believing that the governor-general would submit to any terms rather than see the army, on which the safety of the empire rested, left without commanders. They were mistaken in their calculations; Clive supplied their places from the officers round his person; he sent for others from Madras; he even gave commissions to some mercantile agents who offered their support at this time. Fortunately the soldiers, and particularly the Sepoys, over whom Clive had unbounded influence, remained steadfast in their allegiance. The leaders were arrested, tried, and dismissed from the service; the others, completely humbled, besought permission to withdraw their resignations, and Clive exhibited lenity to all, save those whom he regarded as the contrivers of the plot. In his foreign policy he was equally successful. The Nabob of Oude, who had threatened invasion, sought for peace as soon as he heard of Clive's arrival in India; and the Emperor of Delhi executed a formal warrant, empowering the Company to collect and administer the revenues of Bengal, Bahar, and Oussa; that is, in fact, to exercise direct sovereignty over these provinces. Never had such a beneficial change been wrought in the short space of eighteen months. The governor-general set a noble example of obedience to his own regulations; he refused the brilliant presents offered him by the native princes, and when Meer Jaffier left him a legacy of sixty thousand pounds, he made the whole over to the Company, in trust, for the officers and soldiers invalided in their service.