Curiously enough, however, he began by treating with Surajah Dowlah--the arch-criminal of the Black Hole--instead of crushing him, and, more amazing still, during the course of the negotiations, he deliberately forged Admiral Watson’s name to a treaty intended to deceive an adherent whom he knew to have made terms with the other side. It is the most inexplicable act in his career, and, being so, it is only a waste of words to try and explain it away. He did it, and there’s an end of it. The next act in the now swiftly passing drama was the first and only council of war that Clive ever held. It was the eve of Plassey, an occasion ever memorable in the annals, not only of Britain but of the whole Orient. He was on one bank of the river, Surajah Dowlah was on the other with an army outnumbering his by twenty to one, splendidly equipped, very strong in artillery, and, as usual, supported and officered by the inevitable Frenchmen. The river was the Rubicon which lay between Clive and the Empire of India--and for once in his life he hesitated. He called a council of war. It decided against crossing the river with three thousand men in face of sixty thousand, and Clive endorsed the verdict. Then he went apart under some palm trees and held another and a wiser council with himself, and this council promptly and utterly revoked the decision of the other. The next morning the river was crossed and the next night the little army encamped within a mile of the Nabob’s host. At sunrise the next day Surajah Dowlah, who in the midst of his myriads had passed a night haunted, as has been suggested, by the ghosts of the men and women who perished in the Black Hole, sent forth his forty thousand infantry, his fifteen thousand cavalry, his batteries of fifty guns, and his iron-plated war-elephants to crush the invader once and for all, and on they went like some huge tidal wave, roaring and rushing, to overwhelm some little tree-clad island--and then, just as the human avalanche was in mid-career, the despot weakling’s will wavered, or, more probably, his mind broke down, and he gave the order to halt and retreat, almost before a blow was struck. It was the moment of grace for Clive and he seized it. The three thousand charged the sixty thousand, and all of a sudden the impending tragedy on which the fate of all India from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin depended, was turned into a farce. Of the sixty thousand only five hundred were slain; of the three thousand twenty-two were killed and fifty wounded. The whole thing was over in an hour, and India was won.