The English acquired Madras, their first trading post in India, in the reign of Charles I (1639). Later, they obtained possession of Bombay, Calcutta, and other points, but they had not got control of the country, which was still governed by native princes. The French also had established an important trading post at Pondicherry, south of Madras, and were now secretly planning through alliance with the native rulers to get possession of the entire country. They had met with some success in their efforts, and the times seemed to favor their gaining still greater influence unless some decided measures should be taken to prevent them. At this juncture Robert Clive, a young man who had been employed as clerk in the service of the English East India Company, but who had obtained a humble position in the army, obtained permission to try his hand at driving back the enemy. It was a work for which he was fitted. He met with success from the first, and he followed it up by the splendid victory of Arcot, 1751, which practically gave the English control of southern India. Shortly after that, Clive returned to England. During his absence the native prince of Bengal undertook an expedition against Calcutta, a wealthy British trading post. He captured the fort which protected it (1756), and seizing the principal English residents, one hundred and forty-six in number, drove them at the point of the sword into a prison called the "Black Hole," a dungeon less than twenty feet square, and having but two small windows. In such a climate, in the fierce heat of midsummer, that dungeon would have been too close for a single European captive; to crowd it with more than sevenscore persons for a night meant death by all the agonies of heat, thirst, and suffocation. In vain they endeavored to bribe the guard to transfer part of them to another room, in vain they begged for mercy, in vain they tried to burst the door. Their jailers only mocked them and would do nothing. When daylight came the floor was heaped with corpses. Out of the hundred and forty-six prisoners only twenty-three were alive and they were so changed "that their own mothers would not have known them."[1] [1] Macaulay's "Essay on Clive." When Clive returned he was met with a cry for vengeance. He gathered his troops, recovered Calcutta, and ended by fighting that great battle of Plassey, 1757, which was the means of permanently establishing the English empire in India on a firm foundation. (See map opposite.) 545. The Seven Years' War in Europe and America, 1756-1763.