Calcutta nights, light memories: <br />claret and billiards, games of dice, <br />ladies of elegance, trivia and muslin, <br />but keen esprit de corps, training, <br />time for drinking. Calcutta nights, <br />the races, officers' parties, <br />fraternal mess dinners and social graces <br />of the King's Thirty-Third for the colonel. <br /> <br />But ever the knife, external <br />in bandit darkness, the smell of excrement <br />beyond the fort along the Hooghly. <br />Fighting confined to fever's strife, <br />quick summer movement to Penang, <br />quit for Company's safety. <br />Ever alertness for Tipu, French advisers, <br />never peace at Cornwallis's price <br />achieved; Haidar's Mysore <br />reduced but a treacherous fang <br />of Tipu in fortressed Seringapatam, <br />buttressed by Mogul succession. <br />The truce broken. No longer friends, <br />Mahratta confederates. once made <br />supporters of Clive at Arcot. Seen <br />to do nothing, protect nothing <br />meant eclipse of Empire after its dawn, <br />with the French keen at the door, <br />Company losses, failure of trade, <br />renewal of piracy off the Malabar coast. <br /> <br />Mangalore. Would they land, the French? <br />make treaties with princes sealed with sugared lips, <br />array at Hyderabad under the tricolour, <br />buttons impressed with the Cap of Liberty? <br />Already 'Citizen Tipu' was on tongue tips <br />from the Western Ghats to the coast. <br />Not long before another Dupleix! <br /> <br />Masses of men of the Little Corporal, <br />from Europe to Egypt, then to India <br />were at least quite possible. Josephine, <br />survivor of the sharpness of the Terror, <br />would need to number her nights <br />if her Corsican's needle point <br />compassed to east!<br /><br />Eric Ratcliffe<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/wellington-in-india-i/
