Battle of Arcot - Aftermath

Aftermath

Clive's force had achieved an amazing feat in the face of the overwhelming numerical odds against them, but in India numbers were not always the telling factor. The death of the assault commander in the final charge broke his force's spirit. Whatever the combination of circumstances that brought about Clive's victory, the siege of Arcot marked a sea change in the British experience in India. Clive's biographer Mark Bence-Jones wrote, "It may have been luck, it may have been bungling on the part of the enemy, but it created the legend of English courage and invincibility which was to carry English arms in India from one success to another".

Many in southern India, including some of the attacking soldiers, joined the British company's army. When the British began to seriously recruit and train the men from the armies and provinces they conquered, they ended up with a top-notch army of sepoys mixed with a handful of British Army units assigned to India. France lost her colonial empire ambitions, and the fall in her fortunes in India was made worse by French losses a few years later in the Seven Years War.