the Company no nearer to the triumphant conclusion that was to compensate them for heavy military expenditure; while the English Company, though hard pressed, was by no means beaten; their troops were solid and well led, their finances in very fair condition. Dupleix might have gained ground, at best unstable and slippery, among the native princes; but in Europe the English government was remonstrating strenuously, and would certainly go beyond remonstrance whenever it should become manifest to the English people that their Indian trade and possessions were seriously menaced. The headquarters of each rival Company, at Madras and Pondicherry, lay along an open roadstead, completely exposed to attack by sea. The English fleet under Admiral Watson had just reached the coast, and the French government must have been conscious of the inferiority of their own navy. And since the treaty of 17541 maintained the French in possession of much larger territory on the Coromandel coast than was awarded to the English--while Bussy was still at Hyderabad with his division of 5000 welldisciplined troops-we can only count the loss of Dupleix himself, and the recognition of Mahomed Ali in the Carnatic, as the two points in Godeheu's arrangement that could be said to have placed the French at a distinct disadvantage in India.

The French ministers were actuated, moreover, by the imperious and fundamental necessity of restoring their dilapidated finances; they could not, in justice to their over-taxed people, persist in the unsound and extravagant system of subsidising a commercial Company that had plunged into the quicksand of Indian wars. In 1754 the French Company were on the verge 1 Published in Madras, January, 1755.

himself steadily against Chunda Sahib; but the fortress was beleaguered by a greatly superior army, with a strong French contingent; and it was only saved when Clive made an effective diversion by his daring seizure of the capital of the Carnatic, Arcot. This was the turning-point of the war. A large division of the besieging army, despatched from Trichinopoly to retake Arcot, made some fierce assaults that were repulsed by the desperate valour of Clive's scanty garrison, who made such an obstinate stand behind very feeble defences that the attempt had to be abandoned. Then the English and their allies, led by Clive and Lawrence, took the open field against their enemy, cut off the French communications, dispersed Chunda Sahib's army, captured the French officers, and completely relieved Trichinopoly. Chunda Sahib was murdered by the Marathas who had joined Mahomed Ali; and Mozuffur Jung was killed in a skirmish on his march towards Hyderabad.

Meanwhile Bussy had established himself at Hyderabad, where he had set up a Nizám, had organized a complete corps d'armée under his own command; and had made himself so much too powerful for the native government that he necessarily provoked much jealousy, enmity, and plotting against him. Having succeeded, nevertheless, by great dexterity and firmness in maintaining his position, he obtained from the Nizám an assignment of four rich districts lying along the eastern coast above the Carnatic, still called the Northern Sirkars, which yielded ample revenue for the payment of his troops. Yet Bussy well knew that his footing at Hyderabad, far inland, was isolated and precarious, dependent entirely on a semi-mutinous army under a few French officers. He had therefore consistently

advised making peace with the English; and now the campaign in the Carnatic was visibly turning against Dupleix, who had no military commander to match against Clive and Lawrence.

Dupleix was beginning to find that practice was making the English no worse players than his own side at the game which he had himself introduced. The whole strength of the French had been exerted, and vainly exhausted, against Trichinopoly; the protracted siege had brought them nothing but disaster. Not only his native allies, but also the French Government at home, were losing their former confidence in Dupleix; for his policy may be said to have broken down when the French candidates for rulership were worsted, and when after some years of heavy expenditure on these irregular hostilities the results fell so far short of the expectations that he had raised. Toward the end of 1753 he made overtures for peace, but so soon as the English discovered that he intended to retain in his own person the Nawabship of the Carnatic, they broke off negotiations. As his policy fell into disrepute, he had been naturally led to disguise the real condition of the Company's finances; so when the Directors in Paris were suddenly advised from Pondicherry that they were two millions of francs in debt, they determined at once to recall him. The English Company at home had long been pressing their government to protest diplomatically against this illegitimate system of private war, and against all the proceedings in India of Dupleix, whose manifest object they declared to be the extirpation of their settlements. They urged that 'the trade carried on by the East India Company is the trade of the English nation in the East Indies, and so far a National concern'; that the French power was

of insolvency; their affairs were under official enquiry; they were demanding large subsidies from the treasury, and it was clear that the public credit would suffer seriously if they were allowed to go into liquidation. Dupleix had laid down the principle, which he was endeavouring to impress upon his government, that no Company could subsist in India which had not a fixed revenue from territory to provide for the cost of establishments. But at that time it was an axiom in France, and even in England, that conquest was incompatible with commerce; the opinion of all French authorities, mercantile and administrative, was unanimous against allowing a trading Company to acquire large territory; and these views had for years been impressed sedulously, though in vain, upon Dupleix. Whether his principle was right or wrong need not be discussed, for the real point is that it was just then impracticable. The exhaustion of the Company's resources, the embarrassments of French finance, and the weakness of the French navy, must have furnished the government with irresistible arguments against persisting in his policy. The true state and inevitable tendency of the contest between the two nations in India has been recognized by M. Marion, in his study of the history of French finance between 1749 and 17541. In defend

1 'L'impuissance absolue d'un homme, quelqu'il soit, à triompher d'une grande nation qui veut vaincre, a été trop souvent mise en relief par l'histoire pour qu'il soit permis de conserver quelques illusions sur ce qu'eut été la lutte de Dupleix et des Anglais. La véritable faute du gouvernement français n'a pas été le rappel de Dupleix; elle a été de rendre impossible par le déficit, par le gaspillage, par la décadence de notre marine, le succès de la politique que Dupleix a voulu suivre, et il serait inique de faire retomber sur le contrôleur général la responsabilité de ces maux, qu'il a voulu, mais qu'il n'a pu, empêcher.'-Machault d'Arnouville, par M. Marion (p. 442), 1891.

ing Machault d'Arnouville, the Controller-General of that period, from the imputation of having sacrificed an empire in Asia by recalling Dupleix, he shows that if the French government had retained his services and supported his policy, the ultimate event could not have been materially changed. The whole fabric of territorial predominance which Dupleix had been so industriously building up was loosely and hastily cemented; it depended upon the superiority of a few mercenary troops, the perilous friendship of Eastern princes, and the personal qualities of those in command on the spot. It was thus exposed to all the winds of fortune, and had no sure foundation.

The first thing needful before any solid dominion could be erected by the French in India was to secure their communications with Europe by breaking the power of the English at sea; but this stroke was beyond the strength of the French in 1754. In the last war the French navy had, according to Voltaire, been entirely destroyed; and though since the peace of 1748 it had to some extent recovered, yet we are told that in 1755 France had only sixty-seven ships of the line and thirtyone frigates to set against one hundred and thirty-one English men-of-war and eighty-one frigates. When the Seven Years War began in 1756, the French did make a vigorous attempt to regain command of the waterways; and it must be clear that to their failure in that direct trial of naval strength, far more than to their abandonment of the policy of Dupleix, must be attributed the eventual disappearance of their prospects of establishing a permanent ascendancy in India.