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naged my own affairs according to my own judgment, "and I managed the Company's according to your in"structions!"* After many harassing inquiries, and three years' detention, his innocence was publicly acknowledged; but his long imprisonment had broken his health, or rather, perhaps, his heart; he lingered for some time in a painful illness, and in 1754 expired. The Government, wise and just too late, granted a pension to his widow.

Only seven days after La Bourdonnais had sailed from Pondicherry, Dupleix, in utter defiance of his recent promise, obtained a warrant from his Council annulling the capitulation of Madras. Thus, so far from restoring the city within a few weeks, on payment of the stipulated sum, the principal inhabitants were brought under a guard to Pondicherry, and paraded in triumph through the streets. Such conduct had, at least, the advantage of absolving them from the obligation of their previous parole, and several of them, assuming Hindoo attire or other disguises, made their way from Pondicherry to Fort St. David, the two settlements being less than twenty miles asunder. Among those who thus escaped was young Robert Clive, then a merchant's clerk, afterwards a conqueror and statesman.

It was not long ere some troops were sent out by Dupleix (Dupleix himself was no warrior) for the reduction of Fort St. David; but the Nabob of Arcot, to whom the cession of Madras had been promised, being now disappointed in his hopes, and filled with resentment, joined his forces to the English, and the invaders were repulsed with loss. Not discouraged, Dupleix opened a new negotiation with the Nabob, who, on some fresh lures held out to him, consented to desert the English, and again embrace the French interest, with the usual fickleness of an Asiatic despot. Thus, in March 1747, Dupleix could under better auspices resume his expedition against Fort St. David, and his soldiers were advancing, as they thought, to a certain conquest, when a number of ships were descried in the offing as about to anchor in the roads. These were no sooner recognized as English than

* Bernardin de St. Pierre, Œuvres, vol. vi. p. 7. ed. 1820.

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the French relinquished their design, and hastened back to Pondicherry.

The English fleet, thus opportune in its appearance, was commanded by Admiral Griffin, who had been sent from England with two men of war to strengthen the Bengal squadron. In the next ensuing months further reinforcements, both naval and military, were brought at different times by Admiral Boscawen and Major Lawrence; the former taking the chief command at sea, and the second on shore. So large was this accession of force as to turn at once, and heavily, the scale against the French. It became possible, nay, even, as it seemed, not difficult, to retaliate the loss of Madras by the capture of Pondicherry. With this view the English took the field in August 1748, having in readiness 2,700 European troops, 1,000 sailors, who had been taught the manual exercise during the voyage, and 2,000 Sepoys in the service of the Company. At the news of this armament, the greatest, perhaps, from modern Europe which India had yet seen, the Nabob of Arcot hastened to change sides once more, and declare himself an English ally; he even promised the succour of 2,000 horse, but only sent 300. Dupleix, on his part, could muster 1,800 Europeans and 3,000 Sepoys, but his dispositions were by far the more skilful and able. Though accused of too much considering his own safety, and always keeping beyond the reach of shot*, he, at all events, knew how to inspire his men with military ardour, while the English were dispirited by the want of practice in their commanders, wasted by sickness, and harassed by the rains, which had begun three weeks before the usual season.

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At length they found it necessary to raise the siege, after thirty-one days of open trenches, and the loss of 1,000 men. French Governor, in his usual boastful strain, immediately proclaimed his triumph by letters to all the chief Soubahdars of India, and even to the Great Mogul.

* This was one of the accusations afterwards brought against Dupleix by the French East India Company. Dupleix does not to have denied the facts, but he pleaded que le bruit des armes suspendait ses reflexions et que le calme seul convenait à son genie! (Mill's Hist. vol. iii. p. 74.)

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Such was the state of affairs in India when the tidings came that a peace had been signed at Aix La Chapelle, and that a restitution of conquests had been stipulated. It became necessary for Dupleix to yield Madras to the English, which he did with extreme reluctance, and after long delay. On this occasion of recovering Madras, the English also took possession of St. Thomé, which the natives had conquered from the Portuguese, but which of late "seemed," says Mr. Orme, "to belong to nobody, "for there were no officers, either civil or military, acting "with authority in the place."

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The rival settlements of Pondicherry and Madras, though now debarred from any further direct hostility, were not long in assailing each other indirectly, as auxiliaries in the contests of the native Princes. scene was rapidly opening to the ambition of Dupleix, The Nizam, or Viceroy of the Deccan under the Mogu had lately died, and been succeeded by his son, Nazir Jung, but one of his grandsons, Mirzapha Jung, had claimed the vacant throne. At the same time, in the dependent province of the Carnatic, Chunda Sahib, sonin-law of a former Nabob, appeared as a competitor to the reigning Prince, Anwar-ood-Deen. There seems the less necessity to weigh the justice of these various claims, since it scarcely formed an element in the consideration of those who espoused them. Neither the French nor the English at this period had any object in such struggles beyond their own aggrandizement, and the humiliation of their rivals; and, moreover, so loose and unsettled were then the politics of India,-with the authority of the Great Mogul supreme in theory and null in fact, that plausible arguments might have been found in favour of the worst pretensions. Dupleix eagerly seized the opportunity to enhance his own importance, by establishing through his aid a Viceroy of the Deccan and a Nabob of the Carnatic. He promised his support to the two pretenders, who had combined their interests and their armies, and who were now reinforced with 2,000 Sepoys and several hundred Europeans. Nor did they want skilful officers from Pondicherry; one, above all, the

*Orme's Hist., vol. i. p. 131.

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Marquis de Bussy, showed himself no less able in the field than Dupleix was in council. In August 1749 a battle ensued beneath the fort of Amboor, when the discipline of the French auxiliaries turned the tide of victory, and when the veteran and subtle Nabob, Anwar-ood-Deen, was slain. . His capital, Arcot, and the greater part of his dominions, fell into the hands of the conquerors. His son, Mahomed Ali, with the wreck of his army, fled to Trichinopoly, and endeavoured to maintain himself, assuming the title of Nabob of Arcot, and acknowledged as such by the English; but their zeal in his behalf was faint and languid, and, moreover, they were at this juncture entangled with some insignificant operations in Tanjore. Dupleix, on the contrary, was all activity and ardour. Even on learning that his confederate, Mirzapha Jung, had suffered a reverse of fortune, and was a prisoner in the camp of Nazir Jung, he did not slacken either in warfare or negotiation. When, at length, in December 1750, the army which he had set in motion came in sight of Nazir Jung's, the Indian prince viewed its scanty numbers with scorn, calling out that it was only "the mad attempt of a parcel of drunken "Europeans! But even before the trumpets sounded to battle Nazir Jung found cause to rue the power of Dupleix. A conspiracy had been formed by the French among his own followers; one of them aimed a carabine as Nazir Jung rode up on his elephant, and the Indian prince fell dead on the plain. His head was then severed from his body, and carried on a pole before the tent of Mirzapha Jung, who, freed from his fetters, was by the whole united army-thus sudden are the turns of Oriental politics!-hailed as the Nizam.

The exultation of Dupleix knew no bounds. On the spot where Nazir Jung had fallen he began to build a town, with the pompous title of Dupleix Fatihabad,— "the City of the Victory of Dupleix,”—and in the midst of that town he laid the foundation of a stately pillar, whose four sides were to bear inscriptions, proclaiming in four different languages the triumph of his arms. With the same vain-glorious spirit he resolved to celebrate, at the seat of his own government, the installation of the new Nizam. On the day of that ceremony he

might have passed for an Asiatic potentate, as he entered the town in the same palanquin with his ally, and in the garb of a Mahometan Omrah, with which the Prince himself had clothed him. He accepted, or assumed, the government, under the Mogul, of all the country along the eastern coast between the river Kistna and Cape Comorin; a country little less in extent than France itself. A still higher honour, and still more important privilege, in the opinion of the natives, was the leave he obtained to carry, among his other trappings, the emblem of a fish.* No petition was granted by the Nizam unless signed by the hand of Dupleix; no money was henceforth to be current in the Carnatic except from the mint of Pondicherry. "Send me reinforcements," wrote Bussy to his chief," and in one year more the Emperor shall "tremble at the name of Dupleix!" But the French Governor soon discovered that his own vanity had been a fatal bar in the way of his ambition. His rivals at Fort St. George and Fort St. David took an alarm at his lofty titles which they might not have felt so soon at his extended power. How superior was their own conduct in prudence! how superior in success! The English in India have continued to call themselves traders long after they had become princes; Dupleix, on the contrary, had assumed the title of Prince while still, in truth, a trader.

It appeared on this occasion, to the heads of the English factory, that, although the contest for the Deccan had been decided by the fall of Nazir Jung, they might still advantageously take part in the contest for the Carnatic. Accordingly they sent several hundred men under Captain Gingen to reinforce their confederate, Mahomed Ali; but these troops were put to flight at Volcondah, and compelled to take shelter with Mahomed Ali in his last stronghold of Trichinopoly. There he was soon besieged and closely pressed by the army of Chunda Sahib. and the auxiliaries of Dupleix. If the place should fall it was clear that the French would gain the mastery over

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* Orme's Hist., vol. i. p. 161. "This distinction," he adds, " was never granted but to persons of the first note in the Empire.". Bishop Heber says that it is considered even a badge of Royalty. Journal, October 28. 1824.

† Article DUPLEIX in the Biographie Universelle by Count de Lally Tollendal.

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