A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume VI Part 7

The retreat of the Hollanders admitted of the movement; the small field-pieces, as yet dragged by hand, were pointed against the English column. Marshal Saxe, with difficulty keeping his seat upon his horse, galloped hastily up to the Irish brigade, commanding all the troops he met on the way to make no more false attacks, and to act in concert. All the forces of the French army burst simultaneously upon the English. The Irish regiments in the service of France, nearly all composed of Jacobite emigrants, fought with fury. Twice the brave enemy rallied, but the officers fell on all sides, the ranks were everywhere broken; at last they retired, without disorder, without enfeeblement, preserving, even in defeat, the honor of a vigorous resistance. The battle was gained at the moment when the most clear-sighted had considered it lost. Marshal Saxe had still strength left to make his way to the king. "I have lived long enough, sir," he said, "now that I have seen your Majesty victorious.

You now know on what the fortune of battles depends."

The victory of Fontenoy, like that of Denain, restored the courage and changed the situation of France. When the King of Prussia heard of his ally's success, he exclaimed with a grin, "This is about as useful to us as a battle gained on the banks of the Scamander." His selfish absorption in his personal and direct interests obscured the judgment of Frederick the Great. He, however, did justice to Marshal Saxe: "There was a discussion the other day as to what battle had reflected most honor on the general commanding," he wrote, a long while after the battle of Fontenoy; "some suggested that of Almanza, others that of Turin; but I suggested--and everybody finally agreed that it was undoubtedly that in which the general had been at death's door when it was delivered."

The fortress of Tournai surrendered on the 22d of May; the citadel capitulated on the 19th of June. Ghent, Bruges, Oudenarde, Dendermonde, Ostend, Nienport, yielded, one after another, to the French armies. In the month of February, 1746, Marshal Saxe terminated the campaign by taking Brussels. By the 1st of the previous September Louis XV. had returned in triumph to Paris.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRUSSELS----159]

Henceforth he remained alone confronting Germany, which was neutral, or had rallied round the restored empire. On the 13th of September, the Grand-duke of Tuscany had been proclaimed emperor at Frankfurt, under the name of Francis I. The indomitable resolution of the queen his wife had triumphed. In spite of the checks she suffered in the Low Countries, Maria Theresa still withstood, at all points, the pacific advances of the belligerents.

On the 4th of June, the King of Prussia had gained a great victory at Freilberg. "I have honored the bill of exchange your Majesty drew on me at Fontenoy," he wrote to Louis XV. A series of successful fights had opened the road to Saxony. Frederick headed thither rapidly; on the 18th of December he occupied Dresden.

This time, the King of Poland, Elector of Saxony, forced the hand of the new empress: "The Austrians and the Saxons have just sent ministers. .h.i.ther to negotiate for peace," said a letter to France from the King of Prussia; "so I have no course open but to sign. Would that I might be fortunate enough to serve as the instrument of general pacification.

After discharging my duty towards the state I govern, and towards my family, no object will be nearer to my heart than that of being able to render myself of service to your Majesty's interests." Frederick the Great returned to Berlin covered with glory, and definitively master of Silesia. "Learn once for all," he said at a later period, in his instructions to his successor, "that where a kingdom is concerned, you take when you can, and that you are never wrong when you are not obliged to hand over. An insolent and a cynical maxim of brute force, which conquerors have put in practice at all times, without daring to set it up as a principle.

Whilst Berlin was in gala trim to celebrate the return of her monarch in triumph, Europe had her eyes fixed upon the unparalleled enterprise of a young man, winning, courageous, and frivolous as he was, attempting to recover by himself alone the throne of his fathers. For nearly three years past, Charles Edward Stuart, son of Chevalier St. George, had been awaiting in France the fulfilment of the promises and hopes which had been flashed before his eyes. Weary of hope deferred, he had conceived the idea of a bold stroke. "Why not attempt to cross in a vessel to the north of Scotland?" had been the question put to him by Cardinal Tencin, who had, some time before, owed his cardinal's hat to the dethroned King of Great Britain. "Your presence will be enough to get you a party and an army, and France will be obliged to give you aid."

Charles Edward had followed this audacious counsel. Landing, in June, 1745, in the Highlands of Scotland, he had soon found the clans of the mountaineers hurrying to join his standard. At the head of this wild army, he had in a few months gained over the whole of Scotland. On the 20th of September he was proclaimed at Edinburgh Regent of England, France, Scotland, and Ireland, for his father, King James III. George II. had left Hanover; the Duke of c.u.mberland, returning from Germany, took the command of the troops a.s.sembled to oppose the invader. Their success in the battle of Preston-Pans against General Cope had emboldened the Scots; at the end of December, 1745, Prince Charles Edward and his army had advanced as far as Derby.

It was the fate of the Stuarts, whether heroes or dastards, to see their hopes blasted all at once, and to drag down in their fall their most zealous and devoted partisans. The aid, so often promised by France and Spain, had dwindled down to the private expeditions of certain brave adventurers. The Duke of Richelieu, it was said, was to put himself at their head. "As to the embarkation at Dunkerque," writes the advocate Barbier, at the close of the year 1745, "there is great anxiety about it, for we are at the end of December, and it is not yet done, which gives every one occasion to make up news according to his fancy. This uncertainty discourages the Frenchman, who gives out that our expedition will not take place, or, at any rate, will not succeed." Charles Edward had already been forced to fall back upon Scotland. As in 1651, at the time of the attempt of Charles II., England remained quite cold in the presence of the Scottish invasion. The Duke of c.u.mberland was closely pressing the army of the mountaineers. On the 23d of April, 1746, the foes found themselves face to face at Culloden, in the environs of Inverness. Charles Edward was completely beaten, and the army of the Highlanders destroyed; the prince only escaped either death or captivity by the determined devotion of his partisans, whether distinguished or obscure; a hundred persons had risked their lives for him, when he finally succeeded, on the 10th of October, in touching land, in Brittany, near St. Pol de Leon. His friends and his defenders were meanwhile dying for his cause on scaffold or gallows.

The anger and severity displayed by the English government towards the Jacobites were aggravated by the checks encountered upon the Continent by the coalition. At the very moment when the Duke of c.u.mberland was defeating Charles Edward at Culloden, Antwerp was surrendering to Louis XV. in person: Mons, Namur, and Charleroi were not long before they fell.

Prince Charles of Lorraine was advancing to the relief of the besieged places; Marshal Saxe left open to him the pa.s.sage of the Meuse. The French camp seemed to be absorbed in pleasures; the most famous actors from Paris were ordered to amuse the general and the soldiers. On the 10th of October, in the evening, Madame Favart came forward on the stage.

"To-morrow," said she, "there will be no performance, on account of the battle: the day after, we shall have the honor of giving you _Le Coq du Village_." At the same time the marshal sent the following order to the columns which were already forming on the road from St. Tron to Liege, near the village of Raucoux: "Whether the attacks succeed or not, the troops will remain in the position in which night finds them, in order to recommence the a.s.sault upon the enemy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRUSSELS----159]

The battle of October 11 left the battle-field in the hands of the victors, the sole result of a b.l.o.o.d.y and obstinate engagement. Marshal Saxe went to rest himself at Paris; the people's enthusiasm rivalled and indorsed the favors shown to him by the king. At the opera, the whole house rose at the entrance of the valiant foreigner who had dedicated his life to France; there was clapping of hands, and the actress who in the prologue took the character of Glory leaned over towards the marshal with a crown of laurel. "The marshal was surprised, and refused it with profound bows. Glory insisted; and as the marshal was too far off in the boxes for her to hand it to him, the Duke of Biron took the crown from Glory's hands and pa.s.sed it under Marshal Saxe's left arm. This striking action called forth fresh acclamations, 'Hurrah! for Marshal Saxe!' and great clapping of hands. The king has given the marshal Chambord for life, and has even ordered it to be furnished. Independently of all these honors, it is said that the marshal is extremely rich and powerful just now, solely as the result of his safe-conducts, which, being applicable to a considerable extent of country, have been worth immense sums to him." The second marriage of the dauphin--who had already lost the Infanta--with the Princess of Saxony, daughter of the King of Poland, was about to raise, before long, the fortune and favor of Marshal Saxe to the highest pitch: he was proclaimed marshal-general of the king's armies.

So much luck and so much glory in the Low Countries covered, in the eyes of France and of Europe, the checks encountered by the king's armies in Italy. The campaign of 1745 had been very brilliant. Parma, Piacenza, Montferrat, nearly all Milaness, with the exception of a few fortresses, were in the hands of the Spanish and French forces. The King of Sardinia had recourse to negotiation; he amused the Marquis of Argenson, at that time Louis XV.'s foreign minister, a man of honest, expansive, but chimerical views. At the moment when the king and the marquis believed themselves to be remodelling the map of Europe at their pleasure, they heard that Charles Emmanuel had resumed the offensive. A French corps had been surprised at Asti, on the 5th of March; thirty thousand Austrians marched down from the Tyrol, and the Spaniards evacuated Milan.

A series of checks forced Marshal Maillebois to effect a retreat; the enemy's armies crossed the Var, and invaded French territory. Marshal Belle-Isle fell back to Puget, four leagues from Toulon.

The Austrians had occupied Genoa, the faithful ally of France. Their vengefulness and their severe exactions caused them to lose the fruits of their victory. The grandees were ruined by war-requisitions; the populace were beside themselves at the insolence of the conquerors; senators and artisans made common cause. An Austrian captain having struck a workman, the pa.s.sengers in the streets threw themselves upon him and upon his comrades who came to his a.s.sistance; the insurrection spread rapidly in all quarters of Genoa; there was a pillage of the weapons lying heaped in the palace of the Doges; the senators put themselves at the head of the movement; the peasants in the country flew to arms. The Marquis of Botta, the Austrian commandant, being attacked on all sides, and too weak to resist, sallied from the town with nine regiments. The allies, disquieted and dismayed, threatened Provence, and laid siege to Genoa. Louis XV. felt the necessity of not abandoning his ally; the Duke of Boufflers and six thousand French shut themselves up in the place.

"Show me the danger," the general had said on entering the town; "it is my duty to ascertain it; I shall make all my glory depend upon securing you from it." The resistance of Genoa was effectual; but it cost the life of the Duke of Boufflers, who was wounded in an engagement, and died three days before the retreat of the Austrians, on the 6th of July, 1747.

On the 19th of July, Common-Sense Belle-Isle (_Bon-Sens de Belle-Isle_), as the Chevalier was called at court, to distinguish him from his brother the marshal, nicknamed _Imagination,_ attacked, with a considerable body of troops, the Piedmontese intrenchments at the a.s.sietta Pa.s.s, between the fortresses of Exilles and Fenestrelles; at the same time, Marshal Belle-Isle was seeking a pa.s.sage over the Stura Pa.s.s, and the Spanish army was attacking Piedmont by the way of the Apennines. The engagement at the heights of a.s.sietta was obstinate; Chevalier Belle-Isle, wounded in both arms, threw himself bodily upon the palisades, to tear them down with his teeth; he was killed, and the French sustained a terrible defeat;--five thousand men were left on the battle-field. The campaign of Italy was stopped. The King of Spain, Philip V., enfeebled and exhausted almost in infancy, had died on the 9th of July, 1746. The fidelity of his successor, Ferdinand VI., married to a Portuguese princess, appeared doubtful; he had placed at the head of his forces in Italy the Marquis of Las Minas, with orders to preserve to Spain her only army. "The Spanish soldiers are of no more use to us than if they were so much cardboard," said the French troops. Europe was tired of the war.

England avenged herself for her reverses upon the Continent by her successes at sea; the French navy, neglected systematically by Cardinal Fleury, did not even suffice for the protection of commerce. The Hollanders, who had for a long while been undecided, and had at last engaged in the struggle against France without any declaration of war, bore, in 1747, the burden of the hostilities. Count Lowendahl, a friend of Marshal Saxe, and, like him, in the service of France, had taken Sluys and Sas-de-Gand; Bergen-op-Zoom was besieged; on the 1st of July, Marshal Saxe had gained, under the king's own eye, the battle of Lawfeldt. As in 1672, the French invasion had been the signal for a political revolution in Holland; the aristocratical burgessdom, which had resumed power, succ.u.mbed once more beneath the efforts of the popular party, directed by the house of Na.s.sau and supported by England. "The republic has need of a chief against an ambitious and perfidious neighbor who sports with the faith of treaties," said a deputy of the States-general on the day of the proclamation of the stadtholderate, re-established in favor of William IV., grand-nephew of the great William III., and son-in-law of the King of England, George II. Louis XV. did not let himself be put out by this outburst. "The Hollanders are good folks," he wrote to Marshal Noailles: "it is said, however, that they are going to declare war against us; they will lose quite as much as we shall."

Bergen-op-Zoom was taken and plundered on the 16th of September. Count Lowendahl was made a marshal of France. "Peace is in Maestricht, Sir,"

was Maurice of Saxony's constant remark to the king. On the 9th of April, 1748, the place was invested, before the thirty-five thousand Russians, promised to England by the Czarina Elizabeth, had found time to make their appearance on the Rhine. A congress was already a.s.sembled at Aix-la-Chapelle to treat for peace. The Hollanders, whom the Marquis of Argenson before his disgrace used always to call "the amba.s.sadors of England," took fright at the spectacle of Maestricht besieged; from parleys they proceeded to the most vehement urgency; and England yielded.

The preliminaries of peace were signed on the 30th of April; it was not long before Austria and Spain gave in their adhesion. On the 18th of October the definitive treaty was concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle. France generously restored all her conquests, without claiming other advantages beyond the a.s.surance of the duchies of Parma and Piacenza to the Infante Don Philip, son-in-law of Louis XV. England surrendered to France the Island of Cape Breton and the colony of Louisbourg, the only territory she had preserved from her numerous expeditions against the French colonies and from the immense losses inflicted upon French commerce.

The Great Frederic kept Silesia; the King of Sardinia the territories already ceded by Austria. Only France had made great conquests; and only she retained no increment of territory. She recognized the Pragmatic-Sanction in favor of Austria and the Protestant succession in favor of George II. Prince Charles Edward, a refugee in France, refused to quit the hospitable soil which had but lately offered so magnificent an asylum to the unfortunates of his house: he was, however, carried off, whilst at the Opera, forced into a carriage, and conveyed far from the frontier. "As stupid as the peace!" was the bitter saying in the streets of Paris.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Arrest of Charles Edward----166]

The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had a graver defect than that of fruitlessness; it was not and could not be durable. England was excited, ambitious of that complete empire of the sea which she had begun to build up upon the ruins of the French navy and the decay of Holland, and greedy of distant conquests over colonies which the French could not manage to defend. In proportion as the old influence of Richelieu and of Louis XIV. over European politics grew weaker and weaker, English influence, founded upon the growing power of a free country and a free government, went on increasing in strength. Without any other ally but Spain, herself wavering in her fidelity, the French remained exposed to the attempts of England, henceforth delivered from the phantom of the Stuarts. "The peace concluded between England and France in 1748 was, as regards Europe, nothing but a truce," says Lord Macaulay "it was not even a truce in other quarters of the globe." The mutual rivalry and mistrust between the two nations began to show themselves everywhere, in the East as well as in the West, in India as well as in America.

CHAPTER LIII.----LOUIS XV., FRANCE IN THE COLONIES. 1745-1763.

France was already beginning to perceive her sudden abas.e.m.e.nt in Europe; the defaults of her generals as well as of her government sometimes struck the king himself; he threw the blame of it on the barrenness of his times. "This age is not fruitful in great men," he wrote to Marshal Noailles: "you know that we miss subjects for all objects, and you have one before your eyes in the case of the army which certainly impresses me more than any other." Thus spoke Louis XV. on the eve of the battle of Fontenoy Marshal Saxe was about to confer upon the French arms a transitory l.u.s.tre; but the king, who loaded him with riches and honors, never forgot that he was not his born subject. "I allow that Count Saxe is the best officer to command that we have," he would say; "but he is a Huguenot, he wants to be supreme, and he is always saying that, if he is thwarted, he will enter some other service. Is that zeal for France?

I see, however, very few of ours who aim high like him."

The king possessed at a distance, in the colonies of the Two Indies, as the expression then was, faithful servants of France, pa.s.sionately zealous for her glory, "aiming high," ambitious or disinterested, able politicians or heroic pioneers, all ready to sacrifice both property and life for the honor and power of their country: it is time to show how La Bourdonnais, Dupleix, Bussy, Lally-Tollendal were treated in India; what a.s.sistance, what guidance, what encouragement the Canadians and their ill.u.s.trious chiefs received from France, beginning with Champlain, one of the founders of the colony, and ending with Montcalm, its latest defender. It is a painful but a salutary spectacle to see to what meannesses a sovereign and a government may find themselves reduced through a weak complaisance towards the foreigner, in the feverish desire of putting an end to a war frivolously undertaken and feebly conducted.

French power in India threw out more l.u.s.tre, but was destined to speedier, and perhaps more melancholy, extinction than in Canada.

Single-handed in the East the chiefs maintained the struggle against the incapacity of the French government and the dexterous tenacity of the enemy; in America the population of French extraction upheld to the bitter end the name, the honor, and the flag of their country. "The fate of France," says Voltaire, "has nearly always been that her enterprises, and even her successes, beyond her own frontiers should become fatal to her." The defaults of the government and the jealous pa.s.sions of the colonists themselves, in the eighteenth century, seriously aggravated the military reverses which were to cost the French nearly all their colonies.

More than a hundred years previously, at the outset of Louis XIV.'s personal reign, and through the persevering efforts of Colbert marching in the footsteps of Cardinal Richelieu, an India Company had been founded for the purpose of developing French commerce in those distant regions, which had always been shrouded in a mysterious halo of fancied wealth and grandeur. Several times the Company had all but perished; it had revived under the vigorous impulse communicated by Law, and had not succ.u.mbed at the collapse of his system. It gave no money to its shareholders, who derived their benefits only from a partial concession of the tobacco.

revenues, granted by the king to the Company, but its directors lived a life of magnificence in the East, where they were authorized to trade on their own account. Abler and bolder than all his colleagues, Joseph Dupleix, member of a Gascon family and son of the comptroller-general of Hainault, had dreamed of other destinies than the management of a counting-house; he aspired to endow France with the empire of India.

Placed at a very early age at the head of the French establishments at Chandernuggur, he had improved the city and constructed a fleet, all the while acquiring for himself an immense fortune; he had just been sent to Pondicherry as governor-general of the Company's agencies, when the war of succession to the empire broke out in 1742. For a long time past Dupleix and his wife, who was called in India Princess Jane, had been silently forming a vast network of communications and correspondence which kept them acquainted with the innumerable intrigues of all the petty native courts. Madame Dupleix, a Creole, brought up in India, understood all its dialects. Her husband had been the first to conceive the idea of that policy which was destined before long to deliver India to the English, his imitators; mingling everywhere in the incessant revolutions which were hatching all about him, he gave the support of France at one time to one pretender and at another to another, relying upon the discipline of the European troops and upon the force of his own genius for securing the ascendency to his protege of the moment: thus increasing little by little French influence and dominion throughout all the Hindoo territory. Accustomed to dealing with the native princes, he had partially adopted their ways of craft and violence; more concerned for his object than about the means of obtaining it, he had the misfortune, at the outset of the contest, to clash with another who was ambitious for the glory of France, and as courageous but less able a politician than he; their rivalry, their love of power, and their inflexible attachment to their own ideas, under the direction of a feeble government, thenceforth stamped upon the relations of the two great European nations in India a regrettable character of duplicity: all the splendor and all the efforts of Dupleix's genius could never efface it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dupleix----168]

Concord as yet reigned between Dupleix and the governor of Bourbon and of Ile de France, Bertrand Francis Mahe de La Bourdonnais, when, in the month of September, 1746, the latter put in an appearance with a small squadron in front of Madras, already one of the princ.i.p.al English establishments. Commodore Peyton, who was cruising in Indian waters, after having been twice beaten by La Bourdonnais, had removed to a distance with his flotilla; the town was but feebly fortified; the English, who had for a while counted upon the protection of the Nabob of the Carnatic, did not receive the a.s.sistance they expected;,they surrendered at the first shot, promising to pay a considerable sum for the ransom of Madras, which the French were to retain as security until the debt was completely paid. La Bourdonnais had received from France this express order "You will not, keep any of the conquests you may make in India." The chests containing the ransom of the place descended slowly from the white town, which was occupied solely by Europeans and by the English settlements, to the black town, inhabited by a mixed population of natives and foreigners of various races, traders or artisans. Already the vessels of La Bourdonnais, laden with these precious spoils, had made sail for Pondicherry; the governor of Bourbon was in a hurry to get back to his islands; autumn was coming on, tempests were threatening his squadron, but Dupleix was still disputing the terms of the treaty concluded with the English for the rendition of Madras; he had instructions, he said, to raze the city and place it thus dismantled in the hands of the Nabob of the Carnatic; the Hindoo prince had set himself in motion to seize his prey; the English burst out into insults and threats. La Bourdonnais, in a violent rage, on the point of finding himself arrested by order of Dupleix, himself put in prison the governor- general's envoys; the conflict of authority was aggravated by the feebleness and duplicity of the instructions from France. All at once a fearful tempest destroyed a part of the squadron in front of Madras; La Bourdonnais, flinging himself into a boat, had great difficulty in rejoining his ships; he departed, leaving his rival master of Madras, and adroitly prolonging the negotiations, in order to ruin at least the black city, which alone was rich and prosperous, before giving over the place to the Nabob. Months rolled by, and the French remained alone at Madras.

[Ill.u.s.tration: La Bourdonnais----170]

A jealous love of power and absorption in political schemes had induced Dupleix to violate a promise lightly given by La Bourdonnais in the name of France; he had arbitrarily quashed a capitulation of which he had not discussed the conditions. The report of this unhappy conflict, and the color put upon it by the representations of Dupleix, were about to ruin at Paris the rival whom he had vanquished in India.

On arriving at Ile de France, amidst that colony which he had found exhausted, ruined, and had endowed with hospitals, a.r.s.enals, quays, and fortifications, La Bourdonnais learned that a new governor was already installed there. His dissensions with Dupleix had borne their fruits; he had been accused of having exacted too paltry a ransom from Madras, and of having accepted enormous presents; the Company had appointed a successor in his place. Driven to desperation, anxious to go and defend himself, La Bourdonnais set out for France with his wife and his four children; a prosecution had already been commenced against him. He was captured at sea by an English ship, and taken a prisoner to England.

The good faith of the conqueror of Madras was known in London; one of the directors of the English Company offered his fortune as security for M.

de La Bourdonnais. Scarcely had he arrived in Paris when he was thrown into the Bastille, and for two years kept in solitary confinement. When his innocence was at last acknowledged and his liberty restored to him, his health was destroyed, his fortune exhausted by the expenses of the trial. La Bourdonnais died before long, employing the last remnants of his life and of his strength in pouring forth his anger against Dupleix, to whom he attributed all his woes. His indignation was excusable, and some of his grievances were well grounded; but the germs of suspicion thus sown by the unfortunate prisoner released from the Bastille were destined before long to consign to perdition not only his enemy, but also, together with him, that French dominion in India to which M. de La Bourdonnais had dedicated his life.

Meanwhile Dupleix grew greater and greater, every day more powerful and more daring. The English had not forgotten the affair of Madras. On the 30th of August, 1748, Admiral Boscawen went and laid siege to Pondicherry; stopped at the outset by the fort of Ariocapang, of the existence of which they were ignorant, the disembarked troops could not push their trenches beyond an impa.s.sable mora.s.s which protected the town.

The fire of the siege-artillery scarcely reached the ramparts; the sallies of the besieged intercepted the communications between the camp and the squadron, which, on its side, was bombarding the walls of Pondicherry without any serious result. Dupleix himself commanded the French batteries; on the 6th of October he was wounded, and his place on the ramparts was taken by Madame Dupleix, seconded by her future son-in-law, M. de Bussy-Castelnau, Dupleix's military lieutenant, animated by the same zeal for the greatness of France. The fire of the English redoubled; but there was laughter in Pondicherry, for the b.a.l.l.s did not carry so far; and on the 20th of October, after forty days'

siege, Admiral Boscawen put to sea again, driven far away from the coasts by the same tempests which, two years before, had compelled La Bourdonnais to quit Madras. Twice had Dupleix been served in his designs by the winds of autumn. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle came to put an end to open war between the Europeans; at the French establishments in the Indies the Te Deum was sung; Dupleix alone was gloomy, despite the riband of St. Louis and the t.i.tle of marquis, recently granted him by King Louis XV: he had been obliged to restore Madras to the English.

War soon recommenced, in the name, and apparently to the profit, of the Hindoo princes. France and England had made peace; the English and French Companies in India had not laid down arms. Their power, as well as the importance of their establishments was as yet in equipoise. At Surat both Companies had places of business; on the coast of Malabar the English had Bombay, and the French Mahe; on the coast of Coromandel the former held Madras and Fort St. George, the latter Pondicherry and Karikal. The princ.i.p.al factories, as well as the numerous little establishments which were dependencies of them, were defended by a certain number of European soldiers, and by Sepoys, native soldiers in the pay of the Companies.

These small armies were costly, and diminished to a considerable extent the profits of trade. Dupleix espied the possibility of a new organization which should secure to the French in India the preponderance, and ere long the empire even, in the two peninsulas. He purposed to found manufactures, utilize native hand-labor, and develop the coasting trade, or Ind to Ind trade, as the expression then was; but he set his pretensions still higher, and carried his views still further.

He purposed to acquire for the Company, and, under its name, for France, territories and subjects furnishing revenues, and amply sufficing for the expenses of the commercial establishments. The moment was propitious; the ancient empire of the Great Mogul, tottering to its base, was distracted by revolutions, all the chops and changes whereof were attentively followed by Madame Dupleix; two contested successions opened up at once--those of the Viceroy or Soudhabar of the Deccan and of his va.s.sal, the Nabob of the Carnatic. The Great Mogul, nominal sovereign of all the states of India, confined himself to selling to all the pretenders decrees of invest.i.ture, without taking any other part in the contest. Dupleix, on the contrary, engaged in it ardently. He took sides in the Deccan for Murzapha Jung, and in the Carnatic for Tchunda Sahib against their rivals supported by the English. Versed in all the resources of Hindoo policy, he had negotiated an alliance between his two proteges; both marched against the Nabob of the Carnatic. He, though a hundred and seven years old, was at the head of his army, mounted on a magnificent elephant. He espied in the melley his enemy Tchunda Sahib, and would have darted upon him; but, whilst his slaves were urging on the huge beast, the little French battalion sent by Dupleix to the aid of his allies marched upon the nabob, a ball struck him to the heart, and he fell. The same evening, Murzapha Jung was proclaimed Soudhabar of the Deccan, and he granted the princ.i.p.ality of the Carnatic to Tchunda Sahib, at the same time reserving to the French Company a vast territory.

Some months rolled by, full of vicissitudes and sudden turns of fortune.

Murzapha Jung, at first victorious, and then vanquished by his uncle n.a.z.ir Jung, everywhere dragged at his heels as a hostage and a trophy of his triumph, had found himself delivered by an insurrection of the Patanian chiefs, Affghans by origin, settled in the south of India. The head of n.a.z.ir Jung had come rolling at his feet. For a while besieged in Pondicherry, but still negotiating and everywhere mingling in intrigues and conspiracies, Dupleix was now triumphant with his ally; the Soudhabar of the Deccan made his entry in state upon French territory. Pondicherry was in holiday trim to receive him. Dupleix, dressed in the magnificent costume of, the Hindoo princes, had gone with his troops to meet him.

Both entered the town in the same palanquin to the sound of native cymbals and the military music of the.French. A throne awaited the soudhabar, surrounded by the Affghan chiefs, who were already claiming the reward of their services. The Hindoo prince needed the aid of France; he knew it. He proclaimed Dupleix nabob of all the provinces to the south of the River Krischna. Tcbunda Sahib, but lately his ally, became his va.s.sal--"the va.s.sal of France," murmured Madame Dupleix, when she heard of this splendid recompense for so many public and private services. The ability and indomitable bravery of M. de Bussy soon extended the French conquests in the Deccan. Murzapha Jung had just been a.s.sa.s.sinated at the head of his army; Bussy proclaimed and supported a new soudhabar, who was friendly to the French, and who ceded to them five provinces, of which the large town of Masulipatam, already in French hands, became the capital. A third of India was obedient to Dupleix; the Great Mogul sent him a decree of invest.i.ture, and demanded of the Princess Jane the hand of her youngest daughter, promised to M. de Bussy.

Dupleix well know the frailty of human affairs, and the dark intrigues of Hindoo courts; he breathed freely, however, for he was on his guard, and the dream of his life seemed to be accomplished. "The empire of France is founded," he would say.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dupleix meeting the Soudhabar of the Deccan----174]

He reckoned without France, and without the incompetent or timid men who governed her. The successes of Dupleix scared King Louis XV. and his feeble ministers; they angered and discomfited England, which was as yet tottering in India, and whose affairs there had for a long while been ill managed, but which remained ever vigorous, active, animated by the indomitable ardor of a free people. At Versailles attempts were made to lessen the conquests of Dupleix, prudence was recommended to him, delay was shown in sending him the troops he demanded. In India England had at last found a man still young and unknown, but worthy of being opposed to Dupleix. Clive, who had almost in boyhood entered the Company's offices, turned out, after the turbulence of his early years, a heaven-born general; he was destined to continue Dupleix's work, when abandoned by France, and to found to the advantage of the English that European dominion in India which had been the Governor of Pondicherry's dream.

The war still continued in the Carnatic: Mahomet Ali, Tchunda Sahib's rival, had for the last six months been besieged in Trichinopoli; the English had several times, but in vain, attempted to effect the raising of the siege; Clive, who had recently entered the Company's army, was for saving the last refuge of Mahomet Ali by a bold diversion against Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic. To him was given the command of the expedition he had suggested. In the month of September, 1751, he made himself master of Arcot by a surprise. The Hindoo populations, left to themselves, pa.s.sed almost without resistance from one master to another.

The Europeans did not signalize by the infliction of punishment the act of taking possession. Clive was before long attacked in Arcot by Tchunda Sahib, who was supported by a French detachment. He was not in a position to hold the town; so he took refuge in the fort, and there, for fifty days, withstood all the efforts of his enemies. Provisions fell short; every day the rations were becoming more insufficient; but Clive had managed to implant in his soldiers' hearts the heroic resolution which animated him. "Give the rice to the English," said the sepoys; "we will be content with the water in which it is boiled." A body of Mahrattas, allies of the English, came to raise the siege. Clive pursued the French on their retreat, twice defeated Tchunda Sahib, and, at last effecting a junction with the Governor-General Lawrence, broke the investment of Trichinopoli, and released Mahomet Ali. Tchunda Sahib, in his turn shut up in Tcheringham, was delivered over to his rival by a Tanjore chieftain in whom he trusted; he was put to death; and the French commandant, a nephew of Law's, surrendered to the English. Two French corps had already been destroyed by Clive, who held the third army prisoners. Bussy was carrying on war in the Deccan, with great difficulty making head against overt hostilities and secret intrigues.

The report of Dupleix's reverses arrived in France in the month of September, 1752.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Death of the Nabob of the Carnatic----174]