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Updated: June 7, 2025
Austria, an inland power, could not help France against an adversary whose strength was on the sea; she could not aid the designs of France in America or in India, where the capable French leader Dupleix was in a fair way to build up a mighty oriental empire. Nor had France anything to gain in Europe from an Austrian alliance. The shoe was on the other foot.
The accounts of the state of affairs in the Carnatic, which reached Charlie, were not satisfactory Dupleix, with his usual energy, was aiding the son of Chunda Sahib, with men and money, in his combat with the British protege; and most of the native allies of the latter had fallen away from him.
When the war broke out between England and France, in 1744, these two French presidencies were ruled by two men of superior genius, La Bourdonnais and Dupleix, both of them men of great experience in Indian affairs, and both devoted to the interests of the company, so far as their own personal ambition would permit.
The Marquis de Bussy, a brave and capable soldier who had been a second to Dupleix, and was wholly in accord with his policy and ambitions, remained in the Deccan, a large region in the southern central part of the peninsula, over which Dupleix had once ruled. In 1756, troubles arose between the English and the native prince in Bengal.
But the English colonists, in spite of the fact that they were mainly traders, discovered among the clerks in Madras a leader equal in military skill and energy to Dupleix himself. Robert Clive, who was but twenty-five years old at this time, organized a large force of Sepoys and gained a remarkable ascendency over them by his astonishing bravery.
The Nabob of the Carnatic, offended by the action of the English governor of Madras, who had omitted to send him those presents which are essential to all stages of Oriental diplomacy, had practically winked at the action of the more liberal-handed Dupleix in his movement against Madras.
Strobo was in Calcutta to meet a friend, an Austrian, who was shortly leaving India in the Messagerie Maritimes steamer Dupleix after agreeable wanderings disguised as a fakir in Tibet; and to this friend was attached, in what capacity I never thought well to inquire, a lady who was a Pole, and played and sang as well as Strobo fiddled.
Of the French especially it would appear that their writers have noticed only those like Dupleix, Bussy, and Lally, who commanded armies in glorious campaigns that somehow always ended to the advantage of the British, and have utterly forgotten the civilians who really kept the game going, and who would have been twice as formidable to their enemies if the military had been subordinate to them.
The fortune of war turned to the side of the gallant Englishman, and Dupleix, who was no general, retreated before the victors. Clive obtained the command of Fort St. David, an important fortress near Madras, and soon controlled the Carnatic. About this time, the settlements on the Hooghly were plundered by Suraj-w Dowlah, Viceroy of Bengal.
This casket was given to Peloti to deliver: he had abused his trust by abstracting the gem of the collection, a beautiful diamond; and the theft being accidentally discovered, Dupleix in his rage ordered the thief to be branded on the right hand with the word 'fur, and drummed him out of the French service.
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