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 the rival Companies out there used to send their few white soldiers to help some native prince, who happened to be at war with another native prince. They also took into their pay native Indians, whom we call Sepoys. They drilled and armed them with European weapons, and made them capital soldiers. An army of two or three hundred French or English soldiers, with perhaps two thousand sepoys, would beat any native army you liked to name, even if it were fifty thousand strong. In the war of 1740–8 the French did succeed in taking Madras; but, before that war was over, Major Stringer Lawrence and Robert Clive turned the tide of victory again. Clive, who began life as a clerk, was the real founder of our Indian Empire. When peace was made in 1748 by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Madras was restored to us.

In Europe nothing was settled by that peace; and in India and America there was hardly peace at all. We may cheerfully forget the dull and stupid Whig ministers who ruled England from 1744 to 1756, but in the latter year William Pitt took office. And in 1757 he became an all-powerful war minister, England was then in a very bad way.

The war had just begun again, and the late ministers had so obstinately refused to strengthen the army or navy, that the King was forced to hire six thousand Germans to defend the coast of Kent against an expected invasion! France had taken Minorca from us, and a very badly fitted out British fleet, under Admiral Byng, had failed to rescue it. The fault was the Ministers’ who had neglected the Navy, but the nation was angry with the Admiral, and, to save trouble to the Ministry, Byng was tried and shot on his own ship.