Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/386

378 However, they gave him letters of protection to secure him from being prosecuted by any of his creditors. So that his fortune was left much less than that which he was possessed of before he entered upon the government of Pondicherry in 1742. His conduct certainly merited a very different requital from his nation, which never had a subject so desirous and capable of extending its reputation and power in the East-Indies; had he been supplied with the forces he desired immediately after the death of Anwar-o-dean Khan, or had he afterwards been supported from France in the manner necessary to carry on the extensive projects he had formed, there is no doubt but that be would have placed Chundasaheb in the Nabobship of the Carnatic, given law to the Soubah of the Decan, and perhaps to the throne of Delhi itself, and have established a sovereignty over many of the most valuable provinces of the empire; armed with which power he would easily have reduced all the other European settlements to such restrictions as he might think proper to impose: it is even probable that his ambition did not stop here, but that he intended to expel all other Europeans out of Indostan, and afterwards from all other parts of the East-Indies, for he was known often to say, that he would reduce the English settlements of Calcutta and Madrass to their original state of fishing towns. When we consider that he formed this plan of conquest and dominion at a time when all other Europeans entertained the highest opinion of the strength of the Mogul government, suffering tamely the insolence of its meanest officers, rather than venture to make resistance against a power which they chimerically imagined to be capable of over-whelming them in an instant, we cannot refrain from acknowledging and admiring the sagacity of his genius, which first discovered and despised this illusion. But military qualifications were wanting in his composition to carry effectually into execution projects which depended so much upon the success of military operations; for although sufficiently versed in the theory of war, he had not received from nature that firmness of mind, which is capable of contemplating instant and tumultuous danger with the serenity necessary to command an army; nor were there any officers at Pondicherry of sufficient abilities to oppose such as we have seen commanding the English