Page:Dupleix and the Struggle for India by the European Nations.djvu/140

 CHAPTER X

Too Heavily Handicapped

Nothing appeals so much to human sympathy as the sight of a great man struggling with adverse Fortune. To see him with a bold and unshaken front defying her frowns, rising superior to disaster, improvising resources; seizing every advantage, improving it to such a degree that even his enemies come to regard his personality alone as the foe to be feared — that is a sight which few can regard unmoved. Such a display was given to the world in 1814 by the greatest warrior of modern times, when he, at bay against combined Europe, almost succeeded in compelling Fortune. The story of that wonderful campaign has provoked sympathy and admiration from nationalities who hated the man. There was a marked resemblance in feature and in genius between Napoleon and Dupleix. Each was animated by unbounded ambition, each played for a great stake; each displayed, in the final struggle, a power and a vitality, a richness of resource and a genius such as compelled fear and admiration: both, alas, were finally abandoned by their countrymen. But their names still remain, and will ever remain, to posterity as examples of the enormous value, in a struggle with