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Rh advantage. In the same spirit he granted the hospitality of Pondichery to the wife and daughter of Chandá Sáhib, the son-in-law of the late Nuwáb. He was glad that in the hour of imminent peril it should fall to the lot of France to afford protection to those who unquestionably would, on the retirement of the Maráthás, recover supreme power in the Karnátik.

He had reasoned justly. It is true that the Maráthá leader, incensed by the reception granted to the relatives of the late Nuwáb, and by the refusal of the French Governor to surrender them to his mercy, threatened to deal to Pondichery the fate of Bassein, then recently captured from the Portuguese; that he detached a body of 16,000 troops to convert his threats into deeds; that these troops captured and pillaged Porto Novo, thirty-two miles to the south of Pondichery, and Gudalar, belonging to the English, sixteen miles nearer to it; that they reached a point within five miles, of Pondichery itself. Thence their leader despatched an envoy to demand, on the penalty of dealing with it as he had dealt with Trichinopoli, then recently taken, the surrender of the town. Dumas, equal to the occasion, hid nothing from the envoy. He showed him his supplies, his fortifications, his guns, his drilled Europeans, his drilled sipáhis, and then told him that, so equipped, Pondichery would resist to the last. To show his friendly disposition, however, he gave to the envoy, as he departed, a present of ten bottles of Nantes cordials,