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52 sipáhis, and about the same number of Africans brought from the Islands, he marched on Fort St. George, and summoned it to surrender.

Governor Morse was in no condition to offer a resistance likely to prove successful. At the moment Fort St. George contained behind its ramparts only some 300 soldiers, but of these only 200 were fit for duty. It is true that amongst its merchants or factors there was the budding genius destined, a few years later, to baffle all the plans of Dupleix, but whose brilliant talents were concealed at the time behind a morose exterior and by intense depression of spirits. But the situation was too desperate to be affected oven by the genius which Robert Clive was soon to develope. Governor Morse, indeed, attempted to obtain from the Nuwáb of the Karnátik the same protection which that ruler had accorded to Pondichery. But he approached him unskilfully, and his messenger was dismissed without an answer. He could do no more. On the 21st, then, he surrendered the fort and its dependencies to La Bourdonnais, the garrison becoming prisoners of war.

Into the contention which followed between La Bourdonnais and Dupleix as to whether the right to dispose of the conquered place rested with the Commander of the fleet or with the Governor and Council of Pondichery, it is foreign to the purpose of this work to enter. It must suffice to state that the Home Government decided in a despatch sent in anticipation, it would seem, of a conflict of authority in favour of