Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/13

 INTRODUCTION.

The present work supplies a suppressed chapter of Anglo-Indian history. It undertakes, that is to say, to describe, in detail, the final struggle of the French, terminating in September, 1783, for empire in Southern India; the successful efforts of the same nation during the wars of the Revolution and the Empire to destroy British commerce in the Indian Seas; the suppression of those efforts accomplished by the capture of the Isles of France and Bourbon. It concludes with a sketch of the most famous adventurers who strove, often successfully, to train and discipline on the European model the soldiers of those native princes who, towards the close of the last century, seemed the most likely to come into hostile contact with the British.

It is strange, indeed, that in the standard English histories of India these later efforts of England's most persistent rival should have been dismissed in a few