Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/277

Rh new invader from the north — possibly, for the moment, for Ranjit Singh — to relapse, on his death, into renewed anarchy.

It would seem, then, to have been necessary for the safety of India that the successor to the Maráthá should be a foreigner. Who was that foreigner to be? It was inevitable that he should come from Europe, for the children of northern Asia had been tried and found wanting. Portugal made the first venture, ignorant of the possible stake she might be called to play for. Holland, with a keener, though still very dim appreciation of the future, followed and, in part, supplanted Portugal. Then came England with a vision more clouded than that of Holland, caring nothing for dominion, looking only for gain. Last of all stepped in France. To the brilliant intellect of her gifted sons the nature of the mission which lay before one European power was not for long a sealed book. The greatest of the children whom she sent to India, recognising the priceless value of the stake, risked his all to win it. Had the Bourbon who ruled France properly supported him he would have won it. As it was the intensity of the passion he displayed in playing the great game communicated some vague idea of its importance to his English rivals. The genius of Clive clutched it: the statesmanlike brain of Warren Hastings nurtured it; the commanding intellect of Marquess Wellesley established it as an ineradicable fact. Yet, throughout this period, France, which had been the first to conceive