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250 the idea never resigned it. She had much to contend against. The narrow visions of her monarch and her statesmen could not grasp the vital importance of the mighty stake. It was these men who prevented India from becoming French. I have but to point to a few instances of their incapacity. The restoration of Madras by the peace of Aix la Chapelle; the recall of Dupleix, when if they had sent him but one regiment more, he would have gained southern India; the diminution of the forces ordered to be sent with Lally; the appointment as his colleague of such a man as d'Aché; the acknowledgment by the treaty of Versailles of the status quo ante bellum, when the English were reduced to their last grasp in southern India; all these were fatal errors due to that want of comprehensive grasp which marked the statesmen of the later Bourbons. Frenchmen on the spot, indeed, atoned nobly for the errors of their rulers. They fought for the idea, as long as it could be fought for; and when they beheld it slipping from their grasp they yet struggled with skill, with courage, and with pertinacity to prevent its appropriation by their rivals. In my history of the French in India, not less than in this volume, I have endeavoured to draw a vivid and a true picture of their aims and of their struggles. Those aims were worthy of being recorded, for they were lofty; those struggles deserved a historian, for they were gallant. The record reveals to us, moreover, this great people displaying qualities for which the world has not