Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/30

2 took service in the courts which showed the greatest inclination to resist the progress of the increasing power of the English. Thus the younger Lally, Law, Raymond, de Boigne, Perron, Dudrenec, and many others became the main supports upon which Haidar Ali, the Nizam, Sindia, and Holkar rested their hopes for independence, if not for empire. But, after all, although in many cases these adventurers accomplished much in the way of organising resistance to the English, they did not succeed in their own secret views. They failed entirely to resuscitate the dream of successful rivalry to England. One by one they disappeared before the steady advance of the foe they had once hoped to conquer. Sometimes, as at Haidarabad, dismissed on the requisition of an English governor; again, as in 1802, beaten by the English general, they gradually renounced the cause as hopeless, and finally ceased to pursue the struggle. The hopes which had glimmered but very faintly after the death of Haidar, which had again been somewhat rekindled by the prudent measures of Mádháji Sindia, were dealt a fatal blow by Lord Lake at Aligarh and at Dehli, and were finally crushed by that stalwart soldier on the field of Láswárí.

But there was another element upon which the fortunes of France still flourished even after the blow dealt at her in 1761. Strange, indeed, it was, that during the contest which terminated in that year, she had never sent simultaneously to the field of action a capable general and a capable admiral. It is true that La