Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/137

 CHAPTER V

THE FRENCH IN INDIA UNDER DUPLEIX

The war between England and Spain, which had begun in 1739 over commercial and maritime quarrels, was now gradually drawing France into open hostilities with England. But as the English had a larger and more powerful navy, the rupture between the two countries placed France in the dangerous position of holding great transmarine possessions and interests by insecure lines of support and communication. In America and the West Indies the colonial dominions of France were more extensive than those of England; in India there was no great difference as to strength or settlements; and the French had the advantage of a most valuable, though rather distant, base of operations at the islands of Bourbon and Mauritius, with a station on the Madagascar coast.

At Mauritius, Labourdonnais, as governor, had been accumulating naval stores since 1740 and preparing, with the aid and approval of the French government, to fall upon the English merchant vessels or to attack 103