Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/140

106 nais, that if the ransom were paid, it should be restored to the English within three months. The next incident was important. Dupleix, who had now three thousand French soldiers at his disposal, and who had been positively ordered by a secret despatch from his government on no account to give up Madras, had not the least intention of relinquishing it either to the Nawab or the English Company. When the Nawab invested the town, Dupleix drove off the native troops so effectually as to establish, at one blow, an immense military reputation for the French in the Karnatic, since the ease and rapidity with which the Nawab's army was dispersed at this first collision between the regular battalions of Europe and the loose Indian levies proved at once the formidable quality of European arms and discipline.

Dupleix made unsparing and audacious use of his advantage; he declared null and void the agreement with the English, seized all the Company's property, carried the Madras governor and his officers to Pondicherri, where they figured as captives in a triumphal procession, and despatched a large force against the English fortress of St. David, the only fortified post still held by the English, about twelve miles south of Pondicherri. But the French were surprised in their march, and the expedition was so sharply checked that the troops thereafter lay inactively encamped in the neighbourhood of the fort, which they never succeeded in besieging.

In the meantime, as the English squadron was re-