Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/150

116 Nasir Jang and his grandson Muzaffar Jang, who both took up arms; whereupon the Karnatic, which had been kept quiet only by Asaf Jah's power of enforcing his authority, at once became the scene of a violent conflict between rival claimants for the subordinate rulership. The entanglement of these two wars of succession threw all South India into confusion, producing that complicated series of intrigues, conspiracies, assassinations, battles, sieges, and desultory skirmishing that is known in Anglo-Indian history as the War in the Karnatic. The whole narrative, in copious and authentic detail, is to be read in Orme's History under the title of "The War of Coromandel," which records the admirable exploits of Clive, Lawrence, and some other stout-hearted but utterly forgotten Englishmen, who at great odds and with small means sustained the fortunes of their country in many a hazardous or desperate situation by their skill, valour, and inflexible fortitude.

Into this medley Dupleix plunged promptly and boldly. His immediate aim was to establish in the Karnatic, the province within whose jurisdiction lay both Madras and Pondicherri, a ruler who should be dependent on the French connection. His ulterior object was the creation of a preponderant French party at the court of the Nizam himself, to whom the Karnatic was still nominally subordinate; and by these two steps he hoped to obtain a firm dominion for his nation in India. In defending himself, afterwards, for having taken a part in these civil broils, he argued, not unfairly, that neutrality was impossible, because if the