Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/161

Rh We may heartily agree with Elphinstone that Dupleix was "the first who made an extensive use of disciplined sepoys; the first who quitted the ports on the sea and marched an army into the heart of the continent; the first, above all, who discovered the illusion of the Moghul greatness." Nevertheless, although it seems invidious to detract from the posthumous glory of a man so able and yet so unfortunate as Dupleix, he cannot be ranked as an original discoverer in Asiatic warfare and politics, without taking into account surrounding circumstances and conditions that naturally pointed to the use of methods which he developed rather than invented.

The weakness of all Oriental states and armies had long been known; and India has always been, through natural causes, less capable than other great Asiatic countries of resisting foreign invasion. Her indigenous population has rarely furnished armies that could encounter the inrush of the hordes from Central Asia; and the only soldiers upon whom the princes of Southern India could rely were commonly mercenaries from the north. At the end of the seventeenth century, the imperial troops were probably still the best in India; but Bernier writes that a division of Turenne's men would have made short work of the whole Moghul army; nor could any European of military experience have doubted that the loose levies of the Karnatic would be scattered by a few well-armed and disciplined battalions.

Nor was there, in point of fact, any great novelty