Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/183

Rh zines or a sufficient garrison, and was now at last blockaded by land and water. The French could make but a feeble resistance, and were completely surrounded and half-starved until they were compelled to surrender at discretion in January, 1761.

From the fall of Pondicherri we may date the complete and final termination of the contest between France and England in India. All that remained to the French in that part of the world, says Voltaire, was their regret at having spent, during more than forty years, immense sums to maintain a Company that had been equally maladroit in commerce and in war, that had never made any profits, and that had paid no genuine dividends either to shareholders or to creditors. The association was dissolved in 1770, after it had been proved from official figures by the Abbé Morellet, who was employed to examine the accounts, that between 1725 and 1769 the Company had lost capital to the amount of 169,000,000 francs. He estimated the sum total of the advances that had been made to the Company by successive French ministries, during those forty-four years, at 376,000,000 francs, but it should be remembered that the abbé seems to have been preparing a case for the Company's dissolution.

The French did indeed recover, at the peace of 1763, the places that had belonged to them before Dupleix entered upon his schemes of territorial extension. Nevertheless, the sinews of their war power were cut by the stipulation against their fortifying these places and against their keeping troops in Bengal, whereby France