Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/250

210 generally speaking, that all the really hard fighting done by the Anglo-Indian army has been against tribal or quasi-national associations, – against Marathas, Sikhs, Jats, or Afghans.

It was with the greatest reluctance that the English East India Company, after its acquisition of Bengal, again set out upon the road of political adventure and military expeditions. In a letter of 1767 to their President at Calcutta the London Directors say: "The Diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, are the utmost limits of our view on that side of India. On the coast the protection of the Karnatic and the possession of the Circars ... and on the Bombay side the dependencies thereon, with Salsette, Bassein, and the Castle of Surat. If we pass these bounds, we shall be led from one acquisition to another, till we shall find no security but in the subjection of the whole, which, by dividing your force, would lose us the whole, and end in our extirpation from Hindustan."

This letter had been written on receipt of intelligence that had alarmed and displeased the Honourable Court. Although the French had been dislodged, the situation of the English on the southeast coast was still far from secure. In Bengal, the English were recognized masters of a rich inland province, free from any fear of attack by sea, and with their land frontier sheltered on its open side behind the allied kingdom of Oudh. But in Madras their territory ran along the seacoast, and was only covered landward by an indefinite kind of protectorate over the Karnatic principality,