Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/300

258 English power in India underwent some perilous vicissitudes; but the ring of enemies by which Hastings had been encompassed was at last broken, and in the spring of 1785, when he resigned the Governor-Generalship, the English were at peace with all the native powers of India.

SOME OF TIPPU'S FORCES. After Gold's Oriental Drawings.

It will be observed that throughout the eighteenth century the main alternations of peace and war in India keep time with the successive ruptures and renewals of amity between France and England. So long as the French were rivals of the English in the country, the two Companies necessarily took the word of command, for peace or war, from their home governments. After this rivalry had ceased, the French kept their coast settlements; but their navy could always threaten the British Indian seaboard, and the safety of all English communications with India depended entirely upon the result of the maritime wars between the two nations.