Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/329

Rh who had witnessed the last appearance of the French, as his allies, on the coast, who still had access to the seaboard and was in touch with the French settlements, had by no means abandoned his father's policy of endeavouring to check the growth of English predominance by calling in the assistance of other European nations.

Tippu's ignorance of the real condition of European affairs, however, led him to make plans that were entirely futile, and that only accelerated his own destruction. In 1787 he sent to Constantinople an embassy which, though it effected nothing at all, obtained from the Sultan so ostentatious a reception that it probably encouraged the unfortunate ruler of Mysore in miscalculating his own power and the intrinsic value of such politic courtesies. In the same year his ambassadors were civilly welcomed at Paris by Louis XVI, at a moment when the relations between France and England were decidedly strained. These most unsubstantial diplomatic amenities seem to have deluded him into a very false reckoning of his situation; while they confirmed the English in their attitude of vigilant suspicion and in their determination to cut off such dangerous communications at the first opportunity.

In such an environment of reciprocal distrust the futility of attempting to arrest the natural current of affairs in India by Acts of Parliament, or to resist the converging pressure of circumstances, was soon demonstrated. It had been declared by Pitt's act that as the pursuit of schemes of conquest was repugnant to the