Page:History of the French in India.djvu/150

 128 THE RISE Otf THE FRENCH POWER IN INDIA. chap, his enemy, he did not show it. On the contrary, he, made an appearance of pursuing the English. But it 1745. was only an appearance. He must, in reality, have been greatly relieved by their sheering off. He had expended a great portion of his ammunition, he had provisions but for twenty-four hours longer. The disappearance of the English left him free to accomplish his object. His dismasted ship, the " Insulaire," he ordered to Bengal to be repaired ; then, quickly collecting the remainder of his squadron, he resumed almost immedi- ately his northerly course, and on the following evening cast anchor in the Pondichery roads. One portion of his seemingly impossible task had thus been accomplished. Pondichery was safe, the French fleet mistress of the Indian seas, Madras uncovered. The positions of the contending rivals had been exactly reversed. It would now be for the French to threaten, for the English to sue for neutrality. What will be the result ] Will the Nawwab of the Karnatik, standing neutral between the contending parties, extend to the English the same protection he had accorded to their rivals? If not, it would seem as though their case were almost desperate. Abandoned by their fleet, with but three hundred Europeans within its walls, Madras presented far fewer means of defence than Pondichery. Governor Morse, too, was neither a Dumas nor a Dupleix. On the other hand, the French had at their head two masters, both men of genius, of energy, of ambition ; the one a master in council, an adept at statecraft, skilled in all the wiles of a subtle policy, but himself unacquainted with war and its he was constrained to renounce their which many ships had only four and pursuit. In his letter to Dupleix, twenty hours' supply, made me con- however, he says nothing about the template the frightful situation in disappearance of the English, hut which I should be, if I were to fall writes thus : — " The fear of missing to the leeward of the place: this Pondichery, the large amount of determined me to bear up for Pondi- money for you on board, and, more chery." than that, the scarcity of food, of