Page:History of the French in India.djvu/213

 THE REASONING OP DUPLEIX. 191 pressing. This, therefore, he set himself in the first chap. instance to encounter. No man was more sensible than he of the very delicate nature of the task which 1746. thus lay before him. He had, indeed, promised to make over Madras to the Nawwab, intending as we know, to make it over in a dismantled state. But being now for the first time in a position to perform the promise, he was prevented from accompanying that performance by the dismantling which, in his opinion, was a most necessary adjunct to it, and the more so, because Madras was at that moment invested by the Nawwab. To dismantle Madras in the presence of the army of Mafauz Khan, would have roused in the breast of the Nawwab an indignation equal to that which had been already kindled by abstaining from surrendering it. To make over Madras, on the other hand, with its fortifications still standing, would, he considered, be an act of treachery to French interests. It would be in that case, he felt, in the power of the Nawwab to make his terms with the English, and to re-sell them a place which the French had conquered with the view to the permanent expulsion of that nation from the Koro- mandel coast. To such a line of conduct Dupleix could never reconcile himself. In the temper of the Nawwab, however, any other course was fraught with danger. That danger and the possible disaster con- sequent upon it were, however, in the eyes of Dupleix, less formidable than the certain danger and certain disaster attendant upon an abject submission to the threats of the Nawwab. He resolved, therefore, to risk the fury of his wrath rather than surrender French interests to his mercy, and to retain Madras for himself, rather than make it over with its fortifications un- destroyed. But while he came to this fixed resolution, he determined to employ every art, to exhaust every device, to induce the Nawwab to forego his claim, and to avert those hostilities with the satrap of the Mughal,