Page:History of the French in India.djvu/297

 SPLENDID POSITION OF DUPLEIX. 275 the day's ceremony. He emerged from that tent the chap. virtual superior of the lord of Southern India. y We have not yet enumerated all the advantages 1750. which accrued to the French on the occasion of this visit. In addition to those promulgated by Muzaffar Jang at the time of his installation, one sum of 500,000 rupees was made over to Dupleix for the soldiers who had fought at the late battle ; another of the same amount was repaid to the Company, on account of moneys that had been advanced, and security given for the amount remaining due. The increase of revenue likely to accrue to the French Company by the territorial cessions we have adverted to, was computed at little short of 400,000 rupees annually. To com- memorate these great results thus obtained, Dupleix ordered the creation of a town on the site of the battle which had caused them, to be entitled Dupleix-Fath- abad.* This design, founded on sound policy, being in strict conformity with those native usages by which alone the mass of the people were likely to be im- pressed, and not, as has been ignorantly charged against him, on ridiculous vanity, was not, it is true, destined to be realised. Events were too strong even for this strong man. He, the pioneer of European conquest and European civilisation, whose vast plans were not, as so many of his contemporaries believed, too vast to be accomplished, was destined to see them appropriated to a great extent by his rivals. It will be for us very soon to point to the single weak point in that strongly welded armour — the solitary defect in that almost con- summate genius, by means of which one great adversary possessing the quality wanting to Dupleix, shattered the vast fabric of his plans ere yet they had been made proof against attack. Not only the urgent and pressing instructions from the Company of the Indies, but his own conviction of T 2
 * Indicating " The place of the victory of Dupleix."