Page:History of the French in India.djvu/366

 342 THE STRUGGLES OF DUPLEIX WITH ADVERSITY. C y^ p - general they seiit him a Law. It is true that, elevated -^—-^ by the hopes they had formed from the success of his 1752. large schemes, they vouchsafed him flattering letters and a marquisate. These, however, were but cheap rewards which Dupleix would gladly have bartered for a few hundred of those brave troops who were idling their time in the garrisons of France. Thus left to his own resources we see him evoking material strength out of the slightest materials, drawing to himself allies, when, as it would appear, there remained to him nought but destruction. He thus succeeded because, in the first place, he possessed a genius for organisation of the highest order ; because, in the second, he considered no sacrifice too great to be made for the glory and interests of France. Bitterly personal as was the hatred borne to him in that day by contemporary Englishmen, seizing as they did every occasion to attribute to him motives of personal ambition and personal vanity, even they were forced to admit his genius and his devotion to his country. "To give Dupleix his due," writes Major Lawrence in his memoirs, "he was not easily cast down; his pride supported him, and at the same time his mind was full of resources." Mr. Orme likewise admits that the French would have been compelled " to cease hos- tilities after the capture of Srirangam, had not M. Dupleix been endowed (and this at least is much to his honour) with a perseverance that even superseded his regard to his own fortune, of which he had at that time disbursed £140,000, and he continued with the same spirit to furnish more." It was this disinterestedness, this abnegation of his own interests when the interests of France were concerned, that gave him influence and authority with his own people, that gained the lasting admiration and respect of all the native princes with whom he came in contact. In Dupleix they recognised a man not only thoroughly in earnest, but who was proof against the ordinary consequences of disaster.