Page:History of the French in India.djvu/451

 niS EFFORTS TO RUIN DUPLEIX. 425 public accounts. By this subterfuge he avoided placing chap. on record an acknowledgment of the sums due to IX- Dupleix. But this was not all. We have before 1754. stated that Dupleix had been in the habit of advancing to his native allies his own private fortune for the ex- penses of the war. These advances had been made on the security of certain districts in the Karnatik, from the revenues of which they were repayable. In fact, the agent of the native princes, by name Papiapoule, had at this time in his possession an order to make over to Dupliex the revenues of those districts in pay- ment of the sums due to him. At the time of Gode- heu's arrival, some of these advances had been repaid ; others, however, to the amount of 22,000,000 francs (£880,000), were still standing over. At the rate, how- ever, at which they were then being paid in, this sum would have been reimbursed during the following year, 1755. But Godeheu, seeing in this a means of enrich- ing the State at the expense of Dupleix, chose to con- sider these advances as sums irregularly laid out by his predecessor for his own private advantage, and not for the benefit of the State. He, therefore, suddenly seized Papiapoule in his own private house, placed him in confinement* under circumstances most insulting to Dupleix, deprived him of all his papers, and farmed the revenues of the districts to another native for the sole benefit of the Company. In addition to this, he re- fused to allow a bill drawn by the Company itself in favour of Dupleix, to the amount of 422,606 francs (£16,904), to be cashed in Pondichery. Having thus effectually ruined him, having exposed him to the claims of those who were his creditors, solely because on the credit of his character they had lent their money to the State, Godeheu allowed to depart — beggared though not dishonoured, blasted in his fortune, cheated out of the fruits of his then ripening labours — this by
 * lie reinaiued in irons till released by Lally, in 1758.