Page:History of the French in India.djvu/454

 428 THE PALL OF DUPLE1X. chap, equanimity of temper that enabled him to bear the IX ' greatest reverses, the most cruel injustice towards him- 170 i. se lf> with resignation and composure. He was not indeed a general. He did not possess the taste for leading armies into the field. Yet he showed on many occasions — notably on the occasion of the siege of Pondichery by Boscawen — that he could not only stand fire, but could defeat by his unassisted and natural skill all the efforts of the enemy. The character of his government and the influence of his own presence are attested to by the English historian of that epoch, writing, as he was, under the spell of the prejudices of the period. " All his countrymen," writes Mr. Orme, " concurred in thinking that his dismission from the Government of Pondichery was the greatest detri- ment that could have happened to their interests in India." When we think indeed how much he had accomplished — how he had built up the French power, how he had gained for it an unparalleled influence and an enor- mous extension of territory when we reflect that with half the two thousand men that Godeheu brought out with him, he could have crushed the English, already reduced to extremities at TrichinapalH — we cannot but marvel at the blindness, the infatuation, the madness, that recalled him. The primary cause was, no doubt, as we have stated, the degraded condition of the France of Louis XV. But there was yet, we believe, another reason, not entirely dependent upon the state of his country, for we have seen it act under other rulers than Louis XV., and under other Governments than France. To borrow the words of the French historian,* " Dupleix had against him that crime of genius, which so many men have expiated by misery, by exile, and by death." par VAngleterre t par le Barou Bar-
 * Histoirede la Vonquete tie VInde chou <le Penhoen.