Page:History of the French in India.djvu/460

 434 GODEHEU AND DE LEYR1T. chap, have also reported that the prisoners have been restored to Muhammad Ali, that Murari Rao and the Maisurians 1754. have abandoned you. All this proves to me that the English have gained completely the superiority over your nation." The Diwan, Shah Nawaz Khan, writing to the Muhammadan governor of Haidarabad, thus ex- pressed himself: "I cannot recover from the surprise which the news of the recall of the Governor Bahadur has caused me. I cannot imagine what the French are at; but by that act they will lose their honour and their territories. I cannot conceal from you that we can arrange nothing with the new governor, who has not the least knowledge of our affairs. Besides, it appears that the French are neither so powerful nor so generous as they would have us believe, and that the English have the absolute mastery over them. I will not hide from you then that I am about to negotiate with the English and Muhammad Ali." The letters of the French officers themselves were not at all more cheerful. "I foresaw," wrote Moracin to Bussy, from Machhlipatan, " in the same sense as your- self, what would be the effect of the arrival in India of the King's Commissary. I wrote to him a fortnight ago, and I believe I gave him an opinion similar to your own. It is fit that I should inform you of the contents of the letters from Madras which our native bankers have shown me. In these it is stated that the King of England has forced the King of France to recall M. Dupleix from Pondichery, under a threat of war ; and that the King of France, in sending out the new governor, said to him : 4 Go and make peace in India ; restore to the Navvwab the territories which he has given to the Company ; I will not keep them, be- cause to do so would annoy my brother, the King of England.' " Both Bussy and Moracin felt at this time the utter hopelessness of their position so completely, that nothing but the earnest exhortation of Dupleix to