Page:History of the French in India.djvu/477

 CAUTIOUS POLICY OF DE LEYRIT. 451 Leyrit saw clearly that war would then be inevitable, all chap. his foreign policy was directed to nurse the resources of L X " Pondichery, to avoid committing himself to a contest, 1755 until his own private knowledge of the confirmation of the treaty should render it advisable for him to provoke hostilities on other grounds. Should the treaty not bo confirmed, war would naturally ensue. This exposition of the views of de Leyrit will enable us to comprehend and account for the cautious policy he continued for some time to follow. We shall under- stand why it was he continued to support Bussy at Haidarabad, why, when the English again infringed the treaty, he confined himself to threats and to pro- tests, until, learning that the treaty had been confirmed by his Directors, he made the aggression of the English a pretext for renewing hostilities, endeavouring thus to retain for France permanent possession of the ceded Sirkars. It was undoubtedly, in theory, a sagacious and able policy, but to succeed it required the pos- session of greater energy and vigour in action than de Leyrit and his subordinates, always excepting Bussy, possessed. Opportunities for protesting were never wanting to either party. In the autumn of the same year, 1755, the French having taken possession of some lands con- tiguous to Sadras, midway nearly between Pondichery and Fort St. George, the English remonstrated, and the dispute only terminated by an equal division of the contested territory.* But in the following year affairs took a turn which could not fail to embroil the two nations. The English had always been jealous of the position held by Bussy at the court of the Subadar. The in- fluence which thus accrued to the French could not fail to make itself felt on both shores of Southern tling a dispute, the lands in question who were parties to the treaty. GG 2
 * A truly European mode of set- having belonged to native princes