Page:History of the French in India.djvu/576

 550 THE LAST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE. chap, an unenterprising and hesitating adversary, for, after a X11 ' fierce struggle, he not only captured the fort, but forced 1759. Conflans with his whole army to surrender. The consequences of this unsurpassed act of cool and resolute daring were most important. Less than a week after, Moracin,* ordered to MachhKpatan by Lally on receiving the first message from Conflans, arrived with three hundred troops off the place. Finding it occupied by the English, he proceeded to Ganjam. There, however, he effected nothing : indeed, the place was abandoned, and his whole party dispersed by the end of the year. But the most important result was the treaty concluded with Salabat Jang. Struck by the unexpected defeat of the French, and annoyed at the time by the pretensions of Nizam Ali, the Subadar hastened to conclude with Forde a treaty whereby he renounced the French alliance, agreed never to allow a French contingent in the Dakhan, and ceded to the English a territory yielding an annual revenue of four lakhs of rupees. Before the end of the year, those dis- tricts, the possession of which constituted one of the triumphs of the administration of Dupleix, passed entirely into the hands of the English, and thenceforth the fate of French India was sealed. Meanwhile Lally, retreating from Madras, had taken post at Kanchipuram. Thence, leaving his troops under the command of de Soupire, he set out for Arkat to arrange for the provisioning of the army. At Arkat he received a strange account of the proceedings of de Leyrit. Profiting by the absence of Lally with the army, de Leyrit had summarily, and against the protest of four members of his Council,! put a stop to an ordered to Machhlipatan, and had he the order, and did actually delay so obeyed, he would have arrived in long-, that he only arrived in time to time to have placed Forde in a posi- share in the ruin in which the force tion from which even his skill and of Conflans was involved, daring could with difficulty have ex- t The names of the protestors were tracted his force ; but, the ally of the MM. Barthelemy, Boileau, La Selle, French intriguers at Pondichcry, he and Nicholas.
 * Moracin was indeed at once endeavoured for a long time to evade