Page:History of the French in India.djvu/607

 CAUSES OF THE FAILURE OF THE FRENCH. 581 failure to establish a French Empire in India, because chap. up to the moment of the actual capitulation, it was always possible that the fall of Pondichery might be i76i. delayed, and a chance afforded to the French of again asserting their supremacy. United counsels and ener- getic action so late even as January 1, 1761, might have caused the annihilation of the besieging army ; the arrival of d'Ache up to the 6th would have forced the English to raise the siege, and might even have insured the destruction of their fleet. But the events of January 16 made French supremacy in the Karnatik for ever impossible. It is true that the Peace of Paris restored to France, in 1763, Pondichery and her other dependencies in Southern India ; but they were restored dismantled and defenceless, with their trade annihilated, with their influence gone, with the curse of defeat and failure stamped upon their habitations ; they were restored at a time when England, using well the precious moments, had rooted herself firmly in the soil. The difference in the power and position of the rival settlements was shown clearly in 1778, when on the breaking out of war between France and England, Pon- dichery was at once invested and captured by a British army.* It is true, indeed that during that war, the French made a desperate effort to profit by the misfor- tunes of England in America, by sending out 3,000 men under Bussy and a fleet under Suffren to assist Haidar Ali, then alone almost a match for the few English in Madras. But whilst, on sea, the splendid achievements of the greatest of French admirals covered with a halo of glory this last effort on the part of France to expel the English from the Karnatik, on land the campaign was productive of little but disaster.^ France by the Peace of 1783, cap- t For an account of this war the tured again in 1793, restored by the reader is referred to the supplemen- Peace of Amiens, captured again in tary work of the author, entitled 1803, and finally restored in 1814 "Final French Struggles in India."
 * Pondichery was restored to and 1815.