Page:History of the French in India.djvu/93

 M. BUM AS GOVERNOR OF PONDICHERY. 71 Tibet. Under such a system Chandranagar speedily chap. recovered from its forlorn condition. From having. been the most inconsiderable, it became, in a few 1731. years, the most important and flourishing of the European settlements in Bengal. Its revival caused the greatest satisfaction in France. The Government and the Directors thoroughly appreciated the advantage of having at the head of the settlement a man who had such confidence in his own plans, and who cared so little for responsibility, that he never hesitated to ad- vance his own funds for public purposes. Dupleix was always ready to do this, whilst he traded at the same time on his own account. Thus it happened that his fortunes and the fortunes of Chandranagar grew up side by side. If his own gains were great, a comparison of the Chandranagar of 1741 with the Chandranagar of 1731 would have shown that the gains of the depen- dency which he governed were certainly not in smaller proportion. Meanwhile M. Lenoir, whose second administration of Pondichery and its dependencies lasted nine years, had been succeeded as Governor-General on the 19th September, 1735, by M. Benoit Dumas, then Governor of the Isles of France and Bourbon. Up to this period, since the death of Francis Martin, the relative position of Pondichery to the native chieftains in the neighbour- hood had but little varied. But with the advent of M. Dumas appeared the first symptoms of a new order of things, less attributable to the character of that gentle- man, than to the character of the events of which the province of the Karnatik was about to become the scene. It is therefore necessary that we should record the events of the government of M. Dumas with some minuteness. M. Dumas had been a servant of the old Company of the Indies. He had entered the service at the age of seventeen, in the year 1713, and had proceeded direct