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 CHAPTER IV

How the Fortunes of Robert Clive were affected by the Hostilities between the French and English in Southern India

The events narrated in the second and third chapters must be studied by the reader who wishes to understand the India of 1744-65 — the India which was to be the field for the exercise of the energies of the hero of this biography. It was an India, he will see, differing in all respects from the India of the present day: an India which may not improperly be termed an Alsatia, in which, as we have seen, murder was rampant, and every man fought for his own hand. What it then was it would be again were the English to leave the people to their own devices.

In the autumn of 1744 the Governor of Pondicherry, M. Dupleix, who had succeeded Dumas in October, 1741, received a despatch from his Directors notifying that a war with England was impending; requiring him to diminish his expenditure; to cease to continue to fortify Pondicherry; and to act with the greatest caution. A little later they wrote to say that war had actually been declared, that they had instructed