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 CHAP. VIII.

THE NIZAM'S CONNECTION WITH THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH, AND TERMINATION OF THAT CONNECTION WITH THE FRENCH.

The year 1746 was a dark one for the interests of the English East India Company on the eastern side of the peninsula of India. The question about to be raised was not of commercial profit or loss, but of political influence ; and it took fifteen years to determine the supremacy of one of the two European powers both then struggling for ascendancy. The mutual declarations of war made by France and England in 1744 were now being felt at their distant settlements in the East.

Madras had been the chief factory of the English on the Coromandel Ccftast for upwards of a century, and in territorial extent consisted of a seaboard of five miles, and a mile landward. From that factory England used to import the description of bleached cloth known by the name of maddapollam, now so extensively manufactured in Great Britain and exported to India. On this eastern coast, too, at this very time, Clive was fired with military ardour, participated in the various sieges and exploits which then occurred, and opened that career of renown which, in 1756, made him the conqueror on the battle-field of Plassey.

The French point oVappui was the little well-known settlement of Pondicherry, still as strictly Parisian in its