Here, again, the personal equation--the only thing that has ever counted in India--stepped in. It was a genuine tribute to Clive's possession of that greatest attribute of a good general--fortunæ. It heartened him up, and he instantly began a second campaign of success, driving Dupleix to despair, since after every petty victory some of the beaten sepoys, following fortune, invariably deserted to the English side. Clive's army, in fact, was a snowball. It increased in size as it went, and after the big fight at Samiavêram, was joined by no less than two thousand horse and fifteen hundred sepoys. But the young man, for all his gloomy face, his silence, his stubbornness, had a curiously sympathetic personality to the natives. When Seringhâm was taken, and a thousand Râjputs shut themselves up in the celebrated pagoda swearing death ere it should be defiled, Clive "did not think it necessary to disturb them," but at Covelong he drove the frightened recruits back to battle at the point of the sword. After taking Chingleput, the campaign came to an abrupt conclusion. Clive, falling sick, had leave to go to England. This was in 1752.
Major Lawrence, meanwhile, in the south, had been fairly successful. The siege of Trichinopoly raised, the French, who had done all the artillery work, retreated to Pondicherry.
But complications arose. Mahomed-Ali, Nawâb of Arcot, showed indisposition to press his advantage, and to his great chagrin Major Lawrence discovered that Trichinopoly itself had been promised to the Mysore king, one of Mahomed-Ali's native allies. The Nawâb himself was ready to repudiate his promise; the English, it is to be feared, did not favour straightforward fulfilment. The result was a hollow compromise, which in its results showed that honesty would have been the best policy. For the next two years, therefore, Trichinopoly became the scene of constant warfare, and such was the stress of battle that raged round the unfortunate town, that in November 1753 not a tree was left standing near it, and the British detachment and convoy which finally relieved it was forced to go six or seven miles to get a stick of firewood.
The story of the final and futile assault of the French is a thrilling one, especially the incident of the night-attack frustrated by the falling into a disused well of a soldier, whose musket going off, alarmed the garrison, thus rendering of no avail a previous wholesale tampering with the guard. For the French had no hesitation in using underhand means; in this, indeed, lay the strength of Dupleix. On this occasion, anyhow, they suffered for it, since, pinned between the outer ramparts and an inner one, four hundred out of six hundred Frenchmen were either killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.
The year 1740 brought a mutual fatigue of warfare both to the French and the English East India Company. They called a truce to assert that they had never really been at war, the hostile interlude being merely the amusements of mercenaries.
But the whole affair was comic. The Council-of-Negotiation which met at a neutral little Dutch settlement was as unreal as the patents produced on both sides in support of the claims of their puppets. There were seven on the French side for the murdered Muzaffar-Jung's successor, Sâlabut, including one from the Great Moghul. The English, too, had patents for their puppet Mahomed-Ali, also including one from the Great Moghul. Now it is possible that both these contradictory patents were genuine--anything was possible in the India of 1754--but the English one was not produced, and the French one had a wrong seal!
So the affair ended in added exasperation.
But in truth France and England's attention was now awakening to the unceasing hostilities in India. International conferences were held in London, where the Secretary of State, in order to be prepared for refusal of his terms, fitted out a fleet for Eastern waters. The menace proved successful. France, never greatly enamoured of her Eastern Company, gave away the game by sending out one Monsieur Godeheu to take over the Governorship from Dupleix.
It was a bolt out of the blue. Whatever his faults may have been, the latter had spent his life for, and risked his whole fortune in, the Company. He never recovered the blow, but went home, sought bare justice by a lawsuit, and died ruined, broken-hearted, ere his case was decided. So England has no monopoly in ingratitude to her public servants.
Monsieur Godeheu was peaceful, painstaking, praiseworthy. He produced an ill-considered but plausible treaty which rather knocked the wind out of Clive's sails when he returned to Bombay in 1755 with Admiral Watson's fleet, fully prepared to attack the Dekkan from the north. He had to content himself with a campaign against the pirate-king of Anghria, in the course of which a momentous quarrel arose between the English and their Mahratta allies. The latter claimed a share of the plunder, the former refused it, asserting with righteous indignation that deliberate treachery had been proved up to the hilt against their so-called allies, and that consequently they were entitled to nothing. A sordid quarrel at best, which bore bitter fruit in years to come.