Joseph Dupleix, born of a Gascon family, the son of the controller-general of Hainant, had settled in India from his youth. He had married there, and had learned to know all the tortuous policy of the Indian princes, whose language his wife, the princess Jeanne, as she was called, knew, and whose secrets she divined. Not over-scrupulous, ambitious and daring for his country's sake even more than his own, he had foreseen and prosecuted this European empire of India which was soon to fall into more fortunate if not more clever hands. In 1748 he had defended Pondicherry against Admiral Boscawen. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, while changing the name of the belligerents, had not put an end to hostilities. The two commercial companies, the French and the English, had continued the war hitherto sustained in the name of their sovereigns. Dupleix entered more and more into the internal intrigues of India. In the Dekhan he had supported Murzapha Jung against Nazir Jung, and in the Carnatic, Tchunda Sahib against Anaverdy Khan. His adroit patronage had brought good fortune to his proteges. In their solicitous gratitude they had conceded vast territories to France. A third of India was already obedient to Dupleix, and the Great Mogul, the invisible sovereign who silently granted degrees of investiture, had just recognized his supremacy. Dupleix thought that he had arrived at the goal of all his dreams. He had taken no account of the improvident weakness of the French government.
Already Dupleix's success had alarmed King Louis XV. and his ministers, who were more uneasy in respect of new embarrassments which might be created for them than solicitous for the greatness of France in India. England was irritated and perturbed. Her affairs had been for a long time badly managed in India, but she remained there vital, active, and sustained by the indomitable ardor of a free people. At Versailles Dupleix was refused the help he asked; the confirmation of his conquests was delayed. The man who was to establish for England the empire of India over the ruins of Dupleix's work, had just arisen. Robert Clive, born in 1725, of a family of small Shropshire landholders, had been placed while very young in the offices of the India Company. His nature was turbulent. The assiduous work of a copying clerk did not admit of any title for him: he was a born general, and already his counsels were listened to by the chiefs of the company. In the peril which menaced it in consequence of Dupleix's triumphs, young Clive was placed at the head of an expedition which he had planned against Arcatan, the capital of the Carnatic. Having become master of the place by a bold stroke in the month of September, 1751, he was soon attacked there by Tchunda Sahib. During fifty days he withstood in the fortress the efforts of the Indians and the French. Provisions gave out, the rations became more insufficient every day; but Clive knew how to inspire in those who surrounded him the heroic resolution which animated himself. "Give the rice to the English," the sepoys came and said to him; "we will content ourselves with the water in which it has been boiled." A body of Mahrattas, allies of the English, caused the siege to be raised. Clive pursued the French in their retreat; he twice defeated Tchunda Sahib and razed the town and the monument that Dupleix had erected in remembrance of his victories. When he had effected his junction with Governor-General Lawrence he broke the blockades of Trichinapolis and delivered Mahomet Ali, the son and successor of Anaverdy Khan. Tchunda Sahib, for his part, being confined at Tcheringham, was given up to his rival by a chief of Tanjore to whom he had trusted himself His throat was cut. The French commandant, a nephew of Law, gave himself up to the English. Clive had destroyed two French corps and was pressing the third army hard. Bussy-Castelnau, the faithful lieutenant of Dupleix, was fighting on the Dekhan and could not come to its aid. In vain did the indomitable energy of the governor-general triumph over all obstacles. Dupleix had found troops and money, and was resisting Clive, whose health was shaken when the news of his dismissal arrived from Europe. His temporary reverses of fortune had achieved the work begun by the suspicions which M. de la Bourdonnais had sown; the ministers of Louis XV. had taken fright. M. Godehen, one of the directors of the company, had been accused of treating with the English. Dupleix re-entered France, sad and irritated, but filled even yet with dreams and hopes. Since the time of his landing from the East he was hailed by the acclamations of the crowd, but the government was opposed to him. He had embarked his entire personal fortune in the service of his great patriotic designs; his claims were not listened to; his wife died of vexation, and he finally, in poverty and despair, succumbed in 1763. "I have sacrificed my youth, my fortune, my life," he exclaimed, with just bitterness; "I have wished to load my nation with honors and riches in Asia. Unfortunate friends, too confiding relatives, virtuous citizens, have consecrated their wealth to make my projects succeed; they are now in misery. … I demand what is due me as the last of the creditors. My services are fables; my demands are ridiculous; I am treated as the vilest of men. The little property that remains to me is seized. I have been obliged to apply for writs of suspension, so as not to be dragged to prison." History has avenged Dupleix by doing justice to his services. He was the most illustrious victim of those mighty French ambitions in India, without being the last or the most tragical of them.
After being detained some time in England by the care of his health. Clive returned to India in 1755, strong in his past glory and freed henceforth from the indomitable energy and clever intrigues of Dupleix. He cast his glances at Bengal, the sovereign of which, Surajah Dowlah, was hostile to the English rule. The Indian prince had just taken the initiative in hostilities by attacking Fort William, which formed the defence of the rising town of Calcutta. The governor took fright, and the place fell into the hands of Surajah Dowlah, who shut up the English prisoners in the dungeon of the garrison;—a terrible "black hole," scarcely sufficient to contain two or three delinquents. One hundred and forty-six unfortunates were crammed there in a stifling heat. In the morning when the door was opened, the cries of suffering, the rending appeals, had ceased. Twenty-three survivors, panting and dying, had scarcely strength to drag themselves out of the horrible place, the witness of their punishment. The nabob, indifferent and triumphant, gave Calcutta the name of Alinagore, or Port of God. He returned to his capital of Moorshedabad, occupied in torturing men, as in his childhood he had taken pleasure in torturing birds.
The anger of the English had placed Clive at the head of a little army. Surajah Dowlah called to his aid the French established at Chaudernagore. Dupleix was no longer there, busy to profit by all military or political complications. The French merchants refused to take part in the hostilities, although the Seven Years' War had just broken out in Europe. Everywhere the arms of France were opposed to those of England. Chaudernagore did not escape the common lot. The English seized it after Clive had repaired Calcutta and Fort William. The decadence of France in India was marching with rapid steps; the treaty concluded by Godehen had dealt a death-blow to its empire, and all the conquests of Dupleix had been abandoned.
Upright and sincere in his relations with Europeans, Clive had contracted the fatal habit of different morality in regard to the Hindoos. Treaties concluded and violated, conspiracies encouraged in all directions, shameful and flagrant perfidies, mark with a black stain, in the life of the great general, his relations with the cruel nabob of Bengal. The victory of Plassey, which he finally gained on the 23d of June, 1757, terminated brilliantly a campaign of mingled heroism and crimes. Henceforth Bengal belonged to England. Bussy, summoned too late by Surajah Dowlah, had not been able to arrest Clive's success. He revenged himself for it by sweeping off all the English factories on the coast of Orissa, and closing to them the road between the coast of Coromandel and Bengal.
On the day after Clive's triumph in India, a bold and improvident soldier, of indomitable courage and will, passionately attached to France, which had received him and his cause—M. Lally-Tollendal, of Irish origin, and already known by his conduct, first in England and then in Scotland, during the expedition of Prince Charles Edward—proposed to the ministers of Louis XV. a new attempt to re-establish France's situation in the East. The directors of the India Company sustained his proposal. The king had promised troops. M. d'Argenson knew Lally's character, and hesitated. The representations of the company won him. When M. de Lally landed at Pondicherry in 1757, the treasury was empty, the arsenals unprovided with arms and munitions, and the English were pressing on the French possessions at all points. The ardor of the general sufficed to remove all obstacles. Lally marched on Gondalem, which he razed on the sixteenth day. Shortly afterward he invested Fort St. David, the most notable of the English fortresses in India. The first assault was repulsed. The count had neither cannons nor beasts of burden to bring them. He hastened to Pondicherry and attached the Hindoos to the trains of artillery, taking indiscriminately the men who came to hand, without troubling himself as to rank or caste, thus imprudently wounding the dearest prejudices of the country that he came to govern. Fort St. David was taken and razed. Devicotch, hardly besieged, opened its gates. Lally had been scarcely a month in India, and already he had chased the English from the south coast of Coromandel. "My whole policy is contained in these five words, but they are sacramental: 'No English in the peninsula,'" wrote the general. He had sent orders to Bussy to rejoin him at Madras.
The ardent heroism of M. de Lally had for a time troubled the English by restoring courage to the remnants of the French colony. The grave defects of his character soon seconded the efforts of his adversaries by surrounding him with enemies, secret or declared, among his compatriots themselves. Being badly backed by M. d'Aché, who was in command of the French fleet, and who was twice beaten by the English, he attacked Madras in the month of September, 1758, with an undisciplined army, addicted to the most frightful debauchery, and commanded by chiefs who were either angry or discontented. Bussy could not console himself for having been obliged to abandon the Dekhan to the feeble hands of the Marquis de Conflaus. The black town had been stormed; the white town resisted valiantly. On the 18th of February, 1759, Lally was obliged to raise the siege; Colonel Coote had just taken possession of the fortress of Wandewash. The general wished to regain it. The battle which was fought on the 22d of January, 1760, was fatal to the French; M. de Bussy was made prisoner and immediately sent to Europe. "To him alone did the capacity belong to have continued the war for ten years," said the Hindoos. Karikal was in the hands of the English. They were marching on Pondicherry.