similar circumstances he would forbid the French to attack the English settlement.
For the moment, then, Dupleix was safe. But the English squadron had arrived, and on the side of the sea Pondichery was virtually blockaded. There was still then cause for anxiety. The reader can imagine, then, the reaction of joy which was produced by the arrival of information from a sure source (May, 1746) that the long-despaired-of squadron of La Bourdonnais had been sighted off the western coast.
La Bourdonnais, after an early career full of promise, had succeeded, in 1735, M. Dumas as Governor of the Isles of France and Bourbon. It is not too much to say that by his own teaching and example he had laid the foundation of the future prosperity of those islands. He had proceeded to France in 1740 with the object of personally convincing the French Government of the enormous advantage which must accrue to the French possessions in India, if, in the event of a war with England, they had a certain base of operations in the Indian Ocean, where land-forces could be trained, and whence ships could sally to prey upon the commerce of their rivals; that they actually possessed in the two islands such a base, and it was only necessary that he should have the ships and the men. After many rebuffs La Bourdonnais succeeded in convincing Cardinal Fleury of the reasonableness of his contention, and in 1741 he proceeded to the islands with five ships belonging to the Company. Hardly had he arrived there when information reached him
