agement, for as soon as peace had been proclaimed at home, he lost no time in prosecuting his schemes on a larger scale.
We have to remember, in any case, that Dupleix cannot be supposed to have known the relative strength of the maritime nations, or the conditions to which the naval forces of France had been reduced by the war of the Austrian succession. The English had spent immense sums of money, but their navy had greatly increased in power and capacity; it had attained a clear superiority over the French everywhere, and notwithstanding some reverses, it was far more than a match for the enemy in Indian waters. The resources of Holland were exhausted, and she was threatened by imminent invasion when peace was signed at Aix-la-Chapelle. As for France, her victories in the Low Countries had brought her no substantial profit and much positive loss, for the damage done to Holland by the war told entirely in favour of England's commercial preponderance; while at sea her trade and marine had suffered so heavily, and her naval material at home was so completely spent that, according to Voltaire, she had no warships left.
Such national destitution must have severely affected any great trading enterprise; it was particularly damaging to the interests of the French East India Company which were directly associated with the fortunes of the State. At the end of the war, the Company found themselves deep in debt; their directors, all nominees of the Crown, had been profuse in expendi-
