was retaken by Suffren in 1782, but not until after England had made peace with the Marathas. In any event, the English power was by that time too firmly consolidated in India by the acquisition of Bengal, with the rich districts northwestward up to Allahabad, to be shaken by the landing on the southeast coast of a small force, which could hardly have produced more than local damage and temporary political confusion in the peninsula. Suffren's real object must have been no more than to create a diversion by harassing our Eastern possessions while our forces were employed against the colonial revolt in America, and in 1783 his operations were interrupted by news of the Peace of Versailles.
We are therefore entitled to fix on the Peace of Paris in 1763 as the true date after which the maritime powers of Europe finally withdrew from all serious rivalry, either in commerce or conquest, with England in India. The epoch is one of pre-eminent importance in the history of the rise of British dominion in the great Asiatic peninsula, for thenceforward the contest for ascendency was between the English and the native powers only – a contest of which the issue was in reality so far from being doubtful, invisible, or amazing, that it could be and was already foreseen and deliberately foretold.
