254 FRENCH INDIA AT ITS ZENITH. chap, sabred by the natives, the remainder rescued from their clutches, and taken prisoners, by the English. It was, 1750. however, less the loss of men and of guns that afflicted Dupleix, than the destruction, by this misfortune, of his vast plans. We have said that he was on the point of succeeding in inducing Nasir Jang to enter into engagements with himself. He had even persisted in this attempt after he had become aware of the existence of the mutinous feeling amongst the French officers, and it is probable that had the army only maintained its position in the field during the next day, Nasir Jang would have signed the treaty which was being pressed upon him. But this mutiny spoiled all. " It is easy to imagine," he says, writing in the third person in his memoirs, " what was the mortification of Dupleix, when he was informed of all the details of the conduct of our cowardly officers, and further, to com- plete his misfortunes, that Muzaffar Jang had been taken prisoner and placed in irons by Nasir Jang." This last information was but too true. Though Nasir Jang had sworn upon the Kuran to restore his nephew to the governments he had held, yet, in accordance with the customs not uncommon in Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth and in India in the eighteenth cen- turies, he at once loaded him with irons. He thus became undisputed Subadar of the Dakhan, and one of his first acts was to appoint Muhammad Ali Nawwab of the Karnatik. This was the destruction to which we have alluded of those great schemes, whereby Dupleix hoped to bring Southern India in entire subordination to French interests. No doubt his mortification was extreme, yet great as it was, it neither caused him to give himself to despair, nor even to abandon his plans. On the contrary, it impelled him to try new and bolder expedients to bring them to maturity. He himself and the other inhabitants of Pondichery had received the first intelligence of the disgrace of
