HIS PLACE IN HISTORY. 431 this day* ; the man who acquired for France territories in the East larger than France herself, treated as an ^- v - . importunate imposter ! Not long could even his brave 1754. spirit endure such a contest. He died on November 10, 1764. f Not the less will he rank with posterity as one of the greatest of Frenchmen ; not the less will even the descendants of his rivals in Southern India place him on the same pedestal as the greatest of their own heroes — on the pedestal of Clive, of Warren Hastings, and of Wellesley 1
- Strange it is that, considering
the mutations France has herself gone through, she should still have allowed these claims to remain un- settled. The Republic, the tirst Em- pire, the Restoration, the Orleanists, the second Republic, and the second Empire, must divide with the Bour- bons the shame of this great scandal. We append an extract from the letter of the Paris correspondent of the Globe of May 17, 1866, showing that even up to the time of his last descendant these claims had been neglected : "Another death, which is worthy of record, is that of the last descen- dant of the great Nabob Dupleix, the celebrated Governor of Pondichery. The coat of arms granted him by Louis XV., for the diplomatic tri- umphs gained by him over the Eng- lish in India, glittered for the last time over the portal of Saint Phi- lippe du Roule, as the modest coffin which contained the remains of the last Dupleix was borne out to the cemetery. Of the great siege of Pondichery, of the glory and magni- ficence of Dupleix, of his riches and his disgrace, of his humiliation, his poverty and miserable death, nothing- is remembered now. Even the jete which he had instituted at Pernan. his native place, to celebrate the raising of the siege of Pondichery, has long been discontinued for want of the funds which he had intended to be annually devoted to the dower of one of the village maidens. He died in the most abject poverty, after having had at his command whole multitudes of men and millions of rupees ; and the faithless agent charged by him with the settlement of the perpetual fund for the good work of which he had been dream- ing for years beneath the hot scorch- ing sun of India, and amid the strife and bloodshed by which he was sur- rounded, never having sunk the money, the celebration of the one glorious souvenir of his life — that too has passed away, and his very name is now no more. When the Ministere des Finances was entered by the mob in 1830, the last appeal of Dupleix, imploring a settlement of his claim of 13 millions against the Govern- ment, was thrown out amongst other papers scattered to the winds. It fell into the hands of the professor of philosophv at the college Louis le Grand, who had it framed and glazed, and hung up in his class-room, where it afterwards served as illustration to many and many a lesson on the vanity of riches and the varied con- formation of the wings they make to themselves when they flee away." t He died in a house in the Rue Neuve des Capucines, on the site till recently occupied by the Foreign office, within a few doors of the offi- cial residence of the Company.
