of the Austrian succession. The battle of Dettingen had been fought (June 16, 1743) before war had actually been declared. But the declaration soon followed, and it was not long before warlike operations, begun in Europe, extended to India.
Both nations despatched squadrons to the Indian seas. The English squadron, preceded by instructions from the directors of the East India Company to its agent at Madras, Mr Morse, to use it to destroy the French settlement at Pondichery, arrived first. But before Morse could carry out his instructions he was compelled to ask the sanction to the undertaking of the ruler of the country of which Madras formed a part, the Nuwáb of the Karnátik. But that prince was under the spell exercised by Dumas and Dupleix. He refused the permission, and Pondichery was saved.
Two years later the position of the two principal European powers on the Coromandel coast was inverted. The English squadron was absent: the French squadron was on the spot. Dupleix then prepared for his rivals the fate with which they had threatened him. In vain did the English appeal to the Nuwáb of the Karnátik. That prince, gained by Dupleix, declined to interfere in the quarrel between the settlers. The result was that, on September 21, 1746, Madras surrendered to the French, and was promptly occupied by a garrison composed of French troops and of sipáhís trained by French officers.
The capture of Madras by the French is an important event in the history of the connection of France and England with India; for it was indirectly the cause of the development of that sipáhí army, the great outbreak of which, against its masters, it is my object to describe in this volume. It would seem that Dupleix, when pleading to the Nuwáb for permission to attack
