who bore a general's commission in
addition to his naval rank. The fleet appeared off the Coromandel
coast in August, 1748. Pondicherry was attacked by land and sea, but
Dupleix made a successful resistance. The English fleet in its turn
suffered from a hurricane, and the siege was raised in October.
Shortly after came the news of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which
ended the European war. Dupleix, with his home communications
restored, could now resume his subtle and persevering efforts to
secure a territorial base which should, as far as possible, shelter
him from the chances of sea war. Pity that so much genius and patience
should have been spent in an effort wholly vain; nothing could protect
against that sea attack but a naval aid, which the home government
could not give. One of the conditions of the peace was that Madras
should be restored to the English in exchange for Louisburg, the prize
won by the North American colonists and released by them as
reluctantly as Madras was by Dupleix. This was indeed illustrating
Napoleon's boast that he would reconquer Pondicherry on the bank of
the Vistula; yet, although the maritime supremacy of England made
Louisburg in her hands much stronger than Madras, or any other
position in India, when held by the French, the gain by the exchange
was decidedly on the side of Great Britain. The English colonists were
not men to be contented with this action; but they knew the naval
power of England, and that they could do again what they had done
once, at a point not far distant from their own shores. They
understood the state of the case. Not so with Madras. How profound
must have been the surprise of the native princes at this surrender,
how injurious to the personality of Dupleix and the influence he had
gained among them, to see him, in the very hour of victory, forced, by
a power they could not understand, to relinquish his spoil! They were
quite right; the mysterious power which they recognized by its
working, though they saw it not, was not in this or that man, king or
statesman, but in that control of the sea which the French government
knew forbade the hope of maintaining that distant dependency against
the fleets of England. Dupleix himself saw it not; for some years more
he continued building, on the sand of Oriental intrigues and lies, a
house which he vainly hoped would stand against the storms that must
descend upon it.

The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, ending this gener