s of which need
not be given. The result was that war broke out again, and that Clive
with three thousand men, one third of whom were English, met the nabob
at the head of fifteen thousand horse and thirty-five thousand foot.
The disproportion in artillery was nearly as great. Against these odds
was fought and won the battle of Plassey, on the 23d of June,
1757,--the date from which, by common consent, the British empire in
India is said to begin. The overthrow of the nabob was followed by
placing in power one of the conspirators against him, a creature of
the English, and dependent upon them for support. Bengal thus passed
under their control, the first-fruits of India. "Clive," says a French
historian, "had understood and applied the system of Dupleix."

This was true; yet even so it may be said that the foundation thus
laid could never have been kept nor built upon, had the English nation
not controlled the sea. The conditions of India were such that a few
Europeans, headed by men of nerve and shrewdness, dividing that they
might conquer, and advancing their fortunes by judicious alliances,
were able to hold their own, and more too, amidst overwhelming
numerical odds; but it was necessary that they should not be opposed
by men of their own kind, a few of whom could turn the wavering
balance the other way. At the very time that Clive was acting in
Bengal, Bussy invaded Orissa, seized the English factories, and made
himself master of much of the coast regions between Madras and
Calcutta; while a French squadron of nine ships, most of which,
however, belonged to the East India Company and were not first-rate
men-of-war, was on its way to Pondicherry with twelve hundred regular
troops,--an enormous European army for Indian operations of that day.
The English naval force on the coast, though fewer in numbers, may be
considered about equal to the approaching French squadron. It is
scarcely too much to say that the future of India was still uncertain,
and the first operations showed it.

The French division appeared off the Coromandel coast to the southward
of Pondicherry on the 26th of April, 1758, and anchored on the 28th
before the English station called Fort St. David. Two ships kept on to
Pondicherry, having on board the new governor, Comte de Lally, who
wished to go at once to his seat of government. Meanwhile, the English
admiral, Pocock, having news of the enemy's coming, and fearing
specially for this post, was o