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394 General History of Europe station. The Mongolian emperor of India at first scarcely deigned to notice the presence of a few foreigners on the fringe of his vast realms, but before the end of the seventeenth century hostilities began between the English East India Company and the native rulers, which made it plain that the foreigners would be forced to defend themselves. The English had to face not only the opposition of the natives but that of a European power as well. France also had an East India Company, and at the opening of the eighteenth century Pondicherry was its chief center, with a population of sixty thou- sand, of which two hundred only were Europeans. It soon be- came apparent that there was little danger from the Great Mogul ; so the native princes and the French and English were left to fight among themselves for the supremacy. 676. Olive renders English Influence Supreme in India. At the moment that the Seven Years' War was beginning, bad news reached Madras from the English settlement of Calcutta, about a thousand miles to the northeast. The nawab of Bengal had seized the property of some English merchants and imprisoned one hundred and forty-five Englishmen in a little room, the Black Hole of Calcutta, where most of them died of suffoca- tion before morning. The English were fortunate in finding a leader of military skill and energy. Robert Clive, although but twenty-five years old, organized a force of Sepoys, as the native soldiers were called by the English. He hastened to Bengal, and with a little army of nine hundred Europeans and fifteen hundred Sepoys gained a great victory at Plassey, in 1757, over the nawab's army of fifty thousand men. He then replaced the nawab of Bengal by a man whom he believed to be friendly to the English. Before the Seven Years' War was over, the English had won Pondicherry and deprived the French of all their former influence in the region of Madras. 677. England's Gains in the Seven Years' War. When the Seven Years' War was brought to an end, in 1763, by the Treaty of Paris, it was clear that England had gained far more than any other power. She was to retain her two forts commanding the