in 1754, having settled an understanding upon this basis with the English government, they deputed to Pondicherri M. Godeheu, who superseded Dupleix, and concluded with the English governor, Saunders, first, a suspension of arms; and secondly, a provisional treaty, afterwards ratified, whereby the Companies bound themselves not to renew attempts at territorial aggrandizement or to interfere in local wars, and covenanted to retain only a few places and districts stipulated in the treaty. Mohammad Ali, whom the English had been supporting throughout the whole contest, was tacitly recognized as Nawab of the Karnatic. This concession virtually dropped the keystone out of the arch upon which the high-reaching policy of Dupleix had been built up, and on his return to France he died, after some vain attempts to obtain justice, in neglect, poverty, and unmerited discredit.
It has been usual to regard this treaty arrangement, which put an end to the unofficial war between the two Indian Companies, as the turning-point of the fortunes of France in the East Indies. The abandonment of the policy of Dupleix has been freely censured as short-sighted and pusillanimous, particularly by recent French writers. The French government is accused of throwing up a game that had been nearly won, and of deserting in the hour of his need the man whose genius had engendered the first conception of founding a great European empire in India, who showed not only the possibility of the achievement but the right method of accomplishing it. We are told, for instance, by Xavier
