116 THE RISE OF THE FRENCH POWER IN INDIA. chap, diverted to some unimportant purpose, and La Bour- ' , donnais found himself reduced to the command of five 1741. vessels belonging to the Company. But these would have been sufficient for his purpose, had he been allowed to pursue that purpose to its end. They carried a con- siderable armament,* and they had on board 1,200 sailors and 500 soldiers. Yet even amongst these, he had difficulties to contend with. But few of the sailors had ever been at sea, and the soldiers had been but little in- structed in military exercises. With both these classes, La Bourdonnais pursued the course he had found so successful with the colonists of the Isle of France. He taught them what their duties were, and he set them himself the best example of doing them. To train them to the various labours likely to devolve upon them, was his constant and unremitting business on the voyage ; and to such an extent did he succeed, that the ships which left France on the 5th April, 1741, manned by landsmen as sailors, and carrying recruits for soldiers, arrived at the Isle of France on August 14th following, with crews as efficient as those which manned the King's navy, and soldiers as well trained in all their musketry exercises as those who fought at Fontenoy. It was the sad fate of those heroic men who struggled to establish a French Empire in India, to find their chief- est and most redoubtable enemies in France itself. The genius of Clive, the persistent valour of Coote, and the almost forgotten gallantry of Forde,f might have strug- gled in vain to overturn a settlement which was based on the solid foundations on which the early rulers of Pondi- chery had begun to build up a French India, had France herself been true to her struggling children. But the France of Louis XV. more resembled the Medea of the ancient story than the tender and watchful mother.
- These ships were the " Fleury" nominee " of 28, and the "Parfaite,"
of 56 guns, the "BriUant" and of 16. "Aimable" of 50 each, the "Re"- f Vide the Decisive Battles of India."
