DESIGNS OF THE FRENCH ON MADRAS. 131 happy to have contributed to it by causes which will chap. only derive merit from your conduct and its happy t results, for which I am ardently desirous. I hope that 1746, my previous assurances, as well as this one, will con- vince you of the light in which I regard the question. I feel too much the importance of our union, not to give myself entirely to bring it about. Have no fears, there- fore, on the score, but count on me as on yourself."* La Bourdonnais had replied in similar terms : " Be assured," he wrote from the Malabar coast on June 21, " that my conduct will be guided as much as possible by your counsels. I burn with impatience to embrace you, and to consult with you measures for repairing our losses." There certainly seemed no reason why these two men should clash. And yet there was seen here, what the world has seen so often since, an example of the extreme difficulty with which men of action, accustomed to command — to plan as well as to execute — submit to a superior authority. They will obey, it is true, a man of acknow- ledged genius, in whose hands is vested irresponsible power. Thus Massena and Ney, Soult and Suchet, acknowledged and obeyed genius and power combined in the person of Napoleon. But away from the in- fluence of his presence, Ney chafed and grumbled when placed under the orders of Massena, and even Suchet, able as he was, refused to make a movement which would have given to the French army a great superiority over Lord W ellington, when, as a consequence of it, he would have been brought under the orders of Soult. Perhaps it was, at Pondichery in 1746, that La Bour- donnais, conscious of his own abilities, felt a revulsion which he could not control at being called upon to work under one who was known to fame chiefly as a successful merchant and trader, and whose skill as a manager of men he had had no opportunity of testing.
- Dated, April 23, 174G, and received by La Bourdonnais at Mahe.
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