Page:History of the French in India.djvu/191

DIFFICULT POSITION OF LA B0UUD0NNAIS. 169 Nor was La Bourdonnais himself at all at his ease. c ^y P> The month of October — a month famous for the storms , ' , and hurricanes which it brings upon the open Koro- 1746. mandel coast — was now well upon him. He had felt and had always declared that it would be dangerous to stay in the Madras roadstead after October 15. Yet, so intent had he been on this quarrel with Dupleix, that he had done very little in the way of embarking the property of which he had made prize. Not even an inventory had been made out. To leave Madras, too, on the 15th, as he had intended, with a treaty unratified by the Superior Council of Pondichery, would be to make over his conquest to Dupleix without conditions, as to lose for himself and for France the ransom -money he had been promised. That defiance of the Pondi- chery authorities which had apparently succeeded so well, what would it profit him, if, after his departure, those authorities should choose to ignore all his pro- ceedings, and should deal with Madras as a conquest of which they alone had a right to dispose % And yet what was more probable than that they would thus act ? Relying upon the physical force of which he disposed he had contemned their orders, refused to acknowledge their authority, arrested their generals, and put them to open scorn. It would have been contrary to all his experience of men to imagine, that the physical force being on their side, they would acknowledge any of the arrangements which, in open defiance of their instruc- tions, he might have made. At the moment then of his apparent triumph, La Bourdonnais felt all the hopelessness and helplessness of his position. Unless he could come to terms with Dupleix, all his plans would be subverted, the bills for public ransom and private gratitude would not be worth the paper on which they were written. Yet, how to come to terms with those whom he had slighted and scorned, seemed of all tasks the most impossible. To