Page:History of the French in India.djvu/237

DANGERS THREATENING FONDICHERY. and its garrison retreating the chances in their favour would have been very great. Major Lawrence, and not the French, would then have been surprised ; the tables would have been turned on the author of the stratagem. But to do this required a head to devise, a resolution to execute promptly and at the moment. These were want- ing in the leader of the French force. A foolish confi- dence reigned where energy and watchfulness ought to have held sway, and the movement which might have been made fatal to the English was, without thought, without examination, tacitly and complacently permitted by the French leader to become the means of inflicting upon his army a terrible defeat — upon the French colony a danger that appeared to forebode almost inevitable destruction. For, in ordering this last attack, Dupleix had a far different purpose than that by which he was prompted in sanctioning those that preceded it. Then he was fighting for empire — he was struggling to expel the English from the coast. But since the last attack for that object, made on March 14th of the previous year, had been foiled by the arrival of the English fleet, the aspect of affairs had changed. It was not only that Admiral Griffin still remained on the coast preventing French traffic, obstructing all communication with France it was not alone that M. Bouvet had appeared off Madras only to land a few soldiers and to return to the islands; but since that attack, intelligence had reached Dupleix that the English had fitted out a most formidable fleet and army, larger than any that had yet appeared in the Indian seas, with the express object of laying siege to Pondichery, and of retorting upon that city the disaster which had befallen Madras. He knew, from letters re- ceived from the French Ministry, that that fleet and army had left England during the preceding November, and might be expected to appear at any moment in the Bay of Bengal. It was, then, in an entirely defensive point of