Page:History of the French in India.djvu/470

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444 GODEHEU AND DE LEYFJT. chap, shadow of whose usurped authority they had endea- ,„ i voured to overthrow French influence. The French, on 1754. the contrary, had the Marathas, the Maisurians, and the Subadar. These knew not a word of the treaty. The effect of it, therefore, was to impose English law, not alone upon the French, but upon the independent princes of India ; to force Salabat Jang to accept, as Nawwab of the Karnatik, a man whom he had fre- quently declared to be a rebel and an outlaw ; to compel the Maisurians and Marathas to desist from their views on the city which they already regarded as their own. As a climax to this condition, the French, the allies of these princes, were to guarantee that they would execute it. Such was Godeheu's treaty — a treaty in which he re- nounced all that the French had been contending for. He gave up the office of Nawwab of the Karnatik; he prac- tically renounced the northern Sirkars ; he abandoned his allies ; he surrendered French influence and French honour. Could there have been a greater contrast to Dupleix 1 To him the English had offered to guarantee the possession of all his territories, provided lie would resign the position and office of Nawwab of the Karna- tik. His successor not only renounced that office, but with it those material advantages which France had secured, the undisputed possession of which would still have left her, under any circumstances, infinitely more powerful than her rival. It is certainly not too severe a sentence, not too extravagant a criticism, to pro- nounce such a treaty to have been, in a French point of view, disgraceful. It was disgraceful to France, dis- graceful to the man who made it. To his timorous love of peace, fostered by the mean and unworthy desire to undo the work of his predecessor, Godeheu sacrificed — and sacrificed knowing what he was sacrific- ing — the very foundations of an Indo-French empire. For, indeed, great as were the material advantages