580 THE LAST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE. chap, had fallen, sound policy would have dictated the
- U l ^ , strengthening of Lally's hands in the Karnatik, but
1761. the troops and the money which might still have enabled him to carry out his original designs, were frittered upon the armies of the nominees of Madame de Pompadour — the Soubises, the Bichelieus, the Con- tades, and the Broglios, with their legions of opera- dancers and hair-dressers.* To keep up those costly armies — which nevertheless were barely able to make head against a lieutenant of the King of Prussia — and their more costly contingents, French India was left without money sufficient to carry on a campaign, with- out reinforcements, without even the few ships that might have sufficed to save her. However much, then, the candid Frenchman of the present day may lament the corruption that was rampant amongst the officials of Pondichery — however he may mourn over the want of unanimity in her Council, and the intrigues of her Councillors — however much he may condemn the absence of patriotic devotion that contributed to her fall — he will still be forced to lay the chief blame at the door of France, on the shoulders of the sensual monarch under whose rule the resources of the king- dom were so lavishly wasted and misdirected. Whilst English India received plentiful supplies of men and ships in abundance, and thought herself hardly-used, because, in the last year of the war, she did not also receive her annual supply of money, French India, after the arrival of Lally's troops, received from the mother-country scarcely more than two millions of francs ! There could be but one result to such a mode of supporting a colony, and that result appeared on" January 16, 1761. We do not hesitate thus to fix the date of the final
- The reader is referred to Carlyle's lieu, given in his Frederick tha
graphic description of the followers Great of the armies of Soubise and Riche-
