The Company thus strengthened forthwith became ambitious. Hitherto it had addressed the native princes in terms of humble submission: it now assumed the tone of an equal and independent power, able to command respect by force of arms. It also equipped a fleet of twelve powerful men-of-war, which was first to capture Chittagong and then to proceed up the eastern branch of the Ganges to seize Dacca. Hostilities were precipitated by a quarrel between English and native soldiers in the bazaar at Hooghly, wherein the forces of the nabob of the province were defeated. The nabob, however, avenged himself by pouncing upon the British factory at Patna; and the approach of Aurungzebe caused the British to withdraw from Hooghly to Chuttamuttee, the site of the present Calcutta. Thus the war against the Moguls ended in the utter humiliation of the Company. The period of conquest was not yet come. [Sidenote: 1642.] [Sidenote: 1668.] [Sidenote: 1669.] [Sidenote: 1697.] [Sidenote: 1701.] Meanwhile a new rival had sprung up in the East Indies. In 1609 a French East India Company had been formed, which after thirty years of ineffectual life at last gave definite evidence of vitality by the formation of a settlement at Madagascar. The venture was not a success; but the great minister Colbert, quickly awake to the advantages of an Indian trade, granted the help of the Government to form a new Company, which, after wasting some time and money on a second experiment in Madagascar, sent an expedition to Surat. There in 1668 was established the first French factory in India, which was quickly followed by the erection of a second at Masulipatam. But, if the Company were to prosper, something more than a factory with a rival factory alongside it was needed; and this want was made good by the foundation of Pondicherry by François Martin in 1674. Two or three years later a French fleet entered the Hooghly and disembarked a body of settlers at Chandernagore, which was finally granted to them by Aurungzebe in 1688. Meanwhile the foolish quarrel of the English Company with the Moguls had given the French an opportunity to take a share of the Indian trade, of which they did not fail to make good use. Their further progress was, however, checked for the moment through the capture of Pondicherry by the Dutch in 1693; but the settlement was restored at the Peace of Ryswick, and no time was lost in improving and fortifying it. Shortly afterwards the French abandoned their factory at Surat and transferred their headquarters to Pondicherry. On the whole they had made good use of their time. The settlements of the British Company after one hundred years of existence were set down, in contemporary spelling, as follows: Bombay, with factories at Surat, Swally, Broach, Amadavad, Agra, and Lucknow; on the Malabar coast the forts of Carwar, Tellicherry, and Anjengo, with the factory of Calicut; on the Coromandel coast Chinghee, Orixa, Fort St. George or Madras, Fort St.