The favourable moment in fact had been lost, despite Dupleix's pressing entreaties that it might be seized. Nasir Jung had not only invaded the Carnatic with his own forces but had called Mohammed Ali and the British to his standard; and the East India Company, roused by the imposing numbers of his army, had sent him six hundred European soldiers under command of Stringer Lawrence in person. At the end of March the hostile armies stood within striking distance of each other midway between Pondicherry and Arcot, near the fortress of Gingee; but no blow was struck. A mutiny of the French troops practically broke up Murzapha Jung's army; Murzapha himself surrendered to Nasir Jung; and the whole of Dupleix's grand combinations seemed to be shattered beyond repair. With inexhaustible energy, however, the French Governor set himself to restore the discipline of the troops, and meanwhile opened negotiations with Nasir Jung. Finding his overtures rejected he boldly surprised his camp by night with a handful of men, and with such effect that Nasir Jung retreated hurriedly to Arcot. The British, thus abandoned, retired likewise to Fort St. David, and the field was left open once more to the ambition of Dupleix. [Sidenote: Aug. 31/Sept. 11.] [Sidenote: Dec. 5/16.] Thoroughly understanding the Oriental character, he hastened to follow up this first blow with another. First he turned upon Mohammed Ali, who had been left in isolation near Pondicherry, dispersed his army, though vastly superior to his own, almost without loss of a man, and sent him flying northward. He then detached one of his best officers, M. de Bussy, with a handful of troops against the fugitives of Mohammed Ali's force which had rallied under the walls of Gingee; and Bussy not only routed them in the field but actually carried the fort of Gingee itself, for generations deemed an impregnable stronghold, by escalade. This feat, one of the most brilliant and marvellous ever achieved by Europeans in India, provoked Nasir Jung anew to try his fortune in the field and lured him on to his destruction. Notwithstanding the lateness of the season he collected a vast unwieldy host of a hundred thousand men and moved down to Gingee, only to find military operations absolutely impossible owing to the breaking of the monsoon. For three months he remained perforce inactive, while Dupleix sedulously fostered sedition and conspiracy in his camp. At last, in December, the French attacked and utterly defeated his army, while the conspirators made an end of Nasir Jung himself. Murzapha Jung was at once saluted as Viceroy of the Deccan, and a few days later was solemnly installed as such at Pondicherry; Dupleix, in all the splendour of Oriental robes, sitting by his side as one of equal rank, to receive with him the homage of the subordinate princes. The French Governor was declared Nabob of the whole of the country south of the Kistnah to Cape Comorin, and