With Hawke’s victory the naval war in Europe came to an end. In the East Indies, however, it continued. One of the few relieving features in the dulness of this war—or these wars, the Spanish and the French—is the extension of the activity of our fleet into the remote east. Hitherto when the Royal Navy had gone to the Indian Seas it had been on particular missions, but from 1744 it acted there continuously, and in squadrons, for so long as the countries were at war in Europe. Not that anything the navy did there was very flattering to our pride. Rather the contrary, indeed, since the dispensation by which it was arranged that while we were bad, our enemy should be even worse, was nowhere more conspicuously to our advantage. Yet it marks one step in the growth of the navy that it is found taking over its duties on the other side of the world. In 1744 a squadron of 4 ships, two of 60, one of 50, and one of 20 guns, was sent to the Eastern Seas under Commodore Curtis Barnett. Here at once there is occasion to note how well we were served by the folly of our opponent. A man was then at Paris who was admirably qualified to defeat any enterprise we might undertake against the French posts in India. This was Bertrand Mahé de la Bourdonnais, governor of the French islands of Bourbon and Mauritius. He had not been trained as a king’s officer, though the rank of Capitaine de Frégate was conferred upon him. He was a native of St. Malo, a merchant skipper and trader. But he had acquired all the knowledge needed to make a skilful naval commander, and had shown great faculty in his government. La Bourdonnais was convinced that England would attack the French settlements in the East, and he laid a scheme before the king’s ministers for forestalling us. His plan was accepted, and he was promised a squadron of five vessels. But La Bourdonnais, most happily for us, had excited the hostility of the French East Company by his self-assertive character, and his exposures of its corruptions, and his talent for scornful retort. The company opposed his scheme, and had influence enough to get it laid aside. It persuaded itself and the king’s ministers that it would be possible to maintain neutrality with the English East India Company. Neither thought fit to consider the probable action of the British Government, which might very well decline to be guided by the company. Being deprived of the force promised to him, La Bourdonnais was driven back on his own resources, and on those he could draw from the islands.