British rule in Southern India was at its last gasp. If Dupleix could only have got hold of Mohammed Ali, he might have been master of the Carnatic; Madras might have been a French settlement, and a French Governor and Council might have taken the place of the British in Fort St. George. As it was, Mohammed Ali was very nearly surrendering. He had fled away to seek the help of the Hindu Rajas of the south, and was being closely besieged by the French in the city of Trichinopoly, 180 miles to the south of Arcot. At this crisis Robert Clive saved the East India Company. He left Madras with a small force, and after a march of seventy miles into the interior, threw himself into the city of Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, where the Nawabs of the Carnatic had held their court for more than half a century. The native garrison fled at his approach, and the inhabitants, numbering 100,000, offered no resistance. The French were aghast at hearing that the capital of the Carnatic was in the hands of the British. They despatched a large force from Trichinopoly, but failed to recover Arcot. In the end they raised the siege of Trichinopoly, and Mohammed Ali was delivered out of their hands and placed by the British in possession of the Carnatic, to the exclusion of Dupleix and ruin of his ambitious schemes. [Sidenote: Tragedy at Calcutta, 1756.] British and French were now anxious for peace, and agreed to make Dupleix their scapegoat. They threw the whole blame of the war upon the unfortunate Frenchman, who returned to France and died in poverty. In 1755 a treaty was patched up at Pondicherry, but was never executed. In 1756, on the eve of the Seven Years' War, terrible news arrived from Bengal. The Nawab had captured the settlement at Calcutta; and a hundred and twenty-three English prisoners had been thrust into a barrack cell, and perished most miserably of heat and suffocation. [Sidenote: Threats of the Nawab of Bengal.]