France and England were just then at war in Europe, and Labourdonnais thought it a good time to crush English trade in India while it was yet in its infancy, so, in spite of all the British East Indian fleet could do to stop him, he appeared with his ships off Madras, landed a large body of troops, forced Fort St. George to surrender, and hoisted the French flag on its battlements. Happily, this roused the jealousy of Dupleix. Labourdonnais had pledged his honour that Madras should be restored on the payment of a moderate ransom. Dupleix, who had already dreamt of being sole master of India, was determined that it should be wiped off the map altogether, so he accused his fellow Governor of trespassing on his preserves, and in the end succeeded in annulling his conditions and marching the Governor of Fort St. George, with the principal servants of the Company, in triumph off to Pondicherry. Unfortunately for him, there was one whom he did not take, not a principal servant by any means, only an insignificant, underpaid quill-driver, who had slipped out of the town disguised as a Mussulman, and yet Dupleix would have made a very good bargain if he could have exchanged all his other prisoners of war for him. Clive reached Fort St. David, a dependency of Fort St. George, in safety, and there, taking advantage of the anger roused by this gross breach of faith, he exchanged the pen for the sword, and the writer became an ensign in the East India Company’s army, such as it was. Scarcely, however, had he done so than peace was made in Europe, and therefore in India. Clive, no doubt in great disgust, was sent back to his desk, but, happily for him and the British Empire, not for long. Fortunately, too, submarine telegraphs had not been invented then, and India was almost always a year behind Europe, so Governor Dupleix made up his mind to have a war on his own account, and the prize of this war was to be, as Macaulay puts it, “nothing less than the magnificent inheritance of the House of Tamerlane.” To this end he took such skilful advantage of the disputes of the pretenders to the throne of Nizam al Mulk, the last of the great Viceroys of the Deccan, that within a very short time he secured the triumph of Mirzapha Jung, his _protégé_, and rose himself to such a position that, in the name of this puppet, he was the virtual ruler of thirty millions of people, and master of the whole Carnatic, saving only the city of Trichinopoly, which was all that was left to Mohammed Ali, the candidate with whom the English Company had sided in a half-hearted and wholly futile fashion.