Such was the forever memorable defence of Arcot, and such too was the practical foundation of the British Empire in India. It was the work of a hundred and twenty-five English soldiers and two hundred Sepoys, inspired to heroism by a young man whom Fortune had suddenly plucked out of the wrong place and set down in the right one. Clive was by no means the man to look upon work as done because it was well begun. The authorities at Fort St. George promptly sent him two hundred more English soldiers and seven hundred Sepoys, and with this force--which was quite a large army for him--he marched out to join hands with Morari Row, attacked Rajah Sahib at the head of five thousand men with a stiffening of three hundred French regulars, hit him very hard, and generally convinced people that an Englishman worthy of his name and race had at length taken matters in hand. Unhappily, however, the English were not as strong in the council-chamber as they were in the field, and while the authorities were hesitating, Rajah Sahib and Dupleix retrieved their loss to such purpose that a native army supported by four hundred French troops marched almost up to the walls of Fort St. George and proceeded to amuse themselves by laying the settlement waste, with the result that Captain Clive had to come to the rescue, and the end was another overwhelming defeat, during which about half of the French regulars were either killed or taken prisoners. This physical victory was followed by a moral one no less effective. The vaingloriously-named City of the Victory of Dupleix, surmounted by its magniloquently inscribed pillar, lay at Clive’s mercy and directly in his path, and he promptly pulled the pillar down and wiped the city off the face of the earth. He didn’t do this because he personally disliked either Dupleix or his nation, but in doing it he showed that he was statesman as well as soldier, for, as he well knew, the destruction of the City of Victory was to the waiting and watching millions of India the symbol of the destruction and discredit of the French power, and the establishment and vindication of the British. From that day to this Britain’s star in the East has been in the ascendant and that of France on the decline.