Nevertheless the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in the middle of the eighteenth century was the starting-point from which began a remarkable commercial prosperity in France. It was a prosperity of the bourgeois, the burghers or dwellers in the towns, who developed the industries and trades, but it did not reach down to the paysans, the peasants or dwellers in the country. They were in a very bad way, ground down by heavy taxes and by the enforced labour demanded from them by the seigneurs, or landowners. France had expected great things from her Compagnie de l'Occident, and her extensive colony of Louisiana; but the trading stations which she established in increasing number in the East brought her far richer gains. The war of the Austrian Succession engaged England and France in fighting on {124} battlefields as far apart as Canada and Louisiana in the West, and India in the East; and in the East the French, under Dupleix, at first had the advantage again and again. They repulsed an attack of the English on Pondicherry and they captured Madras. Indications, for the moment, pointed towards an Indian Empire for France as far more likely than an English Indian Empire. In the West, England fared better, but the results of the victories of either side were largely neutralised by that far-reaching Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which provided that both should relinquish their recent conquests to the other. So the apparent effect of that far-off fighting was to show England increasing in strength westward, but losing, relatively to France, in the East. The events of the next few years were to prove that appearance true for the West, but completely to disprove it in the East. And we should note here once again that it was mainly on the sea-coasts of India, not inland, that the French established themselves. In the interior, the great empire of the Moguls was passing from its zenith of power. The most remarkable monument to its glory is that surpassingly beautiful Taj Mahal, regarded as one of the world's wonders--the shrine erected by the Mogul emperor in memory of his best beloved wife. And as the Mogul supremacy wanes, the power of the Hindu States of Mahratta and Sindhia increases, so that the balance is nearly equal between the Mahommedans and the Buddhists. [Sidenote: Taj Mahal] [Illustration: THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA.]