It may seem a strange thing to say, but really it was the French ambition to found a French Empire in India which led to the foundation of the British Empire. Under their able and ambitious leader, Dupleix, the French began to push inland from their coastal stations and forcibly to claim authority in some of the native States. It was, of course, an authority {132} which they exercised in favour of their own people and against the English traders. When the Seven Years' War broke out, English and French in India as elsewhere were declared and open enemies. It was at this very moment that the Nawab, the native ruler, of Bengal, began to quarrel with the English. Naturally he was supported by the French. At first things went badly for the English in some fighting which led to no decisive result, but in the following year--the year of Rosbach and of Leuthen--the British, under Clive, gained a victory of the greatest importance over the troops of the Nawab, supported by the French, at Plassey. It seems to have been quite a revelation to the natives that the British were able to fight at all, and from this time forward their prestige was established in the East, The battle which mainly decided the issue, as between English and French, was not fought until three years later, for at Plassey there had been only a few French supporting the native forces. But at Wandewash, in 1760, the battle was between British and French almost wholly, and its result was a decisive British victory. From that time forward Britain was always regarded as the principal European power in India and on all the eastern sea-coasts. That was the mark made in the East on this greatest of all stories by the Seven Years' War. Its mark was planted no less deeply on the western side. Montreal and Quebec were French towns at the beginning of the war. Moreover, Montcalm, the French governor, had established the authority of the French, supported by a chain of forts, right away west as far as the Mississippi. Take out the atlas, and, remembering that the French possession of Louisiana at that time stretched right up from New Orleans at the Mississippi's mouth to the Great Lakes, you will realise what this meant to the British people in America. {133} It meant that they were completely hemmed in and shut off from all access to the West. [Sidenote: Canada gained by England]