He was born in 1725, and from childhood displayed those qualities which made him pre-eminent on the field of battle; fighting was his delight, and so fierce was his temper that his family could not control him. At last, when eighteen, his father gladly sent him to Madras as a clerk in the service of the East India Company; and there, in a torrid climate which shattered his health, poor and neglected, lonely and forlorn, he pined, until in melancholy he twice attempted suicide. But he was destined to found an empire, and at last his hour came. When Clive went to India, the Company was still a purely commercial concern, holding only the land needed for its warehouses, and having in their pay a few ill-disciplined sepoys. In the year 1746, when Clive was twenty-one, the war of the Austrian Succession was raging, and suddenly a French fleet, commanded by Labourdonnais, appeared off Madras, and attacked Fort Saint George. Resistance was hopeless, the place surrendered, and the governor and chief inhabitants were taken to Pondicherry. Clive, however, managed to escape, and, volunteering, received an ensign’s commission, and began his military career. Shortly after, peace was made in Europe, but in India the issue of the struggle lay undecided between the French and English, the prize being the peninsula. Dupleix, the French governor of Pondicherry, was a man of commanding intellect, who first saw the possibility of constructing a European empire in Hindostan by controlling native princes. Following up his idea, he mixed in a war of succession, and having succeeded in establishing a sovereign of the Deccan, he made himself master of Southern India. The Nizam’s treasure was thrown open to him, and beside many jewels of price, he is said to have appropriated two hundred thousand pounds in coin. This was the man whom Clive, when only a clerk of twenty-five, without military education or experience, attacked and overthrew.