Clive's first object, after he accepted the Government of Bengal, was to give what aid he could to Fort St. George. The view he took of the dangers of that settlement, and the measures he adopted to afford it relief, are thus described by a contemporary historian.[214] "No one doubted that Madras would be besieged, as soon as the monsoon had sent the squadrons off the coast, if reinforcements should not arrive before. But Clive did not entertain the surmise that it could be taken whilst it had provisions; and, as troops were known to be on the way from England, if the ships in which they were embarked should lose their passage in this year, they would probably arrive in the first months of the next. Nevertheless it was necessary, if possible, to alleviate the inequality between the English and French force in Coromandel. "But the preference which each of the Company's Presidencies was naturally inclined to give to its own safety, as the only ground on which the property and fortunes of the whole community were established, suggested apprehensions that Madras, in the same manner as it had been treated by the Presidency of Calcutta, would, whatever might be the necessity of Bengal, detain on their own service whatsoever troops might be sent to their assistance; and, although little was to be immediately apprehended in Bengal from the French, yet the entire estrangement of the Nabob, and the hazard of all that remained due from him, were to be expected, if he saw the English force too considerably diminished, without the immediate power of recall, to oppose either his own attempts against them, or to afford the assistance he might want, whether in the maintenance of his authority against his own subjects, or the defence of his territory against foreign enemies. "In consequence of these conclusions it was determined not to send a body of troops to Madras, but to employ all that could with prudence be spared, in concert with Anunderauze, against the French in the ceded provinces[215]; which would either occasion a diversion of their troops in the Carnatic, or, if they neglected this assistance, would deprive them at once of all they had acquired by their long connection with the Soubah of the Deckan; and, lest any danger during the expedition should threaten Bengal, the troops were only to obey the immediate orders of Calcutta.