Now we must hark back in order to understand the meaning of the struggle which we have just witnessed. The East India Company, in whose service Clive had enlisted, was established as far back as the days of Queen Elizabeth. It was founded for trade, and it attended closely to business. When Clive arrived in India its territory consisted of a few square miles of land, for which rent was paid to native rajas. Its troops were scarcely sufficient to man the ill-constructed forts which had been erected at Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, and a few other places to protect the warehouses. Most of the soldiers in the service of the Company were natives, and were neither furnished with European weapons nor disciplined according to European methods. The white servants of the Company were simply traders, whose business it was to make advances to manufacturers, ship cargoes, and in other ways push the business interests of their employers. Most of the younger clerks, of whom Clive was one, were miserably paid, while the older ones enriched themselves by trading on their own account. A French East India Company had also been founded, but at the outset it met with much less success than the English Company. At the close of the seventeenth century it possessed little more than the small town of Pondicherry, which still remains in French hands. At this time the Moguls, the descendants of the Mohammedan conquerors of Northern India, dominated the land; but a few years later their power fell to pieces, and India was splintered into little independent kingdoms. The land was given over to civil war; every nawab, or governor, quarrelled and fought with his neighbours. The feebleness of the native rulers and the disturbed state of the country positively invited the European traders, both English and French, to conquest. Hitherto they had been merely competitors for commerce; soon they were to become rivals for dominion. Such was the condition of affairs when Clive sailed for India. He was very homesick and depressed during the long voyage round the Cape, and when he arrived he had spent all his money and contracted some debts. He was stationed at Fort George, Madras, where he was wretchedly lodged and badly paid, and engaged in duties ill-suited to his daring, ardent nature. On more than one occasion he got into scrapes and received reprimands. Twice he attempted suicide, and twice the pistol which he snapped at his own head failed to go off. “It appears I am destined for something,” he said, and, as you already know, his prophecy proved true. In the year of his arrival in India (1744) war was declared by Britain against France, and the struggle in Europe led to the long fight for supremacy in India.