Dupleix, the French Governor of Pondicherry, was a man of great ambition, and he now conceived the idea of founding a great French empire in India. Himself an able soldier, he made two most important discoveries. First, he observed that the native armies could not stand against men disciplined in the European fashion; and, secondly, he perceived that the natives could be brought under European discipline by European officers. Forthwith he began to enlist Sepoys, or native soldiers, and to arm and discipline them after the French manner. With these Sepoys he intended to intervene in the disputes of the native rulers, and by taking first this side, and then that, gradually win India for France. A French expedition appeared before Madras, captured Fort George, and seized the contents of the warehouses as prize of war. Some of the servants of the Company, including Clive, were paraded through the streets of Pondicherry in triumphal procession, and treated with great indignity. Clive, in the disguise of a Mohammedan, managed to escape from the town by night and make his way to Fort St. David, a small British settlement one hundred miles south of Madras. Here he begged an ensign’s commission in the service of the Company, and at twenty-one entered upon his military career. He took part in Admiral Boscawen’s unsuccessful siege of Pondicherry, where he distinguished himself, and in his twenty-fifth year was promoted to be a captain. Shortly after the failure at Pondicherry peace was proclaimed. Nevertheless, there was but a short cessation of hostilities in India; for though British and French were supposed to have sheathed the sword, a great struggle for power was about to begin both in India and in America. Before long there was open war, which at first went greatly in favour of France. Dupleix, continuing his rapid and brilliant career, had intervened in the affairs of the two great native states of Hyderabad and the Carnatic, and had managed to get his own candidates placed on the thrones of both these states. Thus he was practically master of South India. Civil war, however, continued in the Carnatic, where the French nominee was besieging Trichinopoly, the last stronghold of his rival. Trichinopoly was about to fall, and its fall would mean the complete supremacy of the French in India. At the critical moment Clive persuaded the Governor of Madras to entrust him with a small force to attack Arcot, the capital of the nawab whom Dupleix was supporting. By doing so, he hoped to draw off the nawab’s forces from the siege of Trichinopoly. You already know how splendidly he defended Arcot, and how he forced the enemy to raise the siege. By 1753 he had completely undone the work of Dupleix.