“I am bound to respect the reasons which determined M. Renault as well as the gentlemen of the Council, who were all much too good citizens not to have kept constantly in their minds the welfare of our nation and the Company.  People always do see things differently, and the event does not always prove the correctness or incorrectness of the reasons which have decided us to take one or the other course.”

As soon as the Nawab heard of the plundering of Hugli he set out for Calcutta, but to blind the English he requested M. Renault to mediate between them.  The English refusal to treat through the French had the effect of clearing up matters between the latter and the Nawab; but he could not understand why the French would not actively assist him.  Certain, at any rate, that he had only the English to deal with, he foolishly played into their hands by marching to fight them on their own ground, whereas, if he had remained idle at a little distance, merely forbidding supplies to be sent them, he could have starved them out of Calcutta in a few months.  As I have said before, Clive attacked his camp on the 5th of February, and so terrified him that he consented to a shameful peace, in which he forgot all mention of the neutrality of the Ganges.  Law tells a curious story to the effect that what frightened the Nawab most of all was a letter from Admiral Watson, threatening to make him a prisoner and carry him to England.  Watson’s letter is extant, and contains no such threat, but it is quite possible that it was so interpreted to the Nawab.

Though the Nawab had assured the English that he would have the same friends and enemies as they, and had omitted to mention the French in the treaty, he now, of his own accord, gave the French all that the English had extorted from him.  This act could not be kept secret.

“A great fault at present, and which has always existed, in the management of affairs in India, especially in Bengal, is that nothing is secret.  Scarcely had the Nawab formed any project when it was known to the lowest of his slaves.  The English, who were suspicious, and who had for friends every one who was an enemy of Siraj-ud-daula, whom all detested, were soon informed of his proposals to M. Renault and of the letters written on both sides.”

Yet Law thinks it was only the European war and the fear that Renault intended an alliance with the Nawab that induced the English to proceed to extremities:—­

“The dethronement of the Nawab had become an absolute necessity.  To drive us out of Bengal was only a preliminary piece of work.  A squadron of ours with considerable forces might arrive.  Siraj-ud-daula might join his forces to it.  What, then, would become of the English?  They needed for Nawab a man attached to their interests.  Besides, this revolution was not so difficult to carry out as one might imagine.  With Chandernagore destroyed, nothing could be more easy; but even