These small armies were costly, and diminished to a considerable extent the profits of trade.  Dupleix espied the possibility of a new organization which should secure to the French in India the preponderance, and ere long the empire even, in the two peninsulas.  He purposed to found manufactures, utilize native hand-labor, and develop the coasting trade, or Ind to Ind trade, as the expression then was; but he set his pretensions still higher, and carried his views still further.  He purposed to acquire for the Company, and, under its name, for France, territories and subjects furnishing revenues, and amply sufficing for the expenses of the commercial establishments.  The moment was propitious; the ancient empire of the Great Mogul, tottering to its base, was distracted by revolutions, all the chops and changes whereof were attentively followed by Madame Dupleix; two contested successions opened up at once—­those of the Viceroy or Soudhabar of the Deccan and of his vassal, the Nabob of the Carnatic.  The Great Mogul, nominal sovereign of all the states of India, confined himself to selling to all the pretenders decrees of investiture, without taking any other part in the contest.  Dupleix, on the contrary, engaged in it ardently.  He took sides in the Deccan for Murzapha Jung, and in the Carnatic for Tchunda Sahib against their rivals supported by the English.  Versed in all the resources of Hindoo policy, he had negotiated an alliance between his two proteges; both marched against the Nabob of the Carnatic.  He, though a hundred and seven years old, was at the head of his army, mounted on a magnificent elephant.  He espied in the melley his enemy Tchunda Sahib, and would have darted upon him; but, whilst his slaves were urging on the huge beast, the little French battalion sent by Dupleix to the aid of his allies marched upon the nabob, a ball struck him to the heart, and he fell.  The same evening, Murzapha Jung was proclaimed Soudhabar of the Deccan, and he granted the principality of the Carnatic to Tchunda Sahib, at the same time reserving to the French Company a vast territory.

Some months rolled by, full of vicissitudes and sudden turns of fortune.  Murzapha Jung, at first victorious, and then vanquished by his uncle Nazir Jung, everywhere dragged at his heels as a hostage and a trophy of his triumph, had found himself delivered by an insurrection of the Patanian chiefs, Affghans by origin, settled in the south of India.  The head of Nazir Jung had come rolling at his feet.  For a while besieged in Pondicherry, but still negotiating and everywhere mingling in intrigues and conspiracies, Dupleix was now triumphant with his ally; the Soudhabar of the Deccan made his entry in state upon French territory.  Pondicherry was in holiday trim to receive him.  Dupleix, dressed in the magnificent costume of, the Hindoo princes, had gone with his troops to meet him.  Both entered the town in the same palanquin to the sound of native cymbals and the military music of