The government of Madras, encouraged by these events, determined to send a strong detachment, under Clive, to reinforce the garrison of Trichinopoly.  But just at this conjuncture, Major Lawrence arrived from England, and assumed the chief command.  From the waywardness and impatience of control which had characterised Clive, both at school and in the counting-house, it might have been expected that he would not, after such achievements, act with zeal and good humour in a subordinate capacity.  But Lawrence had early treated him with kindness; and it is bare justice to Clive, to say that, proud and overbearing as he was, kindness was never thrown away upon him.  He cheerfully placed himself under the orders of his old friend, and exerted himself as strenuously in the second post as he could have done in the first.  Lawrence well knew the value of such assistance.  Though himself gifted with no intellectual faculty higher than plain good sense, he fully appreciated the powers of his brilliant coadjutor.  Though he had made a methodical study of military tactics, and, like all men regularly bred to a profession, was disposed to look with disdain on interlopers, he had yet liberality enough to acknowledge that Clive was an exception to common rules.  “Some people,” he wrote, “are pleased to term Captain Clive fortunate and lucky; but, in my opinion, from the knowledge I have of the gentleman, he deserved and might expect from his conduct everything as it fell out;—­a man of an undaunted resolution, of a cool temper, and of a presence of mind which never left him in the greatest danger—­born a soldier; for, without a military education of any sort, or much conversing with any of the profession, from his judgment and good sense, he led on an army like an experienced officer and a brave soldier, with a prudence that certainly warranted success.”

The French had no commander to oppose to the two friends.  Dupleix, not inferior in talents for negotiation and intrigue to any European who has borne a part in the revolutions of India, was ill qualified to direct in person military operations.  He had not been bred a soldier, and had no inclination to become one.  His enemies accused him of personal cowardice; and he defended himself in a strain worthy of Captain Bobadil.  He kept away from shot, he said, because silence and tranquillity were propitious to his genius, and he found it difficult to pursue his meditations amidst the noise of fire-arms.  He was thus under the necessity of intrusting to others the execution of his great warlike designs; and he bitterly complained that he was ill served.  He had indeed been assisted by one officer of eminent merit, the celebrated Bussy.  But Bussy had marched northward with the Nizam, and was fully employed in looking after his own interests, and those of France, at the court of that prince.  Among the officers who remained with Dupleix, there was not a single man of capacity; and many of them were boys, at whose ignorance and folly the common soldiers laughed.