Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c56.s3.8

v4.c56.s3.8

In 1794 Pondicherry passed under English occupation and the French had not a single port left in India which could have enabled them to communicate with any Maratha court either directly or through anti-British States. In Dec. 1802 Tipu was dead, and the Nizām and the Peshwā were British vassals. Aboukir Bay had annihilated the French naval power in the Eastern waters (Aug. 1798); Napoleon’s land-route to India had been closed by Sir Sidney Smith at Acre (May 1799). Napoleon’s plan of smuggling a body of French trainers, munition-manufacturers, captains and gun-layers *viâ* Pondicherry to Sindhia’s camp, came too late for Perron, and it was nipped in the bud by the alertness of the British Governor of Madras and the sagacity of Marquess Wellesley.† No French governmental force in India could have been kept supplied with reinforcements of *matériel* and provisions from Home, so long as the English supremacy at sea was not broken,—and of breaking it there was not the faintest hope.