Note 236 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Colonel Malleson (French in India, p. 306), commenting on this action, says that Clive "allowed his dislike of the great French statesman to stifle his more generous instincts." Surely if Dupleix erected this city (as undoubtedly was the case) as much for the impression that it would create in the native mind as for gratification of his personal vanity, Clive would have been wrong if he had not razed it. If it was French policy to build such a city, it was undoubtedly English policy to pull it down, and generosity has no place in the question. It is absurd to treat Dupleix Futtehabad as though it were a bridge of Jena or a column of Rossbach.