A CRITICAL ESTIMATE OF DUPLEIX 125

We may heartily agree with Elphinstone that Du- pleix was " the first who made an extensive use of dis- ciplined sepoys; the first who quitted the ports on the sea and marched an army into the heart of the conti- nent; the first, above all, who discovered the illusion of the Moghul greatness." Nevertheless, although it seems invidious to detract from the posthumous glory of a man so able and yet so unfortunate as Dupleix, he cannot be ranked as an original discoverer in Asiatic warfare and politics, without taking into account sur- rounding circumstances and conditions that naturally pointed to the use of methods which he developed rather than invented. The weakness of all Oriental states and armies had long been known; and India has always been, through natural causes, less capable than other great Asiatic countries of resisting foreign invasion. Her indige- nous population has rarely furnished armies that could encounter the inrush of the hordes from Central Asia; and the only soldiers upon whom the princes of South- ern India could rely were commonly mercenaries from the north. At the end of the seventeenth century, the imperial troops were probably still the best in India; but Bernier writes that a division of Turenne's men would have made short work of the whole Moghul army; nor could any European of military experience have doubted that the loose levies of the Karnatic would be scattered by a few well-armed and disciplined battal- ions. Nor was there, in point of fact, any great novelty