TWO:This was a broad indication of the French seizing, under the pretence of propagating liberty, on what had been called the natural boundaries of France in the time of Louis XIV.,namely, the Rhine and the Alps, thus including Belgium, part of Holland, Nice, and Savoy. They dispatched emissaries to Victor Amadeus, the King of Sardinia, offering to drive the Austrians out of Italy, and give Italy to the Italians. As they had, however, previously sent numbers of their Jacobin propagandists to inoculate his people with Republicanism, the king refused their offers, and forbade General Semonville to enter the country. On this, the Convention proclaimed war against him, and ordered Montesquieu to invade Nice and Savoy. With an army of fifteen thousand men[408] and twenty pieces of artillery, Montesquieu entered Savoy, and the few Savoyard troops being unable to compete with him, the people, moreover, being already prepared by French Republicans, he overran the country, entered Chambry in triumph, and occupied the province to the foot of Mont Cenis. Elated by the successes of these campaigns, the French Convention passed a decree, declaring that it would grant succour and fraternity to all peoples desirous of recovering their liberty; it ordered its generals to give such aid to all citizens who were, or might be, harshly treated on account of their desire for liberty; and the generals were instructed to post this decree in all public places to which they should carry the arms of the Republic. Two days afterwards Savoy was formed into a new department as the Department of Mont Blanc.It was at this crisis, when Hastings was just recovering his authority in the Council, that the news arrived in India, and spread amongst the native chiefs, that in Yenghi Dunia, or the New World, the Company Sahibfor the East Indians could never separate the ideas of the East India Company and England itselfthere had been a great revolution, and the English driven out. This, as might be expected, wonderfully elated the native chiefs, and especially those in the south. There the French of Pondicherry and Chandernagore boasted of the destruction of the British power, and that it was by their own hands. Hastings, who was as able and far-seeing as he was unprincipled in carrying out his plans for the maintenance of the British dominion in India, immediately set himself to counteract the mischievous effects of these diligently-disseminated rumours, and of the cabals which the French excited. These were most to be feared amongst the vast and martial family of the Mahrattas. The Mahrattas had risen on the ruins of the great Mogul empire. They now extended their tribes over a vast space of India from Mysore to the Ganges. The Peishwa, as head of these nations, held his residence at Poonah. Besides his, there were the great houses of Holkar and Scindia; the Guicowar, who ruled in Guzerat; the Bonslah, or Rajah of Berar, a descendant of Sivaji. The Mahrattas were, for the most part, a rude, warlike race, rapacious and ambitious, and living in the most primitive style. To destroy the confidence of these fierce warriors in the French, Hastings gave immediate orders, on receiving the news of the proclamation of war in Europe, for the seizure of the French settlements. This was on the 7th of July, 1778; on the 10th he had taken Chandernagore, and ordered Sir Hector[329] Munro to invest Pondicherry. That was soon accomplished, and the only remaining possession of France, the small one of Mah, on the coast of Malabar, was seized the next spring.