Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive,, also known as Clive of India, was the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency. Clive has been widely credited for laying the foundation of the British East India Company (EIC) rule in Bengal. He began as a writer for the EIC in 1744 and established Company rule in Bengal by winning the Battle of Plassey in 1757. In return for supporting the Nawab Mir Jafar as ruler of Bengal, Clive was guaranteed a jagir of £30,000 per year which was the rent the EIC would otherwise pay to the Nawab for their tax-farming concession. When Clive left India in January 1767 he had a fortune of £180,000 which he remitted through the Dutch East India Company.
Lieutenant-General Sir Eyre Coote, KB was an Anglo-Irish military officer and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1768 to 1780. He is best known for his many years of service with the British Army in India. His victory at the Battle of Wandiwash is considered a decisive turning point in the struggle for control in India between Britain and France. He was known by his sepoy troops as Coote Bahadur.
Jean Baptiste Charles Henri Hector, Count of Estaing was a French military officer and nobleman. He began his service as a soldier in the War of the Austrian Succession, briefly spending time as a prisoner of war of the British during the Seven Years' War. Naval exploits during the latter war prompted him to change branches of service, and he transferred to the French Navy.
The Battle of Ticonderoga was a minor confrontation at Fort Carillon on July 26 and 27, 1759, during the French and Indian War. A British military force of more than 11,000 men under the command of General Sir Jeffery Amherst moved artillery to high ground overlooking the fort, which was defended by a garrison of 400 Frenchmen under the command of Brigadier General François-Charles de Bourlamaque.
The Battle of Plassey was a decisive victory of the British East India Company, under the leadership of Robert Clive, over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies on 23 June 1757. Robert Clive was paid £1 million by the Jagat Seth family – a rich Indian family business group – to defeat Siraj-ud-Daulah. The victory was made possible by the defection of Mir Jafar, Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah's commander in chief who was also paid by the Jagat Seths, as well as much of the Bengal Subah's armies being earlier committed against an Afghan invasion led by Ahmad Shah Durrani against the Mughal Empire. The battle helped the British East India Company take control of Bengal in 1772. Over the next hundred years, they continued to expand their control over vast territories in the rest of the Indian subcontinent, including Burma.
Mirza Aziz-ud-Din Muhammad, better known by his regnal name Alamgir II, was the fifteenth Mughal emperor from 1754 to 1759. He was the son of Jahandar Shah.
Major-General Stringer Lawrence was a British military officer who served as the first Commander-in-Chief of Fort William from 1748 to 1754.
The siege of Louisbourg was a pivotal operation of the French and Indian War in 1758 that ended French colonial dominance in Atlantic Canada and led to the subsequent British campaign to capture Quebec in 1759 and the remainder of New France the following year.
The British expedition against Guadeloupe was a military action from January to May 1759, as part of the Seven Years' War. A large British force had arrived in the West Indies, intending to seize French possessions. After a six-month-long battle to capture Guadeloupe they finally received the formal surrender of the island, just days before a large French relief force arrived under Admiral Maximin de Bompart.
C.S.I. St. Mary's Church is the Anglican church located at Fort St George in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. It lies East of Suez and also the oldest British building in India. The church is popularly known as 'Westminster Abbey of the East'.
The Battle of Madras or Fall of Madras took place in September 1746 during the War of the Austrian Succession when a French force attacked and captured the city of Madras from its British garrison.
Great Britain was one of the major participants in the Seven Years' War, which in fact lasted nine years, between 1754 and 1763. British involvement in the conflict began in 1754 in what became known as the French and Indian War. However the warfare in the European theatre involving countries other than Britain and France commenced in 1756. Britain emerged from the war as the world's leading colonial power, having gained all of New France in North America, ending France's role as a colonial power there. Following Spain's entry in the war in alliance with France in the third Family Compact, Britain captured the major Spanish ports of Havana, Cuba and Manila, in the Philippines in 1762, and agreed to return them in exchange for Spanish Florida. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 formally ended the conflict and Britain established itself as the world's pre-eminent naval power.
France was one of the leading participants in the Seven Years' War, which in fact lasted nine years between 1754 and 1763. France entered the war with the hope of achieving a lasting victory against Prussia, Britain, and their German allies and with the hope of expanding its colonial possessions.
The Raid on Le Havre was a two-day naval bombardment of the French port of Le Havre early in July 1759 by Royal Navy forces under Rear-Admiral George Rodney during the Seven Years' War, which succeeded in its aim of destroying many of the invasion barges being gathered there for the planned French invasion of Great Britain.
A British invasion of Martinique took place in January 1759 when a large amphibious force under Peregrine Hopson landed on the French-held island of Martinique and unsuccessfully tried to capture it during the Seven Years' War. Cannon fire from the British fleet was ineffective against the fortress at Fort-Royal due to its location high on the cliffs, and there were no suitable landing places nearby. Unknown to the British commanders, French governor Francis de Beauharnais had not been resupplied for some months, and even a brief siege would have led to the fort's capitulation. However, Moore and Hopson decided instead to investigate the possibility of attacking Martinique's main commercial port, Saint-Pierre. After a desultory naval bombardment on 19 January that again had little effect on the port's defences, they withdrew, and decided instead to attack Guadeloupe, home to a significant body of French privateers. The expedition was successful at Guadeloupe, which surrendered to them in May 1759. In 1762 a British force captured Martinique.
Anne Antoine, Comte d’Aché was a French naval officer who rose to the rank of vice admiral. He is best known for his service off the coast of India during the Seven Years' War, when he led the French fleet at the Battle of Cuddalore and Battle of Pondicherry. He also failed to provide adequate naval support to French troops attempting to capture Madras in 1759. After he received rumours of a British attack on the major Indian Ocean naval base Mauritius he did not go to the aid of the French forces in Pondicherry which was under siege. Pondicherry, the French capital in India, subsequently surrendered leaving the French with no influence upon the Indian Subcontinent. After the war he retired to Brest where he died in 1780.
The British capture of Senegal took place in 1758 during the Seven Years' War with France, as part of a concerted British strategy to weaken the French economy by damaging her international trade. To this end, a succession of small British military expeditions landed in Senegal and captured Gorée and Fort Saint Louis, the French slave fort located at Saint-Louis, seizing French vessels and supplies. By late 1758 the whole of the French colony on the Senegalese coast had been captured by the British, with administrative matters being handled by the first British Governor of Senegal, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Worge.
The siege of Cuddalore was a siege attempt by British troops against a combined French and Mysorean garrison at the fortress of Cuddalore in the Second Anglo-Mysore War. The siege ended when news arrived of a preliminary peace treaty between France and Britain.
The foreign alliances of France have a long and complex history spanning more than a millennium. One traditional characteristic of the French diplomacy of alliances has been the "Alliance de revers", aiming at allying with countries situated on the opposite side or "in the back" of an adversary, in order to open a second front encircling the adversary and thus re-establish a balance of power. Another has been the alliance with local populations, against other European colonial powers.
The First Carnatic War (1740–1748) was the Indian theatre of the War of the Austrian Succession and the first of a series of Carnatic Wars that established early British dominance on the east coast of the Indian subcontinent. In this conflict the British and French East India Companies vied with each other on land for control of their respective trading posts at Madras, Pondicherry, and Cuddalore, while naval forces of France and Britain engaged each other off the coast. The war set the stage for the rapid growth of French hegemony in southern India under the command of French Governor-General Joseph François Dupleix in the Second Carnatic War.
William Draper 
Nawab of the Carnatic 
Comte de Lally 
