Forewarned by the home Government of Bonaparte's eastern designs, our able and ambitious Governor-General now prepared to isolate the Mahratta chieftains, to cut them off from all contact with France, and, if necessary, to shatter Scindiah's army, the only formidable native force drilled by European methods.
Such was the position of affairs when General Decaen undertook the enterprise of revivifying French influences in India.
The secret instructions which he received from the First Consul, dated January 15th, 1803, were the following: "To communicate with the peoples or princes who are most impatient under the yoke of the English Company....

To send home a report six months after his arrival in India, concerning all information that he shall have collected, on the strength, the position, and the feeling of the different peoples of India, as well as on the strength and position of the different English establishments; ...
his views, and hopes that he might have of finding support, in case of war, so as to be able to maintain himself in the Peninsula....
Finally, as one must reason on the hypothesis that we should not be masters of the sea and could hope for slight succour," Decaen is to seek among the French possessions or elsewhere a place serving as a _point d'appui_, where in the last resort he could capitulate and thus gain the means of being transported to France with arms and baggage.

Of this _point d'appui_ he will "strive to take possession after the first months ...

whatever be the nation to which it belongs, Portuguese, Dutch, or English....
If war should break out between England and France before the 1st of Vendemiaire, Year XIII.

(September 22nd, 1804), and the captain general is warned of it before receiving the orders of the Government, he has _carte blanche_ to fall back on the Ile de France and the Cape, or to remain in India....