FORE:"So?" said Cairness, with the appearance of stolidity he invariably assumed to cover disappointment or any sort of approach to emotion. "Where's she gone to?"Our next great move was against the French in the Carnatic. After various actions between the French and English in India during the Seven Years' War, General Count de Lally, an officer of Irish extraction, arrived at Pondicherry in April, 1758, with a force of one thousand two hundred men. Lally attacked and took Fort St. David, considered the strongest fort belonging to the East India Company, and then, mustering all his forces, made his appearance, in December of that year, before Madras. He had with him two thousand seven hundred French and four thousand natives, whilst the English had in the town four thousand troops only, of which more than half were sepoys. But Captain Caillaud had marched with a small force from Trichinopoly, which harassed the rear of the French. After making himself master of the Black Town, and threatening to burn it down, he found it impossible to compel Fort St. George to surrender, and, after a[178] severe siege of two months, on the appearance of Admiral Pococke's squadron, which had sailed to Bombay for more troops, he decamped in the night of the 16th of February, 1759, for Arcot, leaving behind him all his ammunition and artillery, fifty-two pieces. Fresh combats took place between Pococke and D'Ach at sea, and the forces on land. Colonel Brereton attempted to take Wandewash, but failed; and it remained for Colonel Eyre Coote to defeat Lally. Coote arrived at Madras on the 27th of October, and, under his direction, Brereton succeeded in taking Wandewash on the last of November. To recover this place, Lally marched with all his force, supported by Bussy, but sustained a signal defeat on the 22nd of January, 1760. Arcot, Trincomalee, and other places fell rapidly into the hands of Colonel Coote. The French called in to their aid the Nabob of Mysore, Hyder Ali, but to little purpose. Pondicherry was invested on the 8th of December, and, on the 16th of January, 1761, it surrendered, Lally and his troops, amounting to two thousand, remaining prisoners. This was the termination of the real power of France in India; for though Pondicherry was restored by the treaty of 1763, the French never again recovered their ground there, and their East India Company soon after was broken up. The unfortunate Lally on his return to France was thrown into the Bastille, condemned for high treason, and beheaded in the Place de Grve on the 9th of May, 1766.
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FORE:The brilliant successes of this campaign had clearly been the result of Pitt's plans before quitting office. Bute and his colleagues had no capacity for such masterly policy, and as little perception of the immense advantages which these conquests gave them in making peace. Peace they were impatient forless on the great grounds that peace was the noblest of national blessings, than because the people grumbled at the amount of taxationand because, by peace, they diminished, or hoped to diminish, the prestige of the great Minister, who had won such vast accessions to the national territory. Bute was eager to come to terms with France and Spain, regardless of the advantages he gave to prostrate enemies by showing that impatience. Had he made a peace as honourable as the war had been, he would have deserved well of the country; but to accomplish such a peace required another stamp of mind.
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