left on the batteries before Wandiwash, Lally continued his retreat without reinforcing his garrison in the small hill-fort of Chitapett; and Coote, on whom no chance of advantage was ever thrown away, resolved to capture it, while Captain Wood, with his garrison, was ordered to advance from Cauverypauk and invest the fortress of Arcot; and 1,000 native cavalry, and 300 sepoys under the Baron de Vanerst, were dispatched south to ravage all the country between Pondicherry and Alamparva, in retaliation for the outrages committed by the French and the Mahrattas in the districts of what was now becoming British India; and these orders they executed with such genial fidelity, that they gave to the flames eighty-four villages, and captured 8,000 head of cattle, entailing terrible sufferings on the poor peasantry, who had no interest what 83 ever in this war which those Europeans had come to wage among them. On the 26th of January, 1760, Chitapett was invested, and made but a small show of resistance; for in three days Coote and his entire force halted within cannon-shot of it; two eighteen-pounder guns were placed in battery, and soon made a practicable breach. On this, the Chevalier de Tilly surrendered with his garrison of fifty-six Europeans and 300 sepoys. On the same day the Khan, with all his pestilent Mahrattas, evacuated the Carnatic. Almost immediately after, the town and fortress of Timmerycotta surrendered. This place is chiefly remarkable for a great cataract near it, which has a fall of sixty feet in height into a basin 120 feet in breadth. CHAPTER XVI. CAPTURE OF ARCOT AND REDUCTION OF PONDICHERRY.-FATE OF THE COUNT DE LALLY.-FALL OF THE FRENCH POWER IN INDIA. INTENT on fresh conquests and on utterly crushing the power of France in India, the 1st of February saw Colonel Eyre Coote before Arcot. The works of the fortress had been greatly strengthened of late. The ditch had been hewn in the solid rock to a uniform depth of six feet. A glacis and covered way had been carried completely round the inside of it, and on the north a strong ravelin, armed with six pieces of cannon, communicated with the fort by a gate, before which lay a drawbridge. The three British batteries opened on the 5th, but the artillery was light, and ammunition scarce, so their progress was slow; yet the sap was pushed on, till by the 9th it was very near the glacis, and two breaches had been made within six feet of its base. The means of defence were by no means exhausted, when, to his natural surprise, Coote received an offer of voluntary capitulation. The terms were briefly arranged, and the grenadiers of the army next morning took possession of the gates with fixed bayonets. The garrison, consisting of 247 Frenchmen, and the same number of sepoys, had not as yet suffered a single casualty, and might have held the place till it was regularly assaulted; but the French were fast losing alike heart and prestige. In Arcot were found twenty-two pieces of cannon, four mortars, and much warlike stores. The 29th of February saw Coote before Tyndivanum, a town situated at the junction of several roads all leading to Pondicherry, which is only twenty-five miles distant. "The object of this march," says Beveridge, "could not be misunderstood; and the French, who had commenced the war in the full confidence of establishing an undisputed supremacy, became aware that their next struggle must be for existence. To prepare for the worst they endeavoured to obtain possession of all the commanding posts in the vicinity." Lally, who, after his defeat at Wandiwash, found it impossible to remain long on the strong but barren hill of Gingee, to which he had retreated, now fell back with his famished forces to Pondicherry. There he quarrelled with the Council and all the civil authorities, calling them "embezzlers and peculators-traitors and cowards." And while these unseemly squabbles went on in the last stronghold of France in India, her flag was torn down by the troops of Coote, from every place on which it had been hoisted. Timmerycotta, we have shown, surrendered, 1760.] BEFORE PONDICHERRY. 85 and Trincomalee also; Devicotta was evacuated; 1760, triumphantly encamped within four miles of Alamparva and Permacoil were taken by storm, that place, which was to witness the last scene in and the country wasted by fire and sword. Car- the unsuccessful and brilliant, but stormy, career of rical, the most important place on the coast next to the famous Count de Lally. of the latter; the Creole volunteers of the Isle of Bourbon; the Artillerie du Roi; the Regiments de Marine, de Lorraine, d'Inde, and his own, the 119th of the line. He had 900 sepoys. There were at this time three corps in the French service named from the ancient province of Lorraine-Les Gardes Lorraines, or 30th Foot; 69th Regiment de Lorraine, and 104th Royal Lorraine. It was long since the French had received the slightest succour from their impoverished mother country, against which we were now waging a desperate war in America, the West Indies-in every quarter of the globe where she had possessions, ships, or colonies. Hemmed up in the strong town with faint and fading hopes, Lally could but long for the arrival of some squadron, that would bring him men, money, or provisions, from Bourbon, the Mauritius, or some other quarter. But he would be a bold and skilful French seaman who could now escape the keen-eyed vigilance of the British sailors of those days; for Admiral Cornish blocked up the Coromandel coast with six sail of the line, and Admiral Stevens, who had succeeded Admiral Pococke, now appeared with five ships of the line, on board of one of which came three companies of the Royal Artillery. kilted men from the bleak Highlands of Scotland were disembarked to try their mettle, and their power of enduring heat in the lowlands of Hindostan." The corps thus referred to was the 89th Highland Regiment, which had been raised in the preceding year among the clan Gordon by Colonel S. Long Morris, who had married the Duchess Dowager of Gordon, and the men almost all of them bore the Gordon surname. But at first only a detachment of it served at Pondicherry. Lally, on the 17th of March, had fallen back on the fortress, bravely disputing every foot of ground, until in front of Pondicherry, where he formed his famous lines, which for twelve weeks he defended with such valour and skill, till he began still more to lose heart after Hyder Ali failed him. Colonel Coote was aware that the fortress was so strong by art and nature, that he could hope to reduce it by famine only, especially when held by such a soldier as Lally, who had a vast store of ammunition and cannon, including 700 pieces of all kinds, many millions of ball-cartridge, and had planted on the thirteen great bastions, the six gates, and the walls, which were five miles in circumference, 508 brass and iron guns, independent of mortars. The entire fleet of Cornish was a very powerful Lally led a fierce sortie on the night of the 2nd one, and consisted of nineteen sail, twelve of of September against Coote's advanced posts, but which were of the line, armed with 668 pieces of was repulsed with the loss of many men and seventeen guns. Of this affair an officer of the 89th cannon. Eight In his dire extremity Lally turned his eyes to-wrote thus: "After a volley from our pieces, these wards Mysore, where Hyder Ali-whose terrible name was to find an echo in future history-had established his authority by force of arms. To bring Hyder on Coote's rear, and compel him to raise the siege, Lally offered him present possession of what it was scarcely in his power to give, the fortress of Thiagur, on a mountain which was fifty-two miles from Pondicherry, and commanded two passes into the Carnatic, with the future possession of Tinnevelly and Madura-after dispossessing the British, no easy task for even Hyder. A treaty, however, was concluded, and that personage agreed to send cattle to feed the starving French, and troops to fight their besiegers. Coote sent a detachment to cut off their march. This was done effectually; the Mysorean force was small, and on meeting a repulse, and discovering fully the deplorable state to which Lally was reduced, they fell back with the cattle to their own country. Shortly before this, six of the Company's ships arrived at Madras and there landed 600 men. More and more troops continued to pour in, but still not a ship, not a man, or a barrel of beef for Lally; "and in October a picturesque regiment of we threw down-off with our bonnets, out with our Count d'Aché, the naval comander, having by his sailing elsewhere, completely abandoned Lally to his fate, a fifty-four gun ship, a frigate of thirty-six, and four French Indiamen, were hopelessly shut up in the roadstead. In the month of October, only five sail of the line, under Captain Robert Haldane, were required to block up Pondicherry from the * Letter in Edinburgh Courant, 1761. 1761.] NEGOTIATIONS FOR THE SURRENDER OF PONDICHERRY: 87 seaward, while Coote pushed on the investment by them, he began by an irrelevant preamble, that land, and on the 16th November, after the arrival"the British had taken Chandernagore, against the of a ship from Madras, with the necessary stores, it was resolved to turn the investment into a close siege. Scarcity of provisions compelled Lally to expel a vast number of natives from the town; but as Coote drove them back, many perished under the fire of the guns, which were in full operation. Many of our people died of fatigue in the trenches. Among these was Sir Charles Chalmers, of Cults, a Scottish baronet who served in the artillery, though his estates had been forfeited after Culloden. faith of the treaties of neutrality which had always subsisted between the European nations in Bengal, and especially between the British and French;" also, "that the government of Madras had refused to fulfil the conditions of a cartel between the two crowns." In consequence of this, it was impossible for him to propose a capitulation for the city of Pondicherry; but, that "the troops of the king and company surrender themselves, for want of provisions, prisoners of war to his Britannic Majesty, conformably to the terms of the cartel;" adding that On the 26th of October, Coote's forces were Colonel Coote might take possession of the Ville3,500 Europeans and 7,000 sepoys. The rains abated on the 26th, and Colonel Coote directed the engineers to select proper places for the erection of the batteries, and they all opened together on the 8th December, at midnight. Though formed at a considerable distance, they had a serious effect, but the besieged returned the fire with great vigour. This mutual cannonading continued until Christmas Day, when the engineers formed a new battery, and effected a breach in the north-west counterguard and curtain. Though the approaches were retarded for some days by a violent storm, which almost ruined our works, the 1 damage was soon repaired, and a considerable post, the Redoubt of San Thomé, was taken from the enemy in assault, by the 89th Highlanders, but was afterwards recaptured by 300 French grenadiers from the sepoys who occupied it. By this time the scarcity of provisions in the city was so great, that the soldiers had to subsist on the flesh of elephants, camels, horses, and dogs. The latter sold, says Baron Grant, for twenty-four rupees each. By the 15th of January, 1761, another battery, armed with ten guns and three mortars, was opened against the skirt of the Bleaching Town, and another was formed at only 150 yards from the walls. It proved unnecessary, as on the evening of the 15th, just as the red sunshine was fading on the great bastions of Pondicherry, a white flag was seen coming from thence to the trenches. The bearers of it were Father Lavacer, "supérieur général des Jesuites Français dans les Indes," Colonel Durré, of the Artillerie du Roi, and MM. Morasin and Courtin, members of the council. They bore also two memorials, one signed by Lally, and the other by the governor and council. The former was very characteristic of the count, from its proud and petulant style. As if he had been about to dictate terms, instead of receiving nore Gate on the morrow. "I demand," wrote Lally, "from a principle of justice and humanity, that the mother and sisters of Raza Sahib (then in the city) may be permitted to seek an asylum where they please, or that they may remain prisoners among the English, and not be delivered into the hands of Mohammed Ali Khan, which are red with the blood of the husband and father, to the shame of those who gave up Chunda Sahib to him."* To all this, Colonel Coote replied thus :— "The particulars of the capture of Chandernagore having been long since transmitted to His Britannic Majesty by the officer to whom the place surrendered, Colonel Coote cannot take cognisance of what passed on that occasion, nor can he admit the same as in any way relative to the surrender of Pondicherry. "The disputes which have arisen concerning the cartel concluded between their Britannic and Most Christian Majesties being as yet undecided, Colonel Coote has it not in his power to admit that the troops of His Most Christian Majesty, and of the French East India Company, shall be deemed prisoners of war to His Britannic Majesty; but requires that they shall surrender themselves prisoners of war, to be used as he shall think consistent with the interest of the king, his master; and Colonel Coote will show all such indulgences as are consistent with humanity. "Colonel Coote will send the grenadiers of his regiment, between the hours of eight and nine o'clock to-morrow morning, to take possession of the Villenore Gate; and the next morning, between the same hours, he will take possession of the gate of Fort St. Lewis. "The mother and sisters of Raza Sahib shall be escorted to Madras, where proper care shall be taken for their safety, and they shall not on any *London Gazette, 1761. |