Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/126

118 lost near 300 men: only five or six of the defenders were killed. The next day major Lawrence marched with the greatest part of the army to captain Cope's assistance, and the Taujorines made no farther attempts.

By this time admiral Boscawen and the government of Fort St. David had sufficient reason to believe, that any future undertaking against the kingdom of Tanjore would be attended with great difficulties. At the same time the king made proposals of accommodation. The English stipulated that the fort of Devi-Cotah, with as much land adjoining to it as would produce the annual income of 9,000 pagodas, should be ceded to the East India company for ever: that the king of Tanjore should reimburse the expences of the war; and that he should allow Saujohee a pension of 4,000 rupees; they obliging themselves to be answerable for his person, as likewise that he should never give any more disturbance to the kingdom. The king of Tanjore acceded without hesitation to these conditions; but his compliance did not proceed so much from his dread of the English arms, as from his sense of the danger with which his kingdom was threatened, in consequence of events which happened a few days before in the Carnatic, and which had struck the whole coast of Coromandel with consternation.

Chunda-saheb, made prisoner by the Morattoes, when they took the city of Tritchinopoly in 1741, was esteemed by them a prize of so much importance, that they not only kept him under the strictest confinement, but rejected all the offers he made for his ransom, as much inferior to what they imagined his wealth enabled him to pay. The richest prince in Indostan never hesitates to plead poverty whenever money is to be paid; and Chunda-saheb, either unable or unwilling to satisfy their exorbitant demands, remained in his confinement, corresponding for six years with his friends in different provinces, and suggesting to them the means of inducing the Morattoes to set him at liberty for a moderate sum. The chiefs who were related to the former succession of Nabobs, which ended by the assassination of the young Seid Mahomed; retained their aversion to the reign of An'war-odean Khan; but they saw no one amongst themselves in the Carnatic endowed with sufficient