Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/295

Book IV. village, and contrary to their orders marched out into the plain: the Morattoes, who were in sight, waiting for such an opportunity of exerting themselves, instantly surrounded the party, and charging with great fury, routed them, and cut every man to pieces. This loss disabling the garrison from making any more sallies, the French took possession of the village, erected a battery, and cannonaded the fort. The troops within were still sufficient to have made a good defence; but a mutiny arose, and the lenity of the commanding officer's temper, not permitting him to see the necessity of making severe examples in the beginning, the men, no longer controulable, got possession of the arrack, and mad with liquor, obliged him to capitulate, and were made prisoners of war: this misfortune affected captain Chace so sensibly, that it threw him into a fever, of which he died soon after at Pondicherry. At the same time a detachment of Morattoes, with some Europeans, appeared before Chillambrum, where the English kept a Serjeant with a few artillery-men; who discovering that the governor was plotting to deliver them up to the enemy, marched away in the night to Devi Cotah. Nor was the loss of these places and their dependencies the only detriment which the Nabob's affairs had sustained in the Carnatic; for a number of petty commanders, soldiers of fortune, set up their standards, and pretending to be authorized by Mr. Dupleix and Morari-row, levied contributions, and committed violences in all parts of the country. Even Mortiz-ally hearing soon after his return to Velore that the English did not venture to attack the French entrenchments at Trivadi, and that Tritchinopoly was hard pressed by the Mysoreans, took courage, and entertaining thoughts of asserting the title which Mr. Dupleix had conferred upon him, ordered his troops to commit hostilities in the neighbourhood near Arcot. His force consisted of 50 Europeans, with three pieces of cannon, who accompanied him from Pondicherry, and 2000 Sepoys, 1500 horse, and 500 matchlock Peons, his own troops. They plundered all the villages lying near the city without meeting any interruption; for Abdullwahab Khan, the Nabob's brother, and lieutenant in the province, an indolent sensual man, dissipated in his pleasures and upon his favourites most of the monies he collected, and gave no attention to the maintaining of a