Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/81

Book I. The storm ruined the French marine force in India, and preserved the English establishments from imminent danger: but the events which ensued on the Coast of Coromandel, seem to have been the consequence of that augmentation of troops, which Pondicherry acquired after the French squadron was reduced to the incapacity of attempting any farther expeditions. Mr. De la Bourdonnais left behind him 1,200 disciplined men; 450 more were landed out of the three ships which came last into India, and 8 or 900 sailors were taken out of the ships that remained on the coast, and disciplined, as soldiers. By which additions the forces of Pondicherry amounted to 3,000 Europeans.

The Nabob An'war-odean, very soon after the French had taken Madras, began to suspect, or had discovered, that the promise of Mr. Dupleix to put him in possession of the town, was a fraud employed to divert him from giving the English any assistance during the siege. He determined to revenge this affront by laying siege to Madras; which he made no doubt of taking from the French, with as much ease as they had taken it from the English: for measuring the military abilities of the Europeans, by the great respect and, humility with which they had hitherto carried themselves in all their transactions with the Mogul government; he imagined that this submission in their behaviour proceeded from a consciousness of the superior military prowess of the Moors.

Some of his troops arrived in the neighbourhood of Madrass before Mr. De la Bourdonnais's departure, and soon after, his eldest son, Maphuze Khan with the rest. The whole army amounted to 10,000 men, and invested the town: two deputies were immediately sent to treat with him, and these he kept prisoners. The French governor had received orders from Mr. Dupleix to refrain as long as possible from committing any hostilities against Maphuze Khan, who imputed this inaction to fear: and having received information of the dispositions which Mr. De la Bourdonnais had made for the attack of the place, he endeavoured to imitate them; great heaps of faggots and earth were' brought to the spot where the French had erected one of their batteries of mortars against the town: here the