Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/213

Book VIII. objects, to cover their real intentions, which were to fall upon Elavanasore by surprize.

This place is situated about 60 miles west of Pondicherry; it consists of a fort and a pettah both standing on a plain, and neither having any difficult defences: the districts are of no great extent, but extremely fertile. Before the truce between Mr. Saunders and Godeheu, it was taken posession of by an adventurer named Meer Allumodean, but more generally known by the name of Meer Saheb, who procured his confirmation from the Nabob, then at Tritchinopoly. Under this sanction, he maintained a much greater force, especially of horse, than the incomes of his government could afford, and supported them by plundering the neighbouring districts, pretending, that the managers of them were attached to the French. In an excursion immediately after the truce in 1755, he plundered all the French districts between Seringham and Pondicherry, when the presidency of Madrass rebuking his proceedings he made retribution to the French government, who permitted him to keep a small fort he had taken from them in the neighbourhood of Elavanasore, named Oullagellinoor. This cession raised suspicions in the Nabob, who proposed that the English detachment which escorted him soon after from Tritchinopoly to Arcot, should attack Elavanasore in the way; and again that the English army should proceed against it, in the beginning of the last year, immediately after it had retreated from Velore. On the other hand, Meer Saheb, knowing himself reprobated by the Nabob, and seeing nothing to be got by uniting with the French, thought the mutual enmity between the two his best protection, and paid no respect to either; but increased his force, and continued his depredations on the possessions of both. Besides driving off the cattle which he afterwards sold to the owners, it was especially his custom to seize on persons of substance, whom he confined until they had paid heavy ransoms. In the month of September, he, in one excursion, swept away 5000 beeves and 6000 sheep, indifferently from the country round; and in the beginning of the present year again