Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/300

294 could not be diminished without danger from the garrison in Tritchinopoly, Mr. Soupire sent the force he intended for Hyderally from Pondicherry; and from the restraint laid on all his military operations, they were no more than 300 Sepoys and 75 Europeans, who arrived at Dindigul, in the end of January. They were commanded by Mr. Astrue, the same officer who had been defeated by Major Lawrence before Tritchinopoly in the year 1753, from which time he had continued a prisoner on his parole until the month of October of the preceding year, when he was exchanged. On his arrival at Dindigul. he found Hyderally pressed by urgent affairs to return to Seringapatam, the capital of Mysore, which broke the scheme of attacking Madura; soon after the interview, Hyderally departed, and Mr. Astruc returned to the pagoda of Seringham, where he arrived on the 20th of March, and, having been long ill, died on the 22nd; he was a gallant and worthy man. The agent sent by the Nabob to Maphuze Khan arrived at Nellitangaville on the 28th of February, and found him there, encamped in paltry tents, with 50 horse, ostentatious of his poverty, pretending much discontent against his allies, and much attachment to the Nabob; but when terms of reconciliation were proposed, nothing less would satisfy him than the government of the whole country as an appanage in fee; indeed he was never master of his own opinion, and at present not of his will, for the western polygars, elated by the rising superiority of the French in the Carnatic, took the field, and obliged him, who depended upon them for his subsistence, to lend his name, and to appear with them in person as the pretension of their hostilities: the army was composed of the troops of the Pulitaver, of Vadagherri, of the three minor polygars, Cotaltava Nadacourch, and Savandah; and from the eastern side, of Etiaporum, the dependant of Catabominaigue, who himself continued firm to his new connexion with the English. The confederates had likewise persuaded the Polygar of Shatore under the hills, whose fort is only fifteen miles to the south of Chevelpetore, to enter so far into their views as to admit a body of the Pulitaver's Colleries into his fort, with whom and his own he made depredations into the adjacent