Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/324

318 advice of father Lavaur, he preferred another, from which they expected to get more, with equal ease, in a much shorter time. The king of Tanjore, when besieged by the army of Murzafajing and Chundasaheb with the French troops in 1751, had compounded the arrears of his tribute, and had given Chundasaheb a bond for 5,600,000 rupees, before the approach of Nazirjing's army obliged them to retreat out of his country; the bond was in the possession of the government of Pondicherry; and an incident in the capture of Fort St. David concurred to suggest the expediency of marching into the Tanjore country, and demanding this money sword in hand. The French had found in Fort St. David a prisoner of grater consequence than they expected: his name was Gatica: he was uncle to the deposed king of Tanjore, whose pretensions the English asserted in 1749, when they entered the country, and took Devi Cotah. The king then and now reigning, when he ceded this place to them in propriety, stipulated by a secret article, that they should prevent this pretender from giving him any molestation in future; to ensure which, it was necessary to secure his person; but he withdrew himself out of their reach; however, being in possession of his uncle, who was the leading man of the party, and had entirely managed his nephew, they detained him a prisoner, but under an easy confinement, within the Fort, where he remained until fated by the fall of the place to be employed by the French, with the same views as nine years before by the English: and Gatica was now produced at Pondicherry with much ostentation and ceremony, in order to excite the apprehensions of the king, that the pretender himself would appear and accompany the French army, whom nevertheless they did not proclaim in his stead.

How much soever Mr. Lally agreed in the preference of this expedition, he differed even to animosity both with Mr. Deleyrit and the Jesuit in another measure of still greater importance. He had brought from France the strongest prejudices against the character of Mr. Bussy, whom he believed to have continually amused his nation with phantoms of public utility and danger, in order to secure the continuance of his station, in which he was supposed to have already