Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/392

368 duce the fort, of Arcot, to whom Timery surrendered in the way without resistance; and before he arrived at Arcot, Rajahsaheb had succeeded in a negotiation with the Nabob's kellidar to deliver up the fort on an insignificant capitulation. Mr. Lally, thinking that the taking possession of the citadel of the capital would magnify his reputation in the province, resolved to receive the surrender in person, and made his entry into the fort on the 4th of October, under the discharge of all the cannon; and dispatched orders to Pondicherry and the other French garrisons to proclaim the acquisition with the same ostentation. The Presidency of Madrass saw in these operations nothing but what they expected would have happened immediately after the fall of Fort St. David; and the preservation of Chinglapet, if in their power, gave them more solicitude, than the abandoning of all the other forts together, which the inferiority of their force had left them no means of preserving. At the request of the renter of Chinglapet, they had sent two companies of Sepoys to guard this fort, whilst his own men with arms were employed in protecting the harvests, and the same number of Sepoys were sent at the same time to garrison Conjeveram. Towards the end of August a lieutenant was appointed to command those in Chinglapet, and carried with him another company. On the 14th of September arrived the company's ship Pitt, of 50 guns: she sailed from England on the 6th of March together with six other, under the convoy of the Grafton of 70, and the Sunderland of 60 guns, coming to reinforce Mr. Pococke's squadron: on board of these ships were embarked 900 men of the king's troops, embodied in a regiment under the command of lieutenant colonel Draper, who with Major Brereton, and 100 of the regiment, arrived and landed from on board the Pitt, but 50 had died on the passage of a contagion, then called the Brest fever, which had passed during the war from the French marine into many English ships. The troops which came in the Pitt, and the expectation that the other ships with the rest would arrive before the change of the monsoon, encouraged the Presidency to send four companies more of Sepoys to Chinglapet: this reinforcement stopped the march of considerable detachment