Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/620

596 ammunition, and military stores of all kinds. The batteries must have ceased firing the next day, until convoys arrived; the garrison had not lost three men, arid the fort might have held out ten days longer before the assault by storm could be risqued. They extenuated the early surrender by the certainty of not being relieved. It required the respite of some days to refit the wear and tear which the army had endured during the activity of the late operations; for all the carriages were shattered, all the men wanted clothing, and all the bullocks were sore.

Colonel Coote, in consideration of Mr. Bussy's generosity to the English factory when he took Vizagapatam, had permitted him to repair to Pondicherry from the field of battle, immediately after he was taken. He arrived there the next day, and represented the defeat as far from irretrievable. On the 25th in the evening, came in Mr. Lally, and the troops were following from Gingee to Valdore. His ill success, and the abandoning the field, rendered him still more odious than ever. No invective, howsoever unjust, was spared. Cowardice borrowing courage from drunkenness was imputed as the cause of wrong dispositions, redressed by worse, until the battle was lost, and the retreat to Pondicherry as a design to lose the city, in revenge for the universal detestation in which he was held.

Nevertheless, the best ability and will would have been perplexed what measure to pursue after the defeat. The necessity of refurnishing the army with the stores and artillery they had lost, would alone have required them to fall back near to Pondicherry; and the protection of the districts in the rear of Alamparwah and Gingee now became of great concernment; for since the loss of Masulipatam of the northern provinces, and of their settlements in Bengal, very little grain in proportion to the former importations had been brought to Pondicherry by sea; and the distresses for money to answer more immediate calls had hitherto prevented the government from laying in a store of provisions; so that their greatest resource at this time was from the harvests in these districts, which was ripe and gathering in. The interruptions continually opposed by the garrison of Tritchinopoly to the French troops remaining in the island Seringham, had