Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/454

 joined by a young Frenchman named Migot de la Combe, with two hundred Travancoreans, of whom half deserted, and prepared to stand a siege. On 13 June 1791 Coimbatoor was surrounded by one of Tippoo's generals with two thousand regular infantry, many thousands of irregulars, and eight guns, and was violently bombarded for nearly two months. On 11 Aug. a violent assault was made upon the place; but, owing to the mines Chalmers had made under the breach, it was repelled with loss, and the Mysorean army retreated. The gallant defence attracted the attention of Cornwallis, who sent Lieutenant Nash of the Madras infantry with a company of sepoys to the assistance of Chalmers, bringing up the garrison to seven hundred men. Tippoo now determined on a yet more vigorous attack upon the place, and 6 Oct. Kummur-ud-deen, Tippoo's most famous general, again laid siege to it with eight thousand men and fourteen guns. Again Chalmers made a protracted defence; but at last, when both Nash and himself were wounded, he capitulated on 3 Nov., on condition that he should be allowed to march with his men to Palgaut. The capitulation was violated by Tippoo, and Chalmers and Nash were taken prisoners to Seringapatam in the following year. Tippoo, however, treated the two English officers well, and when Lord Cornwallis appeared before Seringapatam and demanded their release before he would enter into negotiations, they were sent safe into his camp on 8 Feb. 1792. Lord Cornwallis had not approved of defending Coimbatoor, but he was one of the first to acknowledge the gallantry of Chalmers, and specially recommended him to the court of directors for a pecuniary reward (Cornwallis Correspondence, ii. 108). This was Chalmers's great feat of arms; he was promoted captain on 3 Oct. 1792, major on 27 July 1796, lieutenant-colonel in the company's service on 31 July 1799, colonel on 8 April 1808, major-general on 1 Jan. 1812, and was made a K.C.B. when that order was first thrown open to the company's officers in April 1815. He commanded the subsidiary force at Travancore from 1803 to 1809, and the northern division of the Madras presidency from 1812 to 1817. He left India, after forty-two years' continuous service in the Madras presidency, on 21 Jan. 1818, and died on board the Marquis of Wellington on his way home to England on 31 March 1818.

[Dodwell and Miles's Alphabetical Catalogue of the Officers of the Indian Army; East India Military Calendar, ii. 333, 334; Wilks's Historical Sketches of Southern India for the defence of Coimbatoor.]  CHALMERS, PATRICK (1802–1854), Scottish antiquary, was born at Auldbar Castle, near Brechin, on 31 Oct. 1802. He was the son of Patrick Chalmers, by Frances, daughter of John Inglis, East India director and was the representative of an ancient family, Chalmers of Balnacraig, which had held lands in Aberdeenshire in the middle of the fourteenth century. He was educated in Germany and at Oxford, but left the university without taking a degree. He entered the army and rose to the rank of captain, serving for some years with the 3rd dragoon guards, chiefly in Ireland. On the death of his father in 1826 he sold out and went to live at his seat at Auldbar. In 1835 he was chosen to represent in parliament the united burghs of Montrose, Arbroath, Brechin, Forfar, and Bervie, being re-elected in 1837 and also in 1841. He was actively engaged on several parliamentary committees, particularly the committee on the penny postage; but a disease of the spinal column compelled him to retire from parliament in 1842. Chalmers was always greatly interested in Scottish antiquities, and ready to spend money in producing antiquarian publications. In 1848 he published, at his own cost, and presented to the Bannatyne Club, a work on the ‘Ancient Sculptured Monuments of the County of Angus, including those at Maigla in Perthshire, and one at Fordoun in the Mearns’ (Edinburgh, folio). This book had been written by Chalmers chiefly during illness; another edition of it in quarto form was subsequently published ‘with the addition of a number of monuments of the neighbouring counties of the Mearns and Aberdeenshire,’ the expenses being borne by some Aberdeenshire gentlemen and by Chalmers himself, under whose direction the work was published. Until the appearance of Chalmers's work, ‘few examples of the sculptured standing stones (in Scotland) had been engraved of a size sufficient to give either accuracy of representation or the necessary details.’ ‘The Cartulary of the Abbey of Arbroath’ (Liber S. Thorne de Aberbrothæ, 1848, &c. 4to) was another antiquarian work with which Chalmers was connected. He was too ill to write the first volume, which was chiefly the work of Mr. Cosmo Innes, but he contributed the preface and prepared the whole of the second volume. He also contemplated another work on the cartulary of the church of Brechin, and was engaged in editing it from the original manuscript in the possession of Lord Panmure. Chalmers was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (London) in January 1850, and made two communications to the ‘Archæologia:’