Page:Dupleix and the Struggle for India by the European Nations.djvu/90

Rh fight. Nay more, they insisted on retreating. This they did during the night, leaving eleven guns and forty men behind them. Chandá Sáhib accompanied them, commanding the rear-guard to cover the retreat. Muzaffar Jang surrendered to the tender mercies of his uncle, who promptly had him handcuffed and placed in confinement.

The retreat was not a very happy one. It was discovered early in the morning, and the Maráthá horse, dashing in pursuit, caught up the demoralised army before it had entered Pondichery, and killed nineteen Frenchmen. The forty who had been left behind met the same fate.

'It is easy to imagine,' writes Dupleix in his Memoirs, 'what was the mortification of Dupleix when he was informed of all the details of the conduct of our cowardly officers, and further, to complete his misfortunes, that Muzaffar Jang had been taken prisoner and placed in irons by Nádir Jang.' But never was Dupleix greater than when confronted by difficulties which would have overwhelmed ordinary men. The arrival of the fugitives had given him the first intimation of the discontent which had produced the mutiny. In the crisis, he behaved with a vigour and an energy which produced the best results. He placed D'Auteuil under arrest for retreating without orders, the officers who had been the ring-leaders he brought to trial, the men he addressed in a tone and in a manner which speedily brought them to a condi-