Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/102

74 The sortie, made at three o'clock in the morning of the 26th June, was repulsed with the loss of about forty men killed, and 100 taken prisoners.

Notwithstanding this repulse, the English general was too well aware of his own comparative weakness to attempt an assault. He restricted himself therefore to a blockade, and that of merely a nominal nature. The French troops drew in unopposed all their supplies from the country, and Bussy — even the Bussy of 1783 — had become so emboldened as to talk of an attack on the besiegers' camp with his combined force, when suddenly the intelligence that the preliminaries of peace had been signed in Europe, induced both contending parties to agree to a suspension of arms.

This suspension assumed on the 3rd September following a permanent character, by the announcement of the conclusion of the peace known in history as the treaty of Versailles.

The suspension of arms was most unfortunate for France. The army of Stuart before Kadalúr represented the last hope of the English in Southern India. It was reduced then by the want of supplies to the greatest extremities. An attack by the French in force could