Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/92

64 returned to India in 1783 was no longer the hardy warrior who had electrified Southern India in the years between 1754 and 1760; who had made of the Subadar of the Dekhan a French prefect, and whose capacity to dare had supplied the want of soldiers. If the Bussy of 1756, by his genius, his activity, his daring, his success, foreshadowed in some respects the illustrious warrior who, just forty years later, displayed the same qualities to conquer Italy, the Bussy of 1783, corrupted by wealth, enervated by luxury, and careful only of his ease, more resembled that scion of the House of Bourbon, once his sovereign, who consecrated all his hours to his mistresses, who left the nomination of the generals of the armies of France to a de Pompadour, and who banished a Choiseul on the requisition of a Du Barry!

Bussy, then, instead of acting with vigour, did nothing. He did not even show himself to his men. He kept himself — to borrow the language of one of his countrymen — "invisible in his tent like a rich Nabob." Instructed by Colonel d'Offelize of the advance of the English, and informed by that officer that he pledged himself to maintain his force at Permacól, if he were but supported, Bussy not only refused, but abandoned every outlying fortification and fell back within Kadalúr.

The fort of Kadalúr was a quadrangle of unequal sides, extremely weak in many respects, and possessing an indifferent flanking defence. From two to four miles from its western face inland were the hills of Bandapalam. A little estuary formed by the sea covered the