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142 powerfully by supplies of men and money in the gallant defence of Madras. He also made an effective diversion by despatching Colonel Forde to drive the French out of those important districts, the Northern Sirkars, which was done very smartly and successfully. Masulipatam, the headquarters of the French administration, was taken by assault; and the French army was thenceforward deprived of the immense resources which it had been drawing during this war from the advantage of Bussy's influence and possessions. For as these were the districts which had been assigned to him by the Nizam for payment of his troops, their loss was a heavy blow to Bussy's credit at that court; it disclosed the real instability of his imposing position, and gave a strong impulse to the revolution which soon afterwards destroyed all French preponderance at Haidarabad.

Meanwhile Lally had landed his men, had taken Fort St. David, which was not very resolutely defended, and would have marched on Madras if he had not been prevented by want of money and supplies and by the refusal of the French admiral, D'Aché, to co-operate. He was entirely without tact or temper, suspected all the civil authorities of corruption, knew nothing of Oriental feelings or customs, and had precisely that impatient contempt of local experience and provincial soldiering that has so often led second-rate military commanders to disaster in colonial and Asiatic warfare. In order to get money, he made a fruitless raid upon Tanjore, which only plunged him deeper into unpopularity and financial embarrassment.