Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/190

154 fighting single-handed against all the maritime nations; against France, Spain, Holland, and her own American colonies. She was also entangled within India in a very intricate desultory war against Hyder Ali of Mysore and the Marathas; two powers which both held strips of the Indian seaboard and were both corresponding with the enemy.

THE SACRED BULL AT MYSORE.

The French fleet was under Suffren, the best admiral ever possessed by France, and the military force in the expedition was commanded by Bussy. Suffren was far superior as a naval tactician to the English commander, but the French admiral found on the Indian coast, as Captain Mahan justly observes, "no friendly port or roadstead, no base of supplies or repair." The French settlements had all fallen by 1779; and the invaluable harbour of Trincomali, in Ceylon, had been taken by the English from the Dutch just a month before. It