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Rh predominant for the time; if two of them united, the third was in jeopardy. This is what had happened in 1778, when the alarm of war with France drove the Anglo-Indian government into precipitate measures that embroiled us first with the Marathas and secondly with Mysore, and consequently brought down upon us the combined hostility of both.

By the summer of 1780, the fortunes of the English in India had fallen to their lowest watermark. At Calcutta the resources of Bengal were drained by the cost of distant and protracted war, and cramped, as Hastings said, by internal imbecility; for the Governor-General was still contending against perverse and obstructive colleagues, one of whom, Francis, he at last quieted by a pistol-shot, wounding him severely, though not fatally, in a duel at Calcutta, August 17, 1780. At Bombay, the funds were so completely exhausted that the Council reported, as their best reason for keeping the troops on active service abroad, their inability to pay them at home. In the south, Hyder Ali had made common cause with the Marathas, had drawn the Nizam of Haidarabad into the triple alliance against the English, had obtained promises of French co-operation on the seacoast, and in July, 1780, had descended from the hills upon the plains of the Karnatic with an army of eighty thousand men.

All premonitory signs of coming danger had been treated at Madras with inattention and contempt. Sir Thomas Rumbold, a corrupt and incapable governor, departing homeward in the spring, had recorded in a