Page:History of the French in India.djvu/282

 260 FRENCH INDIA AT ITS ZENITH. chap, as the enemy reached them ; and the French, quickly VL bringing- up their guns, opened out from one end of 1750. ^ ne cam P a tremendous fire on the masses now huddled between them and the river. Muhammad Ali showed neither courage nor presence of mind. Here, as at Ambur, he thought only of his own safety. His men, left to themselves, behaved, as might have been expected, like sheep without a shepherd. The 15,000 cavalry who were in the camp did not strike one blow for their master. How to cross the Panar in safety was the problem each man sought to solve for his own advantage. Victory they never had dreamt of; now even orderly retreat was out of the question. Fortunately for them the river was fordable. Yet, before it could be crossed by the fugitives, they had left nearly a thousand of their number on the field of carnage. They left besides, to fall into the hands of the French, a great quantity of munitions of war, immense supplies of grain and fodder, thirty pieces of cannon, and two English mortars. The French did not lose a single man in the engagement; a few sipahis only were wounded by the explosion of a tumbril. If battles are to be judged by their consequences, this action may truly be termed a great victory. By it the French more than regained the ascendancy they had lost by the disastrous retreat from Valdavur ; Chanda Sahib, their ally, resumed, in consequence of it, a position in which he could lay a well-founded claim to the possession of the Karnatik ; whilst his rival, Muhammad Ali, who had but two months before been master of the whole of that province — the territories ceded to the French and English alone excepted — was forced by this defeat into the position of a beaten and baffled fugitive, fleeing with two attendants for refuge to Arkat. The English, on their part, sulky with Muhammad Ali, on the point of losing their com- mandant, Major Lawrence, who was about to embark