Page:History of the French in India.djvu/547

 DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTEKED BY LALLY. 521 nent, when it had become necessary for the army to sit c ^ p ' down before that place, dependent upon Pondichery for ^— supplies, and for the carriage of supplies, that the cul- 1758. pable indifference of de Leyrit and his colleagues began to make itself keenly felt. Lally, seeing the utter impossibility of carrying on a siege until he had first organised a system of supply, aware also, in consequence of the presence of the vic- torious English fleet at Madras, of the absolute necessity of promptitude, returned, immediately after the taking of Gudalur, to Pondichery, with a view to rouse the authorities there to a sense of their duties and of their position, and to make, at all costs, proper arrangements for supplies. At Pondichery, however, Lally found nought but apathy and indifference. To every request that he preferred he was answered by an " impossible." He did not find there, although he had sent 100,000 francs to make preparations, resources that were worth 100 pence.* It can scarcely be wondered at if Lally attributed this conduct to something more than indo- lence or apathy. He says himself, in his memoirs, that he saw very clearly how ill-will lay at the bottom of it all. It is little marvellous then, if he, ignorant of India, knowing nothing of the distinction between castes, left to himself by those who should have aided him, and whose duty it was to have prevented this necessity, should, rather than abandon his enterprise, have insisted on a wholesale conscription of the native inhabitants to carry the loads necessary for his army. True it is that such a course was a fatal blunder ; true it is that it would have been wiser far to have aban- this is shown hy the following extract tions for an enterprise of which you of a letter he addressed to de Leyrit, had had eight months' warning. I dated the 15th May, and which runs sent you 100,000 francs of my money thus: — " The Minister (at Paris) will to aid in the necessary expenses; I find it difficult to believe that you have not found on my arrival re- awaited the disembarkation of the sources of 100 pence in your purse troops on board the first vessel of our or in that of your Council."— Official squadron, before you employed the Correspondence in Lally 's Memoirs.
 * The extent to which Lally felt money at your disposal in prepara-