Page:History of the French in India.djvu/551

 DIFFICULTIES OF THE FRENCH. 525 being celebrated in honour of the capture of Fort St. °^^ m David. Still, however, bent more than ever on the practical, he lost no time in vain rejoicing, but sum- 1758. moned a council to which he invited d'Ache. Again he urged his reasons for instant action against Madras, but again was he met by the dogged and obstinate refusal of his naval colleague. It was a hard trial to see the fruits of his victory thus snatched from his grasp by the stolid stupidity of the man whose indecision and delays had already cost him so much, and who happened to be the only official not subjected to his orders. But hard as it was, Lally was forced to bear it, and to see the fleet that might, he believed, have car- ried him in triumph to Madras, leave the roadstead of Pondichery, on an uncertain and profitless cruise, carrying with it the 600 troops he had lent its com- mander. Still, notwithstanding the defection of d'Ache, Lally was very unwilling to renounce his designs on Madras. With the coup cVoeil of a real soldier he saw, as La Bourdonnais had seen before him, that there the de- cisive blow was to be struck. Yet he was helpless. He had not the money to equip his army, and cle Leyrit and his colleagues persisted in declaring that it was im- possible for them to raise it. Out of this difficulty, the local chief of the Jesuits, by name Father Lavaur, one of the most influential of the residents at Pondichery, suggested an escape. It so happened that amongst the prisoners taken at Fort St. David was that same Sahujf, ex-king of Tanjur, who had been twice expelled from that country in 1739, and who, taken up by the Eng- lish for their own purposes, in 1749, and thrown aside when no longer of use to them, had continued ever since a pensioner on their bounty.* The arrival of Sahviji in Pondichery suggested to the mind of the
 * Chapters III. and VI.