Page:History of the French in India.djvu/570

 544 THE LAST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE. chap, practicable, yet that, " having regard to the situation of ', _ , things, to our force compared with that of the enemy," 1758. an assault would cause the destruction of a great many soldiers, and would end in nothing. These officers, not content with writing this to the general, made no secret of their opinion in the camp, intimating that to try an assault would be to march to certain death. But Lally, though disappointed at this opinion, sensible how great was the responsibility of acting on such an occasion against the written advice of his scientific officers, yet feeling persuaded that they were wrong, and that his soldiers would follow him, did not renounce his deter- mination. He waited only for the wane of the moon to deliver the assault, and had intimated to Crillon, charged with the chief attack, that he was to hold himself in readiness to make it on the evening of February 16th, when to his intense disappointment, he saw Admiral Pocock's squadron sail into the roadstead on the after- noon of that very day. The situation of the besieging army was now des- perate. For the past twenty days the troops had had no pay, and the officers had been on soldier's rations ; there remained but 20,0001bs. of powder in the artil- lery park, and only a similar supply at Pondichery. For three weeks not a single bomb had been fired, that species of ammunition having been exhausted ; the native troops, unpaid, had melted away, and even the European cavalry threatened to go over to the enemy. Pondichery, too, had but 300 invalids left to guard it. Under these circumstances, the arrival of the English fleet, at once relieving Madras and threatening Pondi- chery, made the raising of the siege inevitable. On the night of February 17th, this operation took place. Sending all the wounded who could be moved from St. Thome by sea, and burying his cannon-shot, he left in the trenches, from want of cattle to take them away, five pieces of cannon, and in the pagoda,