Page:History of the French in India.djvu/583

 BUSSY SENT TO BALAT JANG. 557 the place, aud had at first some success. Soon, how- c 'x^' ever, as Geoghegan had anticipated, his troops became entangled in the narrow streets which lay between the 1769. town and the fort, and were exposed to a heavy fire from the latter, as well as from the French troops under cover. They being thus checked, Geoghegan deter- mined to turn the repulse into a defeat. At daybreak, therefore, he assaulted the English in the positions they had gained in the night-time, and after a fight of two hours' duration, drove them completely out, with a loss of eleven officers and 200 men. The French loss w 7 as scarcely less severe in point of numbers; amongst their dead was M. de Mainville, the whilom commander before TrichinapalK. The victory might have had im- portant results, but the illness of Lally, the indiscipline of the army, the absence of d'Ache, not less than the early arrival of Colonel Coote with the remainder of his regiment, combined to render it abortive. After the repulse, the English cantoned themselves in the neigh- bourhood of Kanchipuram, there to wait the expected reinforcements. Meanwhile Lally, hopeless of aid from any other source, had felt himself impelled to seek alliances in the quarter in which he had at first laughed them to scorn. Ever since the departure of Bussy from the Dakhan, affairs had taken a turn in that locality most unfavourable to French interests. In the first instance, Nizam AH, the brother next in order to Salabat Jang, had once more resumed his pretensions, and was again grasping at supreme power. Salabat Jang, faithful, so long as the French possessed the ability to aid him, to his old alliances, had, as we have seen, marched into the Sirkars to assist them, only on their defeat to transfer the right to those provinces to the English, and to conclude with them a solid treaty. Nizam Ali, having ever shown himself a hater of the French, was not to be thought of ; and Salabat