Page:History of the French in India.djvu/594

 568 THE LAST STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE. °xij P ' ^ nc ^ a - shattered to the ground the mighty fabric — which Martin, Dumas, and Dupleix had contributed to 17C0. erect ; it dissipated all the hopes of Lally ; it sealed the fate of Pondichery. By it, the superiority in the field, which during that war had rested mainly with the French in the Karnatik, was transferred entirely to the English. It was the proximate cause why Lally, who had himself acted as besieger before Madras, should, in his turn, suffer the misfortune of being himself besieged in Pondichery. The conduct of Lally in this action, the dispositions that he made, the fact of his righting a battle at all, have been severely condemned by his enemies. The candid military critic is, however, bound to do him justice on all these points. His plan was the best he could have adopted. Drawing Coote by a skilful manoeuvre from the line of the Palar, he assaulted Wandiwash, took the town, and had he been well served, would have taken the fort also. Baffled in this, he determined to accept a battle on ground which he had reconnoitred and chosen. No doubt to deliver a battle, defeat in which must be ruin, is very dangerous policy. But with Lally it was unavoidable. He had not the means of attempting a war of manoeuvres. Straitened as were his resources, such a policy must have resulted in a retreat to Pondichery to be followed by a siege there. This result being unavoidable, he was surely right in attempting to ward it off by a direct blow. Then, again, as to his conduct in the action. He, at least, is not to be blamed for the behaviour of his cavalry. Had they followed him, he would, he says, have thrown the left of the English force into disorder so great that an advance of the infantry must have changed it into an overthrow. He is not to be blamed, for, he could not have foreseen, the accident in the in- trench men t which caused its evacuation, and lost him