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322 foot in the heat of June from Cuddalore to Seringapatam, their wounds undressed and their supply of food and water utterly inadequate. At Seringapatam they were put into irons, the officers fettered indiscriminately to some of the roughest and coarsest of their men. Their scanty food was of the very worst kind. Many succumbed to their inhuman treatment as Haider intended that they should. The remnant that survived were released in 1785, after three years of terrible suffering, with others who had been taken prisoners many years previously. The wonder is that they had strength to live through such an ordeal. Nearly all were naked when they were released, and many of the earlier prisoners had long been given up as dead.

Among other treasures lost in the destruction of the second Pondicherry was a fine collection of natural history specimens made by Sonnerat. He had travelled as far as New Guinea for the purpose of forming the collection, and had brought it to Pondicherry to be shipped to Paris. Pennant, in his 'Eastern Hindoostan,' relates a curious incident connected with this collection. He says: 'On January, the first, 1779, the Deux Amis, a small French Indiaman, was wrecked near my house. Among other letters found in it was one from M. Sonnerat, containing a sum total of all the plants, animals, birds, &c., which he had collected, and full of exultation in his good fortune. I lent it to a friend, who took it into his head to forward it by post to Le Jardin de Roy [at Paris] as an insult on the French nation, and so [he] deprived me of what I should have esteemed an interesting piece of history.'

Lally's fate was sad, and calculated to raise pity even in the breast of his enemies. He was recalled to France and tried for mismanagement of the campaign. He was imprisoned, and finally beheaded. When he heard the sentence he threw up his hands in despair, demanding of