Page:Sir Thomas Munro and the British Settlement of the Madras Presidency.djvu/26

18 The year in which Munro arrived at Madras was the commencement of a critical period in the history of British India. The conduct of the Madras Government—Sir Thomas Rumbold, the Governor, and Sir Hector Munro, the Commander-in-Chief, being at variance with the other members of Council—gave an opening which neither the French nor the other enemies of English supremacy were slow to make use of. Haidar Alí of Mysore, and the Nizám of the Deccan, the two strongest Musalmán powers in India, endeavoured to draw the Maráthás into an alliance against England, but the diplomacy of Hastings won over the Nizám and the Maráthá Rájá of Nágpur.

Haidar, at the head of a numerous and well-appointed army, joined by a corps of Europeans under Lally, marched from Seringapatam, and by August had laid siege to Arcot, a town about sixty-five miles west of Madras. 'The Government,' writes Munro in a letter to his father in October, 1780, 'being at length convinced by the burning of the villages around, and the country people daily flocking in multitudes to Madras, that Haidar had passed the mountains, prepared to oppose him. General Munro was ordered to take the command of the army, and at the same time instructions were sent to the north to Colonel Baillie to march with his detachment and join the main body.' Sir Hector Munro reached Conjeveram, and Colonel Baillie had advanced to within fourteen miles of the latter, when Haidar threw his army be-