Bussy considered obedience the first duty of a soldier, and, to the inconceivable surprise of the native princes, both Hindoo and Mahomedan, who trembled at the sound of his name, at once retired from the Deccan at the period of his greatest strength, and the sun of French prosperity in India set not to rise again.

Lally-
Siege of
Madras.

Lally, a member of an Irish Roman Catholic family, which retired to France on the flight of James II., had from his early youth, and for forty years, been trained in arms. His military reputation stood so high that when war broke out between France and England in 1756, he was considered the fittest man to command the large armament the French ministry He was was sending to India to establish French power. A.D. accompanied by the scions of the most illustrious families 1758 in France. He landed at Pondicherry in April, 1758, and

marched at once against the English factory at St. David's, which was surrendered within a month. The time was peculiarly favourable for the expulsion of the English from the Deccan. Madras was unfortified, its European force and its fleet were in Bengal, and the French commanded the sea and were paramount on land. Lally was bent on attacking Madras without delay, but he was basely thwarted by the admiral, who refused the aid of his ships, and by the council of Pondicherry, who would not afford him any pecuniary assistance. Seven years before this time the rajah of Tanjore, pressed by the demands of Mozuffer Jung and Chunda Sahib, had given them a bond for fifty-six lacs of rupees, which was considered valueless, and made over to Dupleix. As a last resource, Lally resolved to supply his military chest by demanding payment of this bond. With the largest European and native force which had ever till then taken the field, he hurried on to Tanjore; on his route he levied forced contributions, and blew six brahmins from the guns. The town was besieged for a fortnight, and a practical breach had been made when an English fleet appeared on the coast, and threatened Carical, the French depôt; Lally, who had only twenty cartridges left for each man and two days' provisions, raised the siege and retired. On his return to Pondicherry, he prevailed on the council to grant him some aid towards the siege of Madras, which 1758 was the object nearest his heart, and in November advanced to it with an army of 2,000 European foot and 300 European cavalry, the first ever seen in India, besides a large force of sepoys. The garrison of the fort

Siege of
Madras.

consisted of 1,758 Europeans and 2,200 natives, but they
were under the command of the veteran Lawrence, who
was supported by thirteen officers trained under his own
eye. The siege was prosecuted for two months with great
vigour, and a breach was at length effected, but, at the last
moment, the refusal of his officers to second him defeated
Lally's plans, and the appearance of an English fleet in the
roads obliged him to raise the siege and retire.
Misfortunes thickened upon him. The Northern
Sircars were occupied by a force despatched from Calcutta
by Clive, under the gallant Colonel Forde, and Salabut
Jung, having no longer anything to hope or fear from the
French, threw himself into the arms of the English, and
bound himself by treaty never to allow a French force to
enter his service.

Siege raised.

But his

AD

1758

Lally returned to Pondicherry, with his army, officers as well as men, in a state of insubordination. hopes were raised by the arrival of a powerful Naval fleet consisting of eleven vessels, the smallest of engagement. which carried fifty guns; the English squadron was scarcely less powerful. In the engagement which ensued both 1759 parties were crippled, but neither of them beaten. The French admiral, however, disregarding the entreaties and even the menaces of the authorities at Pondicherry, sailed away with his whole fleet to the Isle of France, leaving the command of the sea with the English. The French troops mutinied for their pay, which was ten months in arrear, and marched out of Pondicherry towards Madras, but were induced to return by the discharge of a portion of it. Lally, determined to bring on an engagement, marched on Wandewash, and captured the town and laid siege to the fort. The English force under Colonel Coote, an officer second in ability only to Clive, came up for its French relief. The result was a pitched battle, known defeated at as the battle of Wandewash, one of the most severely contested and most decisive which had as yet been fought in India, in which the French, after prodigies of valour, sustained a signal defeat. It was the last struggle 1760 for empire between the French and English on the plains of India, and it demolished the hopes of establishing a French power. Lally fell back on Pondicherry, where he encountered nothing but intrigue and sedition from those who ought to have been unanimous in sustaining the national honour at this crisis. "From this time," he said, "without money, without ships, without even provisions,

Wandewash.

"Pondicherry might be given up for lost." Coote, in the A.D. meantime, drove the French from all the towns and posi1760 tions they held in the Carnatic, and prepared for the siege Siege of of Pondicherry, when the folly of the Court of Pondicherry. Directors had well-nigh marred it, by sending out orders to supersede him by the Honourable Colonel Monson, the second in command. In the first independent enterprise of Colonel Monson, his success was so equivocal as to present an ill-omen of his efforts, but he was disabled by a severe wound, and Colonel Coote was prevailed on by the council of Madras to resume the command. The town was subject to a strict blockade during the rains, and vigorously besieged as soon as they ceased. Lally was thwarted at every turn by the civil functionaries who detested him, and in whom every spark of honesty and loyalty was extinct; but he maintained a long and energetic defence with a spirit and courage which elicited the applause of his English opponents, and he did not surrender the town until he was reduced to two days' provisions. As the victors 1761 marched into it, their feelings were deeply excited by the skeleton figures to which the noble forms of the two gallant Capture of regiments Lally had brought out with him were Pondicherry reduced by months of fatigue and famine. The French Court of Directors had sent instructions to Lally to erase the English settlements from the land. The despatch had fallen into the hands of the English Directors, and, by their orders, Pondicherry was levelled with the ground, and not a roof left of that noble colony. which, with a brief interval, the two nations had waged for fifteen years, terminated in the extinction of the French power. The ambitious hope of establishing a French empire in India, which had equally animated Labourdonnais and Dupleix, Bussy and Lally, was extinguished. Their settlements were, indeed, restored at the peace of Paris in 1763, but they never recovered their political position in India. Lally returned to Paris and was thrown into the Bastile, where he lingered for three years. He was then brought to trial, denied the assistance of counsel, Lally. and condemned to death for having betrayed the interests of the king and the company. He was drawn on a dung cart to the scaffold and beheaded, the third illustrious victim of the ingratitude of his country in fifteen years.

Fate of

The war

SECTION V.

NATIVE STATES, FROM THE SACK OF DELHI, 1739, TO THE
BATTLE OF PANIPUT, 1761.

Abdalee.

To return to the events in the native states, from the
invasion of Nadir Shah in 1739, to the battle of Paniput
in 1761. The atrocities perpetrated by Nadir Ahmed
Shah on his return to Persia, for eight years, Shah
were at length terminated by his assassination.
But a new and more formidable foe to India arose on his
death in the person of Ahmed Shah, the chief of the
tribe of Abdalee Afghans, who was proclaimed king at
Candahar before the close of the year, and became supreme
in the regions beyond the Indus. Encouraged by the
success of Nadir Shah, whom he had accompanied in his
expedition, he turned his attention to India and occupied
the province of Lahore, and advanced to Sirhind, where he
was defeated by prince Ahmed, the son of the emperor of
Delhi, who obliged him to recross the Indus. His first
Mahomed Shah, the emperor, after a reign of invasion.
more than thirty years, during which the imperial throne
had been steadily becoming weaker, died in 1748, and was
succeeded by his son Ahmed, who appointed the nabob of
Oude his vizier. Alarmed by the growing power of the
Rohillas, who had taken advantage of the invasion and of the
confusion of the times to enlarge their power in Rohil-
cund, the Vizier attacked them and was defeated, and his
province overrun, when he had recourse to the humiliating
and dangerous expedient of calling in the Mahratta chiefs
Holkar and Sindia, by whose aid he chased the Rohillas
back to their hills. To gratify their avarice, he authorised
them to plunder the conquered territory, which did not
recover from the effect of their ravages for many years.

invasion.

A.D.

1747

Ahmed Shah, having recruited his force, again occupied the Punjab and Mooltan, and sent an envoy to Delhi to 1751 demand the formal cession of them. The emperor, His second under the influence of a profligate eunuch, com- and third plied with the request. The Vizier, then absent in the pursuit of the Rohillas, hastened to Delhi, but being too late to prevent the surrender of the provinces, invited the eunuch to a banquet and caused him to be assassinated. The emperor was exasperated by this outrage, and enlisted the services of Ghazee-ood-deen, the grandson of Nizam.

A.D.

ool-moolk and the son of the prince who was poisoned by his mother-in-law. This brought on a civil war between the emperor and the Vizier, and for six months the capital was deluged with blood. Ghazee-ood-deen then called to his assistance Holkar's mercenaries, and the Vizier, unable to cope with them, consented to an accommodation, and was allowed to retain possession of Oude and Allahabad, which were now finally alienated from the empire. The emperor, unable to bear the arrogance of Ghazee-ood-deen, marched out of his capital to oppose him while he was engaged in the siege of Bhurtpore, but was defeated and made prisoner, when the monster deprived him and his mother of sight, and raised one of the princes of the blood 1754 to the throne, with the title of Alumgeer the second. He then proceeded to the Punjab and expelled the Alumgeer II. lieutenants of Ahmed Shah, who no sooner Emperor. heard of the insult than he hastened to avenge it, and having recovered the Punjab, advanced to Delhi. Ghazee-ood-deen made the most abject submissions, and was forgiven, but the Abdalee was determined to obtain a pecuniary indemnity, and gave the city up to plunder. For many days the atrocities of Nadir Shah's time were repeated, and the wretched inhabitants were a second time 1756 subject to the insolence and rapacity of a brutal soldiery. Soon after, several thousand unoffending devotees were sacrificed in the holy city of Muttra at the time of a religious festival. A pestilence which presently broke out in his camp obliged him to recross the Indus. He left his son Timur in charge of the Punjab, and at the particular request of the emperor, placed the Rohilla chief 1757 Nujeeb-ood-dowlah in command of the imperial army to protect him from the designs of Ghazee-ood-deen.

That abandoned minister immediately called the Mahrattas to his aid, and Rughoonath Rao, more commonly Mahratta known in history as Raghoba, advanced and capgrandeur. tured Delhi after a siege of a month, and then proceeding to the Punjab, drove the force of Timur back 1758 into Afghanistan and planted the Mahratta standard for the first time on the banks of the Indus. He returned to Poona, after having conferred the government of the province on a Mahratta officer. The Peshwa had, meanwhile, been intriguing for the possession of Ahmednugur, the most important city south of the Nerbudda, and at length obtained it by treachery. This aggression brought on hostilities with Salabut Jung and his brother Nazir