M. de Lally’s passage was a long one; the English re-enforcements had preceded, him by six weeks.  On arriving in India, he found the arsenals and the magazines empty; the establishment of Pondicherry alone confessed to fourteen millions of debt.  Meanwhile the enemy was pressing at all points upon the French possessions.  Lally marched to Gondelour (Kaddaloue), which he carried on the sixth day; he, shortly afterwards, invested Fort St. David, the most formidable of the English fortresses in India.  The first assault was repulsed; the general had neither cannon nor beasts of burden to draw them.  He hurried off to Pondicherry and had the natives harnessed to the artillery trains, taking pellmell such men as fell in his way, without regard for rank or caste, imprudently wounding the prejudices most dear to the country he had come to govern.  Fort St. David was taken and razed.  Devicotah, after scarcely the ghost of a siege, opened its gates.  Lally had been hardly a month in India, and he had already driven the English from the southern coast of the Coromandel.  “All my policy is in these five words, but they are binding as an oath—­No English in the peninsula,” wrote the general.  He had sent Bussy orders to come and join him in order to attack Madras.

The brilliant courage and heroic ardor of M. de Lally had triumphed over the first obstacles; his recklessness, his severity, his passionateness were about to lose him the fruits of his victories.  “The commission I hold,” he wrote to the directors of the Company at Paris, “imports that I shall be held in horror by all the people of the country.”  By his personal defaults he aggravated his already critical position.  The supineness of the French government had made fatal progress amongst its servants; Count d’Ache, who commanded the fleet, had refused to second the attempt upon Madras; twice, whilst cruising in Indian waters, the French admiral had been beaten by the English; he took the course back to Ile de France, where he reckoned upon wintering.  Pondicherry was threatened, and Lally found himself in Tanjore, where he had hoped to recover a considerable sum due to the Company; on his road he had attacked a pagoda, thinking he would find there a great deal of treasure, but the idols were hollow and of worthless material.  The pagoda was in flames, the disconsolate Brahmins were still wandering round about their temple; the general took them for spies, and had them tied to the cannons’ mouths.  The danger of Pondicherry forced M. de Lally to raise the siege of Tanjore; the English fell back on Madras.

Disorder was at its height in the Company’s affairs; the vast enterprises commenced by Dupleix required success and conquests, but they had been abandoned since his recall, not without having ingulfed, together with his private fortune, a portion of the Company’s resources.  Lally was angered at being every moment shackled for want of money; he attributed it not only to the ill will, but also to