the dishonesty, of the local authorities.  He wrote, in 1758, to M. de Leyrit, Governor of Pondicherry, “Sir, this letter shall be an eternal secret between you and me, if you furnish me with the means of terminating my enterprise.  I left you a hundred thousand livres of my own money to help you to meet the expenditure it requires.  I have not found so much as a hundred sous in your purse and in that of all your council; you have both of you refused to let me employ your credit.  I, however, consider you to be all of you under more obligation to the Company than I am, who have unfortunately the honor of no further acquaintance with it than to the extent of having lost half my property by it in 1720.  If you continue to leave me in want of everything and exposed to the necessity of presenting a front to the general discontent, not only shall I inform the king and the Company of the fine zeal testified for their service by their employees here, but I shall take effectual measures for not being at the mercy, during the short stay I desire to make in this country, of the party spirit and personal motives by which I see that every member appears to be actuated to the risk of the Company in general.”

In the midst of this distress, and in spite of this ebullition, M. de Lally led his troops up in front of Madras; he made himself master of the Black Town.  “The immense plunder taken by the troops,” says the journal of an officer who held a command under Count Lally, “had introduced abundance amongst them.  Huge stores of strong liquors led to drunkenness and all the evils it generates.  The situation must have been seen to be believed.  The works, the guards in the trenches were all performed by drunken men.  The regiment of Lorraine alone was exempt from this plague, but the other corps surpassed one another.  Hence scenes of the most shameful kind and most destructive of subordination and discipline, the details of which confined within the limits of the most scrupulous truthfulness would appear a monstrous exaggeration.”  Lally in despair wrote to his friends in France, “Hell vomited me into this land of iniquities, and I am waiting, like Jonah, for the whale that shall receive me in its belly.”

The attack on the White Town and on Fort St. George was repulsed; and on the 18th of February, 1759, Lally was obliged to raise the siege of Madras.  The discord which reigned in the army as well as amongst the civil functionaries was nowhere more flagrant than between Lally and Bussy.  The latter could not console himself for having been forced to leave the Deccan in the feeble bands of the Marquis of Conflans.  An expedition attempted against the fortress of Wandiwash, of which the English had obtained possession, was followed by a serious defeat; Colonel Coote was master of Karikal.  Little by little the French army and French power in India found themselves cooped within the immediate territory of Pondicherry.  The