had defended and consolidated the empire he had founded against that foreign dominion which threatened the independence of his country.  He had just suffered a series of reverses, and he was on the point of being forced to evacuate the Carnatic and take refuge in his kingdom of Mysore, when he heard, in the month of July, 1782, of the arrival of a French fleet commanded by M. de Suffren.  Hyder Ali had already been many times disappointed.  The preceding year Admiral d’Orves had appeared on the Coromandel coast with a squadron; the Sultan had sent to meet him, urging him to land and attack Madras, left defenceless; the admiral refused to risk a single vessel or land a single man, and he returned without striking a blow to Ile-de-France.  Ever indomitable and enterprising, Hyder Ali hoped better things of the new-comers; he was not deceived.

Born at St. Cannat in Provence, on the 13th of July, 1726, of an old and a notable family amongst the noblesse of his province, Peter Andrew de Suffren, admitted before he was seventeen into the marine guards, had procured his reception into the order of Malta; he had already distinguished himself in many engagements, when M. de Castries gave him the command of the squadron commissioned to convey to the Cape of Good Hope a French garrison promised to the Dutch, whose colony was threatened.  The English had seized Negapatam and Trincomalee; they hoped to follow up this conquest by the capture of Batavia and Ceylon.  Suffren had accomplished his mission, not without a brush with the English squadron commanded by Commodore Johnston.  Leaving the Cape free from attack, he had joined, off Ile-de-France, Admiral d’Orves, who was ill and at death’s door.  The vessels of the commander (of the Maltese order) were in a bad state, the crews were weak, the provisions were deficient; the inexhaustible zeal and the energetic ardor of the chief sufficed to animate both non-combatants and combatants.  When he put to sea on the 7th of December, Count d’Orves still commanded the squadron; on the 9th of February he expired out at sea, having handed over his command to M. de Suffren.  All feebleness and all hesitation disappeared from that moment in the management of the expedition.  When the nabob sent a French officer in his service to compliment M. de Suffren and proffer alliance, the commander interrupted the envoy:  “We will begin,” said he, “by settling the conditions of this alliance;” and not a soldier set foot on land before the independent position of the French force, the number of its auxiliaries, and the payment for its services had been settled by a treaty.

Hyder Ali consented to everything.  M. de Suffren set sail to go in search of the English.

[Illustration:  Suffren——­413]