As early as 1778, even before the maritime war had burst out in Europe, France had lost all that remained of her possessions on the Coromandel coast. Pondicherry, scarcely risen from its ruins, was besieged by the English, and had capitulated on the 17th of October, after an heroic resistance of forty days’ open trenches. Since that day a Mussulman, Hyder Ali, conqueror of the Carnatic, had struggled alone in India against the power of England: it was around him that a group had been formed by the old soldiers of Bussy and by the French who had escaped from the disaster of Pondicherry. It was with their aid that the able robber-chief, the crafty politician, 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.
He sought them for three months without any decisive result; it was only on the 4th of July in the morning, at the moment when Hyder Ali was to attack Negapatam, that a serious engagement began between the hostile fleets. The two squadrons had already suffered severely; a change of wind had caused disorder in the lines: the English had several vessels dismantled; one single French vessel, the Severe, had received serious damage; her captain, with cowardly want of spirit, ordered the flag to be hauled down. His lieutenants protested; the volunteers to whom he had appealed refused to execute his orders. By this time the report was spreading among the batteries that the captain, was giving the order to cease firing; the sailors were as indignant as the officers: a cry arose, “The flag is down!” A complaisant subaltern had at last obeyed the captain’s repeated orders. The officers jumped upon the quarter-deck. “You are master of your flag,” fiercely cried an officer of the blue, Lieutenant Dien, “but we are masters as to fighting, and the ship shall not surrender!” By this time a boat from the English ship, the Sultan, had put off to board the Severe, which was supposed to have struck, when a fearful broadside from all the ship’s port-holes struck the Sultan, which found herself obliged to sheer off. Night came; without waiting for the admiral’s orders, the English went and cast anchor under Negapatam.
M. de Suffren supposed that hostilities would be resumed; but, when the English did not appear, he at last prepared to set sail for Gondelour to refit his vessels, when a small boat of the enemy’s hove in sight: it bore a flag of truce. Admiral Hughes claimed the Severe, which had for an instant hauled down her flag. M. de Suffren had not heard anything about her captain’s poltroonery; the flag had been immediately replaced; he answered that none of the French vessels had surrendered. “However,” he added with a smile, “as this vessel belongs to Sir Edward Hughes, beg him from me to come for it himself.” Suffren arrived without hinderance at Gondelour (Kaddalore).
Scarcely was he there, when Hyder Ali expressed a desire to see him, and set out for that purpose without waiting for his answer. On the 26th of July, M. de Suffren landed with certain officers of his squadron; an escort of cavalry was in waiting to conduct him to the camp of the nabob, who came out to meet him. “Heretofore I thought myself a great man and a great general,” said Hyder Ali to the admiral; “but now I know that you alone are a great man.” Suffren informed the nabob that M. de Bussy-Castelnau, but lately the faithful lieutenant of Dupleix and the continuer of his victories, had just been sent to India with the title of commander-in-chief; he was already at Ile de France, and was bringing some troops. “Provided that you remain with us, all will go well,” said the nabob, detaching from his turban an aigrette of diamonds which he placed on M. de Suffren’s hat. The nabob’s tent was reached; Suffren was fat, he had great difficulty in sitting upon the carpets; Hyder Ali perceived this and ordered cushions to be brought. “Sit as you please,” said he to the commander, “etiquette was not made for such as you.” Next day, under the nabob’s tent, all the courses of the banquet offered to M. de Suffren were prepared in European style. The admiral proposed that Hyder Ali should go to the coast and see all the fleet dressed, but, “I put myself out to see you only,” said the nabob, “I will not go any farther.” The two great warriors were never to meet again.
The French vessels were ready; the commander had more than once put his own hand to the work in order to encourage the workmen’s zeal. Carpentry-wood was wanted; he had ransacked Gondelour (Kaddalore) for it, sometimes pulling down a house to get hold of a beam that suited him. His officers urged him to go to Bourbon or Ile-de-France for the necessary supplies and for a good port to shelter his damaged ships. “Until I have conquered one in India, I will have no port but the sea,” answered Suffren. He had re-taken Trincomalee before the English could come to its defence. The battle began. As had already happened more than once, a part of the French force showed weakness in the thick of the action either from cowardice or treason; a cabal had formed against the commander; he was fighting single-handed against five or six assailants: the main-mast and the flag of the Heros, which he was on, fell beneath the enemy’s cannon-balls. Suffren, standing on the quarter-deck, shouted beside himself “Flags! Set white flags all round the Heros!” The vessel, all bristling with flags, replied so valiantly to the English attacks, that the rest of the squadron had time to re-form around it; the English went and anchored before Madras.
Bussy had arrived, but aged, a victim to gout, quite a stranger amid those Indian intrigues with which he had but lately been so well acquainted. Hyder Ali had just died on the 7th of December, 1782, leaving to his son Tippoo Sahib affairs embroiled and allies enfeebled. At this news the Mahrattas, in revolt against England, hastened to make peace; and Tippoo Sahib, who had just seized Tanjore, was obliged to abandon his conquest and go to the protection of Malabar. Ten thousand men only remained in the Carnatic to back the little corps of French. Bussy allowed himself to be driven to bay by General Stuart beneath the walls of Gondelour; he had even been forced to shut himself up in the town. M. de Suffren went to his release. The action was hotly contested; when the victor landed, M. de Bussy was awaiting him on the shore. “Here is our savior,” said the general to his troops, and the soldiers taking up in their arms M. de Suffren, who had been lately promoted by the grand master of the order of Malta to the rank of grand-cross (bailli), carried him in triumph into the town. “He pressed M. de Bussy every day to attack us,” says Sir Thomas Munro, “offering to land the greater part of his crews and to lead them himself to deliver the assault upon our camp.” Bussy had, in fact, resumed the offensive, and was preparing to make fresh sallies, when it was known at Calcutta that the preliminaries of peace had been signed at Paris on the 9th of February. The English immediately proposed an armistice. The Surveillante shortly afterwards brought the same news, with orders for Suffren to return to France. India was definitively given up to the English, who restored to the French Pondicherry, Chandernuggur, Mahe, and Karikal, the last strips remaining of that French dominion which had for a while been triumphant throughout the peninsula. The feebleness and the vices of Louis XV.‘s government weighed heavily upon the government of Louis XVI. in India as well as in France, and at Paris itself.