3 See Asiatic Annual Register for 1802.
4 Major Lawrence had arrived from England on the 13th of January 1747, commissioned to command all the Company's troops in India. From Mr. Forrest's Madras Records we find that his salary as Major was £300 per annum, and 50 pagodas per month for other allowances, besides £70 per annum as third in Council. It was he who had repulsed the fourth attack made by the French on Fort St. David in the spring of that year. In the early days of the siege of Pondicherry he had had the misfortune to be taken prisoner. Released by the conditions of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, he then resumed command at Fort St. David.
It is probable that, after the raising of the siege of Pondicherry, the French would have resumed their operations against Fort St. David, for, early in 1749, reinforcements in men and money had reached them. But before they could move, information reached them that, on the 7th of October, 1748, peace had been signed between the two nations at Aix-la-Chapelle. By the terms of this treaty the conquests made by the two countries were to be restored. The French, therefore, instead of renewing their attack on Fort St. David, were compelled to restore Madras, its fortifications undermined, and its storehouses empty.5 This restoration was the more distasteful to them, when they found, as they very soon found, that from the force of events, the hostilities which had ceased in Europe were, by virtue of a legal fiction, to be continued in India. They were still to fight the battle for supremacy, not as principals, but as allies of the native princes who, in the disorder accompanying the catastrophe of the Mughal empire, fought for their own hand, against the native allies of the English.
5 Forrest, page 4. The report which he gives in extenso, minuted by the Council of the Madras Presidency, runs as follows: 'The condition we have received it (Madras) in is indeed very indifferent, the French having undermined the fortifications, and rifled it of all useful and valuable stores.'
The official statement is quite opposed to the private accounts hitherto accepted as true.
CHAPTER V
CLIVE DECIDES FOR THE CAREER OF A SOLDIER
Before the conditions of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had become known in India, the English governor of Fort St. David had despatched thence a small force of 430 Englishmen and 1000 sipáhís to assist the ex-Rájá of Tanjore, who had been dethroned for gross misconduct, to recover his kingdom. That, at least, was the nominal reason. The ambition to obtain for the English possession of Devikota, a fort on the river Coleroon, at the point where that river runs into the sea, was the true cause of the action. The force was commanded by Captain Cope, an officer of inferior merit. Clive accompanied it as a volunteer. The expedition failed from causes which it was impossible to combat. The ex-Rájá had no partisans, and the season was that of the monsoon-storms.