[337] Amherst to Pitt, 21st June 1760.
[338] Amherst to Haviland, 12th June 1760.
[339] Amherst to Pitt, 18th Oct. 1760.
[340] Amherst to Pitt, 8th Sept. 1760.
[341] The tract is called an island because it is enclosed on the east by the Jelingeer and on the west by the Bagiruttee.
[342] Draper's, while it lasted, ranked as the 79th. It was composed chiefly of drafts from the 4th, 8th, and 24th, and was raised in November 1757.
[343] A battalion of five hundred men would have been in five divisions, each of one hundred.
[344] I am alive to the peril of a civilian who presumes to differ from a distinguished officer on so purely technical a matter as the manœuvres preceding a general action, but it seems to me that Colonel Malleson has missed this point. Coote, so far as I can gather, not only forced Lally to fight but also to forego at least part of the advantages which he had prepared for himself. One would infer from Malleson's narrative that Lally adhered to the position which he had chosen from the first. "His left, thrown forward, resting on a tank and, supported by an entrenchment on the other side of it, formed an obtuse angle with his line and commanded the ground over which the enemy must pass." Orme's account, which is the fullest, is extremely confused; but he says distinctly that Lally was obliged to wheel round his right, which would necessarily imply that the left could no longer be thrown forward, and that the battery at the entrenched tank could no longer rake the whole of his front. And this I take to have been a principal object of Coote's manœuvre. Again, the smaller tank, which in Lally's first position is spoken of as being in his left front, is described in the action as being in his rear (Orme), implying that Lally must have changed position half if not three-quarters left. Finally, Lawrence's Memoirs, though meagre on this point, speak distinctly of a first and second disposition of the French.
[345] Lally gives his Europeans as only 1350 infantry, and 150 cavalry.
[346] A regiment raised by Colonel Staates Long Morris, 13th October 1759. It held precedence, while it lasted, as the 89th.