The success of the British now appeared so certain that the Nabob Anwarudeen, yielding to the repeated gifts and appeals of Boscawen, decided to throw in his lot with them and promised to furnish a body of two thousand horse. Still Dupleix was not discouraged. By the death of Paradis the chief burden of military as well as of civil command was thrown upon his shoulders, but he did not shrink from it. After all, if he were no soldier, neither was Boscawen. By immense labour the British trenches were carried forward to the position from which they should have been opened, eight hundred yards from the wall, and early in October two batteries at last opened on the town. They were answered by twice as formidable a fire from the guns of the besieged. Boscawen then ordered the fleet to open fire from the sea, but the ships being prevented by shoal water from approaching nearer than a thousand yards from the works, the cannonade was wholly ineffective. The fire of the British batteries ashore continued for three days with little result, while that of the besieged increased rather than languished. The rainy season then set in earlier than usual; the trenches were flooded, and disease began to rage in the British camp. Finally, on the 11th of October, Boscawen decided to raise the siege and the British retreated, leaving over one thousand Europeans dead behind them, while Dupleix remained proud and unconquered in Pondicherry.
The failure of this enterprise was due to the same causes that had wrecked the expedition to Carthagena. In the first place, Boscawen arrived on the coast too late. In the second, he wasted nearly three weeks over the capture of Ariancopang, which was not essential to the capture of Pondicherry. In the third, the unskilfulness of the engineers prolonged the operations, and occupied the troops with duties which kept them from active service in the trenches and harassed them to death for no purpose. The experiment of setting a naval officer in charge of highly technical military operations was probably due to the influence of Vernon; to which also may be traced Boscawen's readiness to attempt the storm of Ariancopang after Vernon's rough-and-ready manner. Against Spaniards in South America such methods might have succeeded; against Frenchmen they could not, least of all when commanded by a Dupleix with a Paradis for his military adviser. If the failure before Pondicherry had ended with the raising of the siege, the reverse would have been comparatively a trifling matter; but it told far and wide over India as a blow to British influence and prestige, and Dupleix was not the man to neglect to magnify the success and the greatness of his nation.
The news of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle some months later brought about a cessation of overt hostilities and the re-delivery of Madras to Boscawen; but still the war did not end. As in Europe French and English could fight fiercely as auxiliaries of an Elector of Bavaria and a Queen of Hungary, so in Asia they could carry on, as allies of native princes, the contest which was to determine the fate of India.
[CHAPTER II]
1749.
The first of the native states in which the British initiated their new policy of intervention was one with which the French had busied themselves ten years earlier, the kingdom of Tanjore. There the ruler favoured by Governor Dumas, Sauhojee, had, after some years of misrule, been deposed; he now came to the British Company for assistance, offering to pay the expenses of the war and to give the fort and territory of Devicotah as the price of his re-establishment on the throne. The Company accordingly detailed a force of five hundred Europeans and fifteen hundred Sepoys, which started at the end of March 1749 for Trichinopoly. Sauhojee had engaged that its operations could be seconded by a general rising in his favour, but this promise was found to be illusory, and the expedition returned without effecting anything. Undismayed, however, by this first failure, the Company equipped a second force, and resolved this time to push straight for the prize offered by Sauhojee, the fort of Devicotah. Eight hundred Europeans and fifteen hundred Sepoys under command of Major Stringer Lawrence embarked for the mouth of the Coleroon, and landing on the south side of the river succeeded after a few days' cannonade in battering a breach in the wall of the fort. A ship's carpenter then contrived a raft on which troops could be conveyed across the river, and Lawrence resolved to storm the fort forthwith. Clive led the storming party, which consisted of thirty-four Europeans and seven hundred Sepoys, but, the Sepoys failing to support him, his little party of British was cut to pieces by the cavalry of the Tanjorines, and he himself narrowly escaped with his life. Lawrence thereupon resolved to throw the whole of his Europeans into the breach. The Tanjorine horse again attacked them as they advanced, but were crushed by their fire; and the British on entering the breach found the fort deserted. Lawrence accordingly took possession of the fort and territory, and the Company, having obtained all that it desired, promised Sauhojee a pension if he would undertake to give no more trouble in Tanjore. It was destined to pay dearly for this evil precedent, and for the paltry acquisition so ignobly gained.
July 23 Aug. 3.
Meanwhile momentous events elsewhere had led to fresh complications. In 1748 Nizam-ul-Mulk, the Viceroy of the Deccan, died, and his death was followed as usual by a quarrel over the succession to his throne. The successor nominated by the dead ruler was his grandson, Murzapha Jung; the rival was his second son, Nasir Jung; and, as was natural, both claimants cast about them for allies. It has already been related how Chunda Sahib, the devoted admirer of the French, had been captured by the Mahrattas in Trichinopoly in 1741. Ever since that time he had been kept in close confinement at Satara; the Mahrattas, who knew him by reputation as the ablest soldier that had been seen for years in the Carnatic, refusing to release him except for an impossible ransom. He had, however, a friend in Dupleix, who throughout his imprisonment had protected his wife and family in Pondicherry, and had contrived further to maintain with him a friendly correspondence. Murzapha Jung while travelling in search of help from the Mahrattas encountered Chunda Sahib at Satara, and at once perceived the value of such a man for an ally. Dupleix was called in, and took in the whole situation at a glance. If the force of the French arms could enthrone Murzapha Jung as viceroy, there would be little or nothing to hinder French influence from becoming predominant in the Deccan, or, in other words, to prevent Dupleix from becoming practically if not nominally viceroy himself. He at once pledged himself to discharge Chunda Sahib's ransom, and immediately after his release allowed him to take into his pay two thousand Sepoys from the garrison of Pondicherry; agreeing also, on receipt of a further cession of territory near the town, to give him the assistance of four hundred European soldiers. With these and with the troops that he had collected, in all some six thousand men, Chunda Sahib joined himself to Murzapha Jung's army of thirty thousand men, and advanced with them against Arcot. The capture of this, the capital town of the Carnatic, would place the resources of that province at their disposal and win for them the first step to the throne of the Deccan. The old Nabob Anwarudeen had collected a force to oppose them, but he could bring forward no troops to match the disciplined infantry of the French. After a sharp action at Amoor he was defeated and slain: the victorious army entered Arcot on the following day, and the Carnatic was won.