ir chance of success, as he was far stronger than
his enemy, but he was again the victim of indecision and want of
energy, and, covered by Paichandah, he fell back across the river
again.

On the 15th of May Clive captured Paichandah, and then determined to
give a final blow to D'Auteuil's force; which had, he learned, again
set out to endeavour to relieve Law. He marched to Utatua to intercept
him.

D'Auteuil, hearing of his coming, instantly fell back again to
Valconda. The native chief of this town, however, seeing that the
affairs of the French were desperate; and willing, like all his
countrymen, to make his peace with the strongest, had already accepted
bribes from the English; and upon D'Auteuil's return, closed the gates
and refused to admit him. Clive soon arrived, and D'Auteuil, caught
between two fires, surrendered with his whole force.

Had Law been a man of energy, he had yet a chance of escape. He had
still seven or eight hundred French troops with him, two thousand
Sepoys, and four thousand of Chunda Sahib's troops. He might, then,
have easily crossed the Kavari at night and fallen upon Lawrence,
whose force there now was greatly inferior to his own. Chunda Sahib,
in vain, begged him to do so. His hesitation continued until, three
days after the surrender of D'Auteuil, a battering train reached
Lawrence; whereupon Law at once surrendered, his chief stipulation
being that the life of Chunda Sahib should be spared.

This promise was not kept. The unfortunate prince had preferred to
surrender to the Rajah of Tanjore, who had several times intrigued
secretly with him, rather than to Muhammud Ali or the English, whom he
regarded as his implacable enemies. Had he placed himself in our
hands, his life would have been safe. He was murdered, by the
treacherous rajah, within twenty-four hours of his surrender.

With the fall of Seringam terminated the contest for the supremacy of
the Carnatic, between the English and French, fighting respectively on
behalf of their puppets, Muhammud Ali and Chunda Sahib. This stage of
the struggle was not a final one; but both by its circumstances, and
by the prestige which we acquired in the eyes of the natives, it gave
us a moral ascendency which, even when our fortunes were afterwards at
their worst, was never lost again.

Muhammud Ali had, himself, gained but little in the struggle. He was,
indeed, nominally ruler of the Carnatic, but he had to rely for his
position sol