gainst 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 managem