the
commander; he was fighting single-handed against five or six assailants:
the main-mast and the flag of the _Heros,_ which he was on, fell beneath
the enemy's cannon-balls. Suffren, standing on the quarter-deck, shouted
beside himself "Flags! Set white flags all round the Heros!" The
vessel, all bristling with flags, replied so valiantly to the English
attacks, that the rest of the squadron had time to re-form around it; the
English went and anchored before Madras.

Bussy had arrived, but aged, a victim to gout, quite a stranger amid
those Indian intrigues with which he had but lately been so well
acquainted. Hyder Ali had just died on the 7th of December, 1782,
leaving to his son Tippoo Sahib affairs embroiled and allies enfeebled.
At this news the Mahrattas, in revolt against England, hastened to make
peace; and Tippoo Sahib, who had just seized Tanjore, was obliged to
abandon his conquest and go to the protection of Malabar. Ten thousand
men only remained in the Carnatic to back the little corps of French.
Bussy allowed himself to be driven to bay by General Stuart beneath the
walls of Gondelour; he had even been forced to shut himself up in the
town. M. de Suffren went to his release. The action was hotly
contested; when the victor landed, M. de Bussy was awaiting him on the
shore. "Here is our savior," said the general to his troops, and the
soldiers taking up in their arms M. de Suffren, who had been lately
promoted by the grand master of the order of Malta to the rank of grand-
cross (_bailli_), carried him in triumph into the town. "He pressed
M. de Bussy every day to attack us," says Sir Thomas Munro, "offering to
land the greater part of his crews and to lead them himself to deliver
the assault upon our camp." Bussy had, in fact, resumed the offensive,
and was preparing to make fresh sallies, when it was known at Calcutta
that the preliminaries of peace had been signed at Paris on the 9th of
February. The English immediately proposed an armistice. The
_Surveillante_ shortly afterwards brought the same news, with orders for
Suffren to return to France. India was definitively given up to the
English, who restored to the French Pondicherry, Chandernuggur, Mahe, and
Karikal, the last strips remaining of that French dominion which had for
a while been triumphant throughout the peninsula. The feebleness and the
vices of Louis XV.'s government weighed heavily upon the government of
Louis XVI. in Ind