the commodore
replied by urging his entire lack of food and supplies. The condition
was such that, a little later, it was necessary to make running
rigging out of the cables, and to put some of the ships on the bottom,
so as to give their materials to others. Before returning to India,
D'Ache wrote to the minister of the navy that he "was about to leave,
only to save the crews from dying of hunger, and that nothing need be
expected from the squadron if supplies were not sent, for both men and
things were in a deplorable state."

Under these circumstances D'Ache sailed from the islands in July,
1759, and arrived off the Coromandel coast in September. During his
year of absence Lally had besieged Madras for two months, during the
northeast monsoon. Both squadrons were absent, that season being unfit
for naval operations on this coast; but the English returned first,
and are said by the French to have caused, by the English to have
hastened, the raising of the siege. D'Ache, upon his return, was much
superior in both number and size of ships; but when the fleets met,
Pocock did not hesitate to attack with nine against eleven. This
action, fought September 10, 1759, was as indecisive as the two
former; but D'Ache retreated, after a very bloody contest. Upon it
Campbell, in his "Lives of the Admirals," makes a droll, but seemingly
serious, comment: "Pocock had reduced the French ships to a very
shattered condition, and killed a great many of their men; but what
shows the singular talents of both admirals, they had fought three
pitched battles in eighteen months without the loss of a ship on
either side." The fruits of victory, however, were with the weaker
fleet; for D'Ache returned to Pondicherry and thence sailed on the 1st
of the next month for the islands, leaving India to its fate. From
that time the result was certain. The English continued to receive
reinforcements from home, while the French did not; the men opposed to
Lally were superior in ability; place after place fell, and in
January, 1761, Pondicherry itself surrendered, surrounded by land and
cut off from the sea. This was the end of the French power in India;
for though Pondicherry and other possessions were restored at the
peace, the English tenure there was never again shaken, even under the
attacks of the skilful and bold Suffren, who twenty years later met
difficulties as great as D'Ache's with a vigor and conduct which the
latter at a more hopeful momen