hat a French armament was expected on the
Coromandel coast, he quietly prepared for war. In the summer of 1780
swarms of his horsemen descended without warning from the hills, and
appeared near the gates of Madras. In September one body of English
troops, three thousand strong, was cut to pieces, and another of five
thousand was only saved by a rapid retreat upon Madras, losing its
artillery and trains. Unable to attack Madras, Hyder turned upon the
scattered posts separated from each other and the capital by the open
country, which was now wholly in his control.

Such was the state of affairs when, in January, 1781, a French
squadron of six ships-of-the-line and three frigates appeared on the
coast. The English fleet under Sir Edward Hughes had gone to Bombay.
To the French commodore, Count d'Orves, Hyder appealed for aid in an
attack upon Cuddalore. Deprived of support by sea, and surrounded by
the myriads of natives, the place must have fallen. D'Orves, however,
refused, and returned to the Isle of France. At the same time one of
the most skilful of the English Indian soldiers, Sir Eyre Coote, took
the field against Hyder. The latter at once raised the siege of the
beleaguered posts, and after a series of operations extending through
the spring months, was brought to battle on the 1st of July, 1781. His
total defeat restored to the English the open country, saved the
Carnatic, and put an end to the hopes of the partisans of the French
in their late possession of Pondicherry. A great opportunity had been
lost.

Meanwhile a French officer of very different temper from his
predecessors was on his way to the East Indies. It will be remembered
that when De Grasse sailed from Brest, March 22, 1781, for the West
Indies, there went with his fleet a division of five ships-of-the-line
under Suffren. The latter separated from the main body on the 29th of
the month, taking with him a few transports destined for the Cape of
Good Hope, then a Dutch colony. The French government had learned that
an expedition from England was destined to seize this important
halting-place on the road to India, and Suffren's first mission was to
secure it. In fact, the squadron under Commodore Johnstone[168] had
got away first, and had anchored at Porto Praya, in the Cape Verde
Islands, a Portuguese colony, on the 11th of April. It numbered two
ships-of-the-line, and three of fifty guns, with frigates and smaller
vessels, besides thirty-five trans