and its
movements were guided by many French officers, trained in the best
military schools of Europe.

Hyder was everywhere triumphant. The sepoys in many British garrisons
flung down their arms. Some forts were surrendered by treachery, and
some by despair. In a few days the whole open country north of the
Coleroon had submitted. The English inhabitants of Madras could already
see by night, from the top of Mount St. Thomas, the eastern sky reddened
by a vast semicircle of blazing villages. The white villas, to which our
countrymen retire after the daily labors of government and of trade,
when the cool evening breeze springs up from the bay, were now left
without inhabitants; for bands of the fierce horsemen of Mysore had
already been seen prowling among the tulip trees, and near the gay
verandas. Even the town was not thought secure, and the British
merchants and public functionaries made haste to crowd themselves behind
the cannon of Fort St. George.

There were the means indeed of assembling an army which might have
defended the presidency, and even driven the invader back to his
mountains. Sir Hector Munro was at the head of one considerable force;
Baillie was advancing with another. United, they might have presented a
formidable front even to such an enemy as Hyder. But the English
commanders, neglecting those fundamental rules of the military art of
which the propriety is obvious even to men who had never received a
military education, deferred their junction, and were separately
attacked. Baillie's detachment was destroyed. Munro was forced to
abandon his baggage, to fling his guns into the tanks, and to save
himself by a retreat which might be called a flight. In three weeks from
the commencement of the war, the British empire in Southern India had
been brought to the verge of ruin. Only a few fortified places remained
to us. The glory of our arms had departed. It was known that a great
French expedition might soon be expected on the coast of Coromandel.
England, beset by enemies on every side, was in no condition to protect
such remote dependencies.

Then it was that the fertile genius and serene courage of Hastings
achieved their most signal triumph. A swift ship, flying before the
southwest monsoon, brought the evil tidings in a few days to Calcutta.
In twenty-four hours the Governor-General had framed a complete plan of
policy adapted to the altered state of affairs. The struggle with Hyder
was a strug