position was full of peril. Still he maintained it for some days, straining his eyes towards the sea. Nor did he cease to hope, until an express from Madras informed him that Trincomali had fallen into the hands of the enemy, and that the fleet, badly treated in an encounter before that place, was in full sail for Madras. He at once resigned hope and fell back on the presidency town.
Seldom, it may be safely affirmed, have English interests in Southern India been exposed to greater danger than they were on this occasion. Haidar was encamped in an impregnable position within easy distance of Madras; two thousand of the famed horsemen of Mysore encircled the capital endeavouring to cut off supplies; a large addition to the French land force was momentarily expected; the fleet, by the capture of Trincomali, had been deprived of the only possible place of refuge on the Coromandel coast during the N.E. monsoon, then about to break: and, added to all, a famine, such as had not been known for years, was devastating the country.[1] It seemed that it required
- ↑ A contemporary, the author of Transactions in India, writing three years after the event, thus describes the famine and its consequences: "At this moment a famine raged in Madras and every part of the Carnatic, and by the tempest now described, all foreign resources that depended on an intercourse by sea were at an end. * * * The roads, the outlets and even the streets (of Madras) were everywhere choked up with heaps of dead and crowds of the dying. Two hundred at least of the natives perished every day in the streets and the suburbs. * * * All was done which private charity could do; but it was a whole people in beggary; a nation which stretched out its hand for food. * * * For eighteen months did this destruction rage from the gates of Madras to the gates of Tanjor."
