numbers is no doubt a splendid achievement; but it is an achievement in which the lower nature of man, that which is termed brute force, has a considerable share. But to gain all the effect of a victory without fighting, to dislodge an enemy superior in numbers from a position of vital importance without firing a shot — that indeed is an exercise of the highest faculties of man's higher nature, a feat of intellectual power not often bestowed, but generally combined, when given, with that strength of nerve which knows when and how to dare.[1]
The clocks of Kadalúr were striking half-past eight when Suffren anchored before the town. With the prescience of a true commander he had discovered that of the two enemies before him it was necessary to drive off the one before attacking the other. Were he to lend his sailors to join in an attack on General Stuart, he might at any moment be assailed at a disadvantage
- ↑ It is curious to note the manner in which this achievement is alluded to by English writers. Wilks, with his usual straightforwardness, writes thus: "On the 16th, he (Hughes) weighed anchor, with the expectation of bringing the enemy to close action, but such was the superior skill or fortune of M. Suffren that on the same night, at half-past eight, he anchored abreast of the fort, and the dawn of day presented to the English army before Cuddalore the mortifying spectacle of the French fleet in the exact position abandoned by their own on the previous day, the English fleet being invisible and its situation unknown." The author of Memoirs of the late War in Asia, himself a combatant, speaks of the French fleet as "a crazy fleet, consisting of fifteen sail of ships, half of them in very bad condition." He merely mentions that "it occupied the place vacated by Sir E. Hughes' fleet, consisting of eighteen coppered ships (their crews greatly debilitated by sickness)." Campbell and the writer of the Transactions pass over the event in silence. Even Mill ignores it; but it is a well-attested fact.
