Page:History of the French in India.djvu/314

290 THE STRUGGLES OF DUPLEIX WITH ADVERSITY. chap, nearly four miles in circumference, with a double enceinte of walls with round towers at equal distances. 1751. The ditch was nearly thirty feet wide but not half so deep, and at different seasons was more or less supplied with water. The outer wall was built of greyish stone; it was about eighteen feet high, and four or five thick, without parapet or rampart; the inner wall, distant from it about twenty-five feet, was much stronger, and was thirty feet high. Its thickness at the bottom was thirty feet, and it gradually decreased as it ascended by means of steps, to a width of ten feet at the summit. In the middle of the old town stood a most extraordinary rock about 300 feet high. On the top of it was a pagoda " which," says Colonel Lawrence, " was of sin- gular use to us the whole war ; here was constantly stationed a man with a telescope, who gave us by signals and writings an account of all the enemy's motions." It remains to be added that the city is about ninety miles from the coast, the river Kavari running something less than half a mile to the north-east of its northern face ; beyond that, a little more than a mile from the south bank of the Kavari, is the pagoda of Srirangam, and beyond that again the branch of the Kavari known as the Kolrun. The French had, as we have seen, taken post to the east of the city, and had opened fire on the walls. Before, however, much progress had been made in the siege, d'Auteuil, whom gout had utterly incapacitated, was, at his own request, relieved from his command, and returned to Pondichery. His successor was M. Law, nephew of the famous Scotch financier, and who had recently returned from France with strong recommenda- tions from the Directors. We do not meet him here for the first time. He it was who, at the time of the attack on Pondichery by Admiral Boscawen, had been intrusted with the defence of the outpost of Ariakupum; a command in which he had displayed energy and vigour.