Page:History of the French in India.djvu/545

INDECISIVE ACTION OF THE RIVAL SQUADRONS. 519 ment. But the rigging- of the English ships had been chap. so shattered by the ill-directed fire of the French, that v Admiral Pocock, anxious as he was to complete his 1758, victory, was forced to renounce the pursuit, and to haul down the signal for action. The French squadron, thereupon, with the exception of the " Bien Aime," which, by the parting of her cable, was driven on shore, ran into the roadstead of Alumparva,* and five or six days later reached Pondichery. The English Admiral bore up to Madras to refit. Such was the intelligence that reached Lally on April 29, whilst on his way to join the detachment he had sent towards Gudalur, the previous evening, under Count d'Estaing. He was little, if at all, daunted by it, resolving to atone, so far as was possible, for a defeat at sea, by the celerity of his movements on land. The detachment under d'Estaing, though misled by its guides, appeared before Gudalur on the 29th ; it was followed the next day by a portion of the regiment de Lorraine and some heavy guns : on May 1, Lally him- self appeared before the place, and summoned it to surrender. To such an extent had the spirit of neglect and un- concern made way in the Pondichery Government since the departure of Dupleix, that, although a year and more had elapsed since it was known that Avar between France and England had been declared ; although the question of attacking Gudalur and Fort St. David had, in that interval, been considered by de Leyrit and his colleagues, not one of them had taken the trouble to ascertain the military condition of those places, or the provision, if any, that had been made for defending them. Lally was compelled, by this culpable indiffer* ence on the part of the Franco-Indian authorities — strongly confirmatory as it was in his mind of the character he had received of them from their own A town in the Chengalpat district.