from Hastings, who furnished three lakhs from his own coffers, materially smoothed the way for Pearse's advance. Two thousand Maráthá horse gave him the strength he needed in that arm; while Mudají himself was converted, in Hastings' words, 'from an ostensible enemy into a declared friend.'
In the Ganjám district, on the southern skirts of Purí, Pearse's column suffered cruelly for a few weeks from an outburst of cholera, that new and deadly scourge which presently in Calcutta made, wrote Hastings, 'an alarming havoc for about ten days,' of April, 1781. In spite of sickness, desertions, and a mutinous spirit among the junior officers, Pearse brought his brigade in sixty-four days to Nellore. In the Masulipatam district he was reinforced by troops from Madras, but not till the beginning of August did he join hands with the main army under the veteran Coote, whose long campaign in the Karnatic had been crowned a month before by the decisive victory of Porto Novo[1] in July 1781.
Coote had reached Madras early in November, 1780, at a moment when matters seemed at their very worst. The Government was paralysed. Haidar's cavalry had swept the country round for supplies and plunder. The people themselves were losing all faith in their powerless protectors. Arcot had fallen, and one of Haidar's generals was besieging Wandiwash, which young Flint, with 300 Sepoys, defended with the courage of a second Clive. Not
- ↑ Gleig, Stubbs' History of the Bengal Artilllery.
