Meanwhile Coote's tireless energy had once more rescued Wandiwash, and beaten Haidar back from Arni in June. But the ill-timed absence of the fleet baulked his attempt to regain Cuddalore. In October his health, broken down by incessant toil, anxiety, hardship, and more than one fit of apoplexy, drove the old warrior back to Calcutta for six months' rest and change. On the Malabar coast our troops and garrisons were hard beset by Tipú, on whose myriads a few repulses made slight impression. The gallant Humberstone was nearly driven into a corner, when Tipú suddenly led off the bulk of his army eastward in hot haste to the camp at Chittúr, where his famous father died on the 7th December, 1782, weary, as he owned at last, of 'waging a costly war with a nation whom he might have made his friends, but whom the defeat of many Baillies and Braithwaites would never destroy[1].' In a fold of his turban was found a paper in which he enjoined his son to make peace with the English at once, on any terms[2].
Matters at this moment looked very dark for our countrymen in Southern India. Refugees from the wasted plains of the Karnatic were dying in the Black Town of Madras at the rate of fifteen hundred a week. The monsoon gales and the French cruisers along the eastern coasts had been playing havoc with English merchantmen and the native coasting craft. Hughes's fleet was disabled for the time by sickness and much fighting. A strong French force under the
