The conflict on the sea blazed up in 1758. The French Government had realised the necessity for making an effort to preserve its East Indian possessions in 1757. A squadron was fitted out at Brest under M. D’Aché, and sailed on the 6th March. It was driven back by bad weather, and two of the vessels belonging to it were taken to serve in America with M. Dubois de Lamotte. On the 4th May M. D’Aché sailed again with one king’s ship and five belonging to the Company, carrying with him a body of troops under the headlong and passionate Lally, the most unhappy and one of the least wise of the Irishmen who have been the enemies to this country. The dates of D’Aché’s cruise illustrate the slow progress of fleets at that time. He reached Rio on the 23rd July, and remained there for two months to recruit the health of his crews—no unusual stoppage in the Indian voyages of the period. He reached the Île de France on the 28th December, and sailed for India on the 27th January 1758. On the 26th April he reached the coast of Coromandel—little less than a year after he had left Brest. While D’Aché was slowly sailing to the East, Pocock had been reinforced in March by Commodore Charles Stevens, and his squadrons had been raised to seven vessels of from fifty to sixty-four guns. He knew that a French force was on its way and must be now approaching the coast of Coromandel. On the 17th April he sailed from Madras and worked to the southward in search of the enemy, but did not succeed in meeting him. D’Aché had passed unseen and had anchored at Carical, a French post to the south of the English station of Cuddalore, which is to the south of Pondicherry. Pondicherry itself is well to the south of Madras. The French officer had with him eight vessels—for he had found some at the Île de France—one more than Pocock, but only his flagship the _Zodiaque_, 74, was a warship. The other seven were vessels belonging to the French East India Company, were built for trade as well as fighting, and even if they carried their full nominal armaments of forty-four, fifty, or fifty-four guns, inferior in solidity to Pocock’s. The one ship more of the French would barely put them on an equality with our squadron.