The operations in Southern India had not been characterized by the same degree of success which had marked Forde's campaign against Conflans and the Dutch, but in the very month that we won the action of Badara Eyre Coote disembarked at Madras at the head of his newly-raised regiment, then numbered the 84th. At the same time some 300 recruits arrived for the Company's battalions, bringing the total force at the disposal of the Government of Madras to four battalions of infantry, 100 English troopers, and eighteen field-guns. With these Coote determined to resume the offensive, and on January 22 the two armies met at Wandewash, about 100 miles south-west of Madras. The forces were fairly equally matched. Hyder Ali, with his allies, the French, however, had a considerable preponderance in cavalry. When we reflect on the momentous issue decided by this and the preceding actions between the French and ourselves in India, and compare the number of the troops engaged with those we now mobilize for an Indian frontier campaign, it seems little short of marvellous that our Indian Empire should have been built up with such slender means. The troops engaged, under the command of Eyre Coote, consisted of Draper's Regiment (then the 79th), his own (the 84th), and two English battalions in the Company's employ (now the Munster Fusiliers), 2,000 sepoys, 1,200 Indian cavalry, and one squadron of English horse, with sixteen guns. The brunt of the fighting fell on the British regiments, Draper's suffering the most heavily; but our total casualties--63 killed and 124 wounded--was a small price to pay for a victory which cost the French 600 killed and wounded and 24 guns. Step by step Coote now undertook the reduction of all the French ports in Southern India. Arcot, Trincomalee, and finally Pondicherry, all fell into our hands, only to be restored, as was Chandernagore, to the French at the conclusion of peace in 1763--an act of generous imbecility which necessitated their recapture on the renewal of the war fifteen years later, at the cost of many hundred valuable British soldiers. CASUALTIES AT WANDEWASH. +-------------------------+-----------+-----------+ | |_Officers._| _Men._ | | _Regiments._ +-----+-----+-----+-----+ | | K. | W. | K. | W. | +-------------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+ |Draper's Regiment (79th) | 3 | 4 | 17 | 66 | |Coote's Regiment (84th) | 1 | 3 | 13 | 36 | |Royal Dublin Fusiliers | 1 | 1 | 3 | 29 | +-------------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+ PONDICHERRY, 1761, 1778, 1793.