The Count d'Ache, Chef d'Escadre, encountered such adverse winds that he was nearly twelve months on his voyage; thus the Chevalier des Soupirs, having wearied of waiting at the Mauritius, sailed towards the coast of Hindostan, and reaching Pondicherry (or _Puducheri_), disembarked his troops. This town was the capital of the French settlements in India, being restored to them by the Dutch after the Treaty of Ryswick. It occupied a good position in the rich, fertile, and populous Carnatic, a country studded by an incredible number of forts and strongholds. Their erection was an indispensable necessity in a level district full of open towns, subject to the sudden attacks of hordes of native cavalry. The sovereigns of the Carnatic must have possessed at one period immense wealth and power, for the number and magnitude of their pagodas, and the indications that remain of ancient riches, grandeur, population, industry and art, impress the mind with wonder. At this crisis the funds and forces of the British in that part of India were so small, that they could scarcely bring one hundred soldiers into the field. Madras, one of their principal places, sixty-three miles distant, was an open town; Fort St. David was in ruins, with a garrison of only sixty invalids. A fortnight would have enabled the Chevalier, with his 2000 men, to reduce the whole coast of Coromandel; but M. des Soupirs was quite unskilled in the art of carrying on war in a country so new to him, and remained inactive, though the French had many losses to repair, having been recently driven from all their wealthy settlements in Bengal by the victorious English. Eight months after his arrival, on the 25th April, 1758, the Chef d'Escadre anchored in the roadstead before the sandy plain occupied by Pondicherry, and Lally disembarking his troops and treasure, marched into the town, the governor of which, M. de Leyrit, received him with a salute of cannon. At the peace of Amiens, the French population of Pondicherry amounted to 25,000, exclusive of the blacks, who were treble that number. Its revenue was then 40,000 pagodas; but it was a place destitute of natural advantages, its vicinity producing only palm-trees, millet, and a few herbs. Weary of his long voyage, and anxious to fulfil his orders, which comprehended the total destruction of every British fortification that fell into his power, the ardent and gallant Lally lost not an hour in preparing for active operations. Next day, the 26th, he returned on board to sail for Cudalore, and in one hour after a powerful British fleet assailed the ships of Count d'Ache in the roadstead, where a French 74-gun ship was taken; but the rest fought a passage to the seaward, and favoured by the wind, and by superior sailing, anchored off Cudalore, a town situated fifteen miles from Pondicherry, on the western shore of the Bay of Bengal.