This little town, which occupies the banks of the Pennar, had been obtained by the English East India Company from the Rajah of Gingee, so early as 1681, for the site of a factory, and had been fortified. Its garrison consisted only of ten invalids; but being assisted by the inhabitants, these brave fellows made so stout a resistance, that Lally was occupied three days in taking it. From thence he marched to Fort St. David, a settlement on the Carnatic coast, obtained by the English from a Mahratta rajah in 1691, and besieging it, after being seventeen days in open trenches, exposed to the broiling sun by noon and the baleful dews by night, gained it by capitulation on the 2nd of June, and levelled all its fortifications to the ground. On the 10th he marched back to Pondicherry, and having resolved to assail Madras, despatched an officer in a small vessel to his naval Chef d'Escadre, with instructions to return and co-operate with him. But Admiral Pocock, who commanded the British squadron in those seas, had defeated M. d'Ache in two engagements, and by driving him sixty miles to the windward, had nearly cut off all communication between him and the army. And now the governor of Pondicherry announced that the town and its vicinity could not subsist Lally's 4000 Frenchmen for more than fifteen days. On this he was compelled to march into the little kingdom of Tanjore (or Tanjowar), which lay one hundred and fifty miles southward, and there quarter his troops during the stormy and rainy season, while the naval squadron took refuge in port. The advance into Tanjowar was not made without a due pretence of wrong to adjust, for the rajah had refused to pay a government debt, which M. de Leyrit assured Count Lally to be more than due. The discharge of five pieces of cannon against his little capital compelled the rajah to pay down treasure to the amount of 440,000 livres, and afford free-quarters to the French troops for two months, until tidings arrived that 800 British were marching against Pondicherry; upon which Lally immediately abandoned Tanjowar, and advanced to the relief of the Chevalier des Soupirs, who with a slender force was timidly preparing to evacuate the capital of French India. On Lally approaching, on the 31st of August, the British detachment fell back on Madras, and now our indefatigable Irishman, full of the most sanguine hopes of expelling them from the vast peninsula of Hindostan, at once made new preparations for investing Fort St. George, their principal settlement on the coast of Coromandel; but scarcity of money, and the improper conduct of the naval Chef d'Escadre, retarded the operations, frustrated the bold intentions of Lally, and ultimately betrayed them to the enemy.