The war was carried on in many parts of the world, and was full of incidents which, as they had little or no effect on its issue, must only be noticed briefly. In October, 1778, Pondicherry was taken by the East India Company's troops, and the French lost all their settlements in India. One of them, Mahe, was claimed by Haidar as tributary to him, and its capture afforded him a pretext for making war on us. He overran the Karnatic in 1780, defeated a British force, took Arcot, and reduced Madras to great straits. In the spring of 1779 the French made a feeble attack on Jersey, and were repulsed by the 78th regiment and the militia of the island. The British factories at Senegal were seized by the French, and Goree by the English. The Spaniards expelled our logwood cutters from Honduras in August, and about the same time the Spanish governor of Louisiana reduced West Florida, which was thinly inhabited and almost undefended. The enemies of England hoped to break her power by destroying her commerce, but it was too large and various to be ruined by casual losses, and too carefully protected to incur a series of them. While the trade of France with the West Indies was almost ruined, the English Jamaica fleet reached home in safety a few days after the enemy left the Channel. Privateers and king's ships did so much damage to the commerce of France and Spain in 1779 that it was held to counterbalance the loss of St. Vincent and Grenada. American cruisers were still troublesome. Paul Jones, a Scottish sailor, who held a commission from congress, infested the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, and in 1779 received a ship from the French government, which he called the _Bonhomme Richard_. With her and four smaller vessels he sailed from Brest, and fell in with the homeward-bound Baltic fleet convoyed by the _Serapis_, Captain Pearson, and a sloop of war. Pearson engaged the _Bonhomme Richard_, and after a desperate fight the two English ships were forced to strike. His gallant conduct saved the convoy, and the _Bonhomme Richard_ was so severely mauled that she sank the next day. The Americans suffered at least as heavily as the English from this desultory warfare, and their privateering ventures were checked by operations on their coast.