This naturally caused some ill feeling between the King’s and Company’s officers. The arrangement had first been made when there was only a single battalion of King’s troops in India. As the number of King’s troops increased, the extra rank given to the officers became a very serious grievance to the Company’s officers, which was further aggravated by the Company’s policy of maintaining a very small number of field officers, and of having their regiments commanded by Captains. The instructions for avoiding disputes with the Company’s officers, that were issued to Sir John Burgoyne, before sailing from England, had been a stereotyped formula of orders for all officers sent with troops to India for more than twenty years past: but such admonitions were of little use under conditions that made friction inevitable. The Madras Government was possessed at that time of a perverse spirit, that led them into all kinds of extravagancies and never ending quarrels. The Members of the Council fought amongst themselves; they evaded or disobeyed the orders of the Court of Directors, and ignored the authority of the Governor General. Individually, they commanded little respect. Collectively, they mismanaged everything. They interfered in military matters, that in a time of war were peculiarly in the province of the chief military authority; and they frittered away the forces at their disposal in ill-conceived and badly equipped expeditions that frequently ended in disaster. Finally, they quarrelled with everybody who was not immediately under their orders, and wrote long winded complaints to the Court of Directors and to Bengal, instead of doing their best under the trying circumstances of the time. The King’s officers on their side were also difficult to deal with. They asserted their right to direct how and where the King’s troops should be employed, and, in other respects, claimed an independence of the Civil Government incompatible with public interests. In 1780, when the Commander in Chief, Sir Eyre Coote, had been sent down from Bengal, after the disaster to Colonel Baillie’s army, he was furnished with orders for the suspension of the acting Governor, Mr Whitehill, against whom the gravest charges had been made, and he was specially invested with powers that to a great extent made him independent of the Madras Council, including the exclusive direction of the treasure transmitted for the prosecution of the war. The temporary grant of such powers was necessary under existing circumstances, but was none the less resented by the Madras Council; though there was little active opposition till the assumption of the Governorship by Lord Macartney in June 1781. The Council complained that more was not accomplished, Sir Eyre Coote complained that his troops were sent into the field without supplies; the Council sent an expedition against the Dutch settlements, without consulting the General, and an