The Madras Government had become contemptible alike in the eyes of friends and enemies, and it was impossible to work with them. Lost to all sense of public duty, they formed the project of refusing to place the troops under command of Sir Eyre Coote on his return in April. Sir Eyre Coote was, on this occasion, nominated by the Bengal Government to take the command of all the troops on the Coast, except the garrison actually required at Madras. Not an unreasonable arrangement, as Sir Eyre Coote was Commander in Chief in India, and the Madras Government was dependent for money on Bengal. The Madras Government sent peremptory orders for Stuart to hasten his march, in order that the troops might be far distant when Sir E. Coote arrived, and passed a resolution that he should not have the command. A letter addressed by the Madras Council to Sir Eyre Coote when he was dying, drew down upon them a censure from Warren Hastings that was calculated to penetrate the most pachydermatous self-conceit, but it had apparently no effect on Lord Macartney and his Council. Even before Sir Eyre Coote’s death, the feeling of Lord Macartney and the Council against the King’s officers was shown by a minute of the Council, at the time of the preparation of the army for the siege of Cuddalore, wherein an attempt was made to deprive the Generals bearing the King’s commission of any employment in the field. In it, an endeavour was made to elicit from Major General Stuart an opinion that the public interests would be best served by leaving those officers, five in number, in garrison. This idea was resisted by Stuart, and Major General Bruce was sent with the army to Cuddalore. The frigate that conveyed the news of the cessation of hostilities with France, to the army before Cuddalore, brought also peremptory orders to Stuart to embark at once for Madras, to answer charges of misconduct. Bruce was forced by ill health to return a few days later. The command of the force in the field then devolved temporarily on Colonel Gordon, till Sir John Burgoyne took command of the returning army on 13th August. But Sir John Burgoyne had likewise come under the displeasure of the Select Committee. In the same letter[11] to the Court of Directors in which they announced the supersession of Stuart, and their intention to give the command to Burgoyne, they wrote-- “Sir John Burgoyne expecting a Preference to be given to his men in point of accommodations and every other respect above all other Corps of His Majesty’s or the Company’s troops, and making no allowance for the calamities of the times and the Exigencies of our situation, has been loud and frequent in his complaints, and the utmost endeavours on our Part to show attention to himself as well as to his Regiment have fallen short of the sense he entertained of the claims of both.”