If Plassy had been the turning-point in the early days of British effort at conquest, so Wandewash showed the natives the fighting strength of other foreign aspirants for political power in India besides France, and led as directly to the expulsion of the French from the Indian Peninsula, as did the capture of Quebec settle for ever the rivalry for supreme power in North America. With this victory the fear of British power among the natives arose and strengthened. During all this time, the power of the East India Company had been gradually extending, and in 1773 was appointed the first Governor-General of India, Warren Hastings. Meanwhile, as the years crept on, a new native state was rising, that would also seek by a French alliance to check the political advance of Great Britain in India. Hyder Ali, a Mahometan chieftain in the army of Mysore, had succeeded in establishing himself on the throne of his Hindu predecessor. Commanding an irregular army estimated at 150,000 men, he was disposed to be threatening; and on the principle of _divide et impera_, Hastings proposed to play off, by alliance, the Deccan and Oudh against this new disturbing element, which was fast spreading its influence over Western and Northern India. In 1780 the chance arose. Hyder took the offensive, defeated and massacred the small army under Colonel Baillie at Conjeveram, and attacked Madras, but he was checked finally by Sir Eyre Coote, and in 1783 the general peace put an end to hostilities, though not for long, and though Hyder himself was dead. By this time the European army had slightly increased. To the troops already there had been added the 71st (then the 73rd), the 72nd (then the 78th), and the old 73rd, and a second battalion of the 42nd; and these had furnished the backbone of the resistance against Hyder Ali’s son Tippoo Saib. There was hard fighting at Mangalore, which gained for the 73rd the honour of bearing the name on its colours for bravery during the seven months of a dreadful siege; and against the French at Cuddalore, where Colonel Wagenheim of the 15th Hanoverian Regiment made prisoner a young French sergeant, and, struck by his appearance, personally directed his wounds to be dressed. Many years after, when the victorious French, under Marshal Bernadotte, entered Hanover, Wagenheim, by that time an aged general, attended his levée. Bernadotte asked him if he recollected the wounded French sergeant to whom he had been so kind at Cuddalore. The general replied in the affirmative. “That young sergeant,” replied the future king of Sweden, “was the person who has now the honour to address you, and who rejoices in having this public opportunity of acknowledging his debt of gratitude to General Wagenheim.”