At last, weary of inactivity, the Marquis de Conflans and Colonel Forde arrived simultaneously, on the 8th of December, at a determination to bring matters to a crisis. Conflans had heard, from a deserter, that Forde had omitted to occupy a mound which, at a short distance from his camp, commanded the position. He determined to seize this during the night, and to open fire with his guns, and that his main army should take advantage of the confusion, which the sudden attack would occasion, to fall upon the English. Forde, on his part, had determined to march at four o'clock in the morning to a village named Condore, three miles distant, whence he could threaten the French flank.
Ignorant of each other's intentions, the English and French left their camps at night. Forde marched at a quarter past four, as arranged with Anandraz; but the rajah and his people, with the usual native aversion to punctuality, remained quietly asleep, and a few minutes after daybreak they were roughly awakened, by a deadly fire poured by six guns into the camp. The rajah sent messenger after messenger to Forde, urging him to return; and he himself, with his frightened army, hurried towards Condore. Forde had, indeed, retraced his steps immediately he heard the fire of the guns, and soon met the rajah's rabble in full flight; and, uniting with them, marched back to Condore.
Conflans supposed that the fire of his guns had driven the whole of his opponents in a panic from Chambol; and, determining to take advantage of the confusion, marched with his force against them. Forde at once prepared for the battle. In the centre he placed the English, including the rajah's forty Europeans. Next to these, on either side, he placed his Sepoys, and posted the troops of Anandraz on the right and left flanks. He then advanced towards the enemy.
The French guns opened fire. Forde halted. In the position in which he found himself, his centre occupied a field of Indian corn, so high that they were concealed from the enemy. Conflans had moved towards the English left, with the intention, apparently, of turning that flank; and after the artillery battle on both sides had continued for forty minutes, he ordered his troops to advance.
In Madras, both the English and French dress their Sepoys in white. In Bengal, however, since the raising of Sepoy regiments after the recapture of Calcutta, the English had clothed them in red. Conflans, therefore, thought that the force he was about to attack was the English contingent; and that, if he could defeat this, the rout of his enemy would be secured. The French advanced with great rapidity, and attacked the Sepoys in front and flank, so vigorously that they broke in disorder. The rajah's troops fled instantly; and, in spite of the exhortations of Forde, the Sepoys presently followed their example, and fled with the rajah's troops to Chambol, pursued by the enemy's horse.
They would have suffered even more severely than they did, in this pursuit, had not Charlie Marryat launched his little squadron at the enemy's horse. Keeping his men well together, he made repeated charges, several times riding through and through them; until at last they desisted from the pursuit and, forming in a compact body, fell back towards the field of battle; Charlie, who had already lost twelve men, not thinking it prudent again to attack so strong a force.
Conflans' easy success over the Sepoys was fatal to him. Believing that he had defeated the English, he gave orders to several companies of the French troops to press on in pursuit, without delay. They started off in hot speed, proceeding without much order or regularity, when they were suddenly confronted by the whole line of English troops, in solid order, advancing from the high corn to take the place lately occupied by the Sepoys. In vain, the scattered and surprised companies of the French endeavoured to reform, and make head against them. So heavy was the fire of musketry opened by the British line, immediately they had taken up their position, that the French broke their ranks, and ran back as fast as they could to regain their guns, which were fully half a mile in the rear.
In the meantime, the French Sepoys on their left had been gradually driving back the English right; but Forde, disregarding this, pressed forward in hot pursuit of the French with his English, behind whom the greater portion of the beaten Sepoys had already rallied. Keeping his men well together, he advanced at the fullest speed, following so closely upon the enemy that the latter had only time to fire one or two rounds, with their thirteen guns, before the English were upon them. The French, who had already lost heart by the serious check which had befallen them, were unable to stand the shock, and at once retreated, leaving their guns behind them.
As Forde had anticipated, the French Sepoys, seeing their centre and right defeated, desisted from their attack on the English right, and fell back upon their camp. The English Sepoys at once marched forward, and joined Forde's force. The rajah's troops, however, the whole of whom had fled, remained cowering in the shelter of a large dry tank.
Forde did not wait for them; but, leaving his guns behind him, pressed forward, an hour after the defeat of the French, against their camp. To reach this, he had to pass along a narrow valley, commanded by the French heavy guns. These opened fire, but the English pressed forward without wavering. The defenders, not yet recovered from the effects of their defeat in the plain, at once gave way, and retreated in the utmost confusion towards Rajahmahendri. Had the cavalry of Anandraz been at hand to follow up the advantage, great numbers might have been captured. As it was, Charlie Marryat, with his little force, harassed them for some miles; but was unable to effect any serious damage on so strong a body. The English captured thirty-two pieces of cannon, and all the stores, ammunition, and tents of the French.
Forde at once despatched a battalion of Sepoys, under Captain Knox, in pursuit; and this officer pressed on so vigorously that he approached Rajahmahendri the same evening. Two more native battalions reached Knox during the night.
So thoroughly dispirited were the enemy, that the sight of the red-coated Sepoys of Knox, whom they could not distinguish from English, induced them to abandon Rajahmahendri in all haste, although it contained a strong mud fort, with several guns. The Godavery is two miles wide, and all night the passage of the river in boats continued; and when, at daybreak next morning, Knox broke into the town, he found fifteen Europeans still on the banks, expecting a returning boat. These he captured; and seeing, upon the opposite bank, a party about to disembark guns and stores from another boat, he opened fire from the guns of the fort towards it; and, although the shot could scarcely reach halfway across the river, such was the terror of the enemy that they forsook the boat, and fled. Knox at once sent a boat across, and brought back that containing the guns.
The French retreated to Masulipatam, the capital of the province, a port which rivalled Madras in its commerce. Forde determined to follow them there, but he was hindered by want of money to pay his troops. This the Rajah Anandraz, who had promised to supply money, now, excited and arrogant by the victory which he had done nothing towards gaining, refused to supply; and many weeks were spent in negotiations, before Forde was able to move forward.
Charlie was no longer with him. The very day before the fight of Condore, letters had arrived from Madras, stating the urgency of the position there; and, upon the night after the battle, Colonel Forde ordered Charlie to return to aid in the defence of that city, before which the French had appeared on the 29th of November.
Several skirmishes took place outside the city, and the English then retired within the fort. The force consisted of sixteen hundred white troops, and two thousand three hundred Sepoys. The nabob, who had also retired into the town, had two hundred horse and a huge retinue of attendants.
On the morning of the 14th the French occupied the town, and the next day the English made a sortie, with six hundred men. These, for a while, drove the French before them through the streets of Madras; but as the French gradually rallied, the fire upon the English was so heavy that the sortie was repulsed, with a loss of two hundred soldiers and six officers killed, wounded, and prisoners. The French loss had been about the same. Had not a large quantity of the French troops broken into the wine stores on their arrival, and drunk to a point of intoxication, it is probable that none of the British party would have returned to the fort. The sortie had, however, the effect that Saubinet, one of the best of the French officers, was killed, and Count D'Estaign, an able general, taken prisoner.
For some time, the siege proceeded slowly, the French waiting for the arrival of their siege artillery, by ship, from Pondicherry. The fort of Madras was now a far more formidable post than it had been when the French before captured it. In the year 1743 Mr. Smith, an engineer, had marked out the lines for a considerable increase in the fortifications. The ditch was dug and faced with brick, but on account of the expense, nothing further had been done. The French had added somewhat to the fortifications during their stay there in 1750. Nothing had been done by the English when they recovered the town, until the news of the preparations which the French were making for the siege of the place had been received. Four thousand natives were then set to work; and these, in eighteen months, had completed the fortifications, as designed by Mr. Smith, just before the arrival of the French.
The latter determined to attack from the northern side. Here the fort was protected by a demi-bastion, next to the sea; and by the Royal Bastion, the wall between the two being covered by a work known as the North Ravelin. The defence was also strengthened by the fire of the northwest lunette, and Pigot's Bastion.
Against these the French threw up four batteries. Lally's Battery, erected by the regiment of that name, was on the seashore directly facing the demi-bastion. To its right was the Burying Ground Battery, facing the Royal Bastion. Against the western face of this position the French regiment of Lorraine erected a strong work, while farther round to the west, on a rising ground, they threw up a battery called the Hospital Battery, which kept up a crossfire on the English position.
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