Lally had taken all the precautions of a good general, but he had taken them with his usual harshness; he had driven from the city all the useless mouths; fourteen hundred Hindoos, old men, women, and children, wandered for a week between the English camp and the ramparts of the town, dying of hunger and misery, without Lally's consenting to receive them back into the place; the English at last allowed them to pass.

The most severe requisitions had been ordered to be made on all the houses of Pondicherry, and the irritation was extreme; the heroic despair of M.de Lally was continually wringing from him imprudent expressions.

"I would rather go and command a set of Caffres than remain in this Sodom, which the English fire, in default of Heaven's, must sooner or later destroy," had for a long time past been a common expression of the general's, whose fate was henceforth bound up with that of Pondicherry.
He held out for six weeks, in spite of famine, want of money, and ever-increasing dissensions.

A tempest had caused great havoc to the English squadron which was out at sea; Lally was waiting and waiting for the arrival of M.d'Ache with the fleet which had but lately sought refuge at Ile de France after a fresh reverse.

From Paris, on the report of an attack projected by the--English against Bourbon and Ile de France, ministers had given orders to M.d'Ache not to quit those waters.