Lally and Pondicherry waited in vain.
It became necessary to surrender; the council of the Company called upon the general to capitulate; Lally claimed the honors of war, but Coote would have the town at discretion; the distress was extreme as well as the irritation.

Pondicherry was delivered up to the conquerors on the 16th of January, 1761; the fortifications and magazines were razed; French power in India, long supported by the courage or ability of a few men, was foundering, never to rise again.

"Nobody can have a higher opinion than I of M.de Lally," wrote Colonel Coote; "he struggled against obstacles that I considered insurmountable, and triumphed over them.

There is not in India another man who could have so long kept an army standing without pay and without resources in any direction." "A convincing proof of his merits," said another English officer, "is his long and vigorous resistance in a place in which he was universally detested." [Illustration: Lally at Pondicherry----184] Hatred bears bitterer fruits than is imagined even by those who provoke it.

The animosity which M.de Lally had excited in India was everywhere an obstacle to the defence; and it was destined to cost him his life and imperil his honor.