the English and Dutch in Europe, Lord Macartney, now President at Madras, sent an army of four thousand men, under Sir Hector Munro, with the design of reducing Negapatam, the capital of the Dutch settlements in India. The enterprise was conducted with the greatest vigour, and five successive lines of redoubts were carried by the besiegers with such energy and intrepidity that the garrison, though consisting of eight thousand men, capitulated in fourteen days. All the other Dutch settlements on the Coromandel coast fell along with it; and even their important station of Trincomalee, on the island of Ceylon, was carried by storm.
But this success was counterbalanced by a misfortune which overtook the corps of Colonel Braithwaite in Tanjore, where, at the head of two thousand men, he was engaged in recovering the ascendancy of the English. From these troops Hyder not only cut off all sources of accurate information, but all the spies who pretended to give them intelligence were actually in his pay; and Braithwaite remained encamped on the banks of the Coleroon, without a suspicion that the flower of the enemy's forces were hemming him in on every side. Even when assured of the fact by one of the natives, he was so misled by opposite intimations as to think the assertion unworthy of credit, till he found himself inclosed by an army of more than ten times his number. All accounts agree that the resistance of this devoted little corps was truly gallant, and that, during the protracted contest, they repulsed repeated and desperate attacks.[1] But at length an onset by the French troops broke the Sepoys; the whole were thrown into confusion, and finally either killed or obliged to surrender. The French officers displayed their usual humanity; and even Tippoo, who commanded, did not on this occasion treat the prisoners with his accustomed barbarity.
- ↑ "Braithwaite's action lasted for the space of twenty-six hours before the British troops were wholly vanquished. Of twenty officers belonging to the detachment twelve were killed or wounded, in which latter number was Colonel Braithwaite." – Munro's "Operations on the Coromandel Coast."
