Nevertheless, Coote went on the offensive and helped inspire other British commanders. From January 1781 through August 1782, Coote relieved besieged garrisons, fought bloody battles with Hyder, and put him on the defensive. In 1782, the Mysoreans and British fought eleven major land battles.9
Hyder trapped Coote in February 1781 in the port of Cuddalore, 115 miles south of Madras. Hyder besieged him by land, and a French squadron led by Admiral Thomas d’Estienne, Comte d’Orves, prevented relief from sea. Hyder asked d’Orves to land a regiment to support the siege. D’Orves not only refused; he sailed away, citing orders against dangerous operations and the need to return to Île-de-France (Mauritius). British reinforcements with supplies sailed into Cuddalore. Coote was down to his last two days of provisions.10
Hyder had come to expect such French lethargy. In 1773, when the French failed to react to a British attack on a native district, he rhetorically asked his liaison officer: “Are the French really interested in India? If they are, why do they fumble? Why do not their vessels come more often? If they decided to fight the English, will they indicate this plan to me, so that I can join in this enterprise?” He also warned France against territorial greed: “If the English are eliminated, and you aspire to succeed in their place, then I will battle you with the same tenacity as I do now against them. You are all Europeans, and I do not wish to see you in my neighborhood.”11
In July 1781, Coote’s army again was an underdog, this time at Porto Novo (Parangipettai), fifty miles south of Cuddalore. His eight thousand men were outnumbered by Hyder’s sixty thousand, but by the end of the day Hyder withdrew his forces. Coote was unable to pursue for lack of cavalry and transport. Nor was Coote able to retake Hyder’s arsenal town of Arcot, seventy miles west of Madras. In February 1782, the Mysoreans and a small French unit killed or captured two-thirds of a 2000-man British and native detachment.12
After another battle with Hyder in June 1782, this time at Arnee (Arani), ninety miles west of Madras, Coote said that he “most assuredly” would have defeated Hyder there and ended the war “had I possessed the means of sustenance”—namely, supplies and provisions for his army.13
By September, Coote couldn’t continue. His health deteriorated, and he returned to Calcutta for rest and cure. There, he stayed until April 1783, when he felt restored enough to return to Madras. But two French ships chased his transport, and, a contemporary said, “his anxiety was indeed so great that it kept him almost constantly on deck.” He died—from “the heat, the fatigue, the night air, and above all, the agitation of mind”—on April 26, two days after arriving in Madras.14
While Coote staunched the bleeding in Madras, the British navy attacked Hyder, the French, and, after they entered the war, the Dutch.
A squadron under Vice Admiral Edward Hughes destroyed the Mysorean navy at Mangalore on the Malabar Coast in December 1780. A joint army-navy expedition took Dutch Negapatam in November 1781. On January 11, 1782, the last Dutch fortification on Ceylon’s Trincomalee harbor surrendered to Hughes’s marines. “The enemy lost but few men as they mostly threw down their arms, and their forfeited lives were spared by that disposition to mercy which ever distinguishes Britons,” Hughes said.15
From France’s entry into the war through 1781, the British commanded the oceans around India and Ceylon, and Hughes commanded the British. “He is a short, thick-set, fat man,” the Bengal Gazette said. “His skin fits remarkably right about him, has very rosy gills, and drivels a little at the mouth from the constant use of quids [chewing tobacco].”16
Although competent, Hughes was not a Rodney-like, loose-cannon admiral. The Admiralty appreciated it. “He will not wander out of the path that may be prescribed to him to follow any schemes or whims of his own, nor never will study to find faults with his orders, but always how he may best execute them,” the navy comptroller said. Indeed, Hughes thought the enemy’s innovative naval tactics were unchivalrous.17
But, like Coote, he had his arguments with the company. He refused to take orders from it and resented its leadership presuming “to arrogate to themselves a dictatorial power over the officer commanding his Majesty’s squadron in the East Indies.” When the company pressured him to action before he was done refitting, he replied that “I was the judge when to sail, being myself only accountable for my conduct, and that, too, not to you.” He reminded the company of his request for reinforcements, which they hoarded—tens of thousands of men “at enormous expense parading round . . . , eating up the small supplies of provisions that come to Madras.”18
Hughes treated his men well, although some thought he was too soft. Regardless, it didn’t hurt his performance. The French admiral whose name would be soon linked with Hughes in history described him as “brave, skillful, and in every respect, a very able officer” with “consummate skills and abilities equal to any man I have ever had to deal with in my profession.”19
His birth was obscure—about 1720. His father was a small-town official of Hertford, England. As with most career officers, he entered the navy as a young teen and saw action in each of Britain’s wars, from South America to Europe to Canada. In 1747, he was promoted to captain, and in ensuing years he commanded progressively larger ships. After a period of unemployment following the Seven Years’ War, Hughes commanded the East India Squadron from 1774 to 1777 out of Bombay. He returned home for two years. Then, in January 1778, the king promoted him to rear admiral, knighted him, and reassigned him back to India as the naval commander-in-chief. On his way, in March 1779, he ousted the French from the slaving port of Gorée (now part of Dakar, Senegal), on the West African coast.
Hughes arrived in Madras in January 1780, and started his successful offensive against Hyder, the French, and the Dutch.
39. Suffren’s “Lust for Action”
IN PARIS, THE GOVERNMENT KNEW IT HAD TO REINFORCE INDIA, OR it would lose it. “Attack the English, united or separated, wherever possible,” the navy ministry ordered its commanders in Île de France (now Mauritius) in March 1781. The man to lead the offensive would be d’Orves, who, unknown to Paris, had already refused to disobey his orders and work with Hyder to trap Coote at Cuddalore.1
But the ministry intended to give d’Orves some help in the form of an aggressive second-in-command on the seas, and a general who would command on the land and be the admiral’s superior. The general didn’t arrive in India until mid-1782. The new chef d’escadre (the equivalent of a rear admiral), didn’t wait for him.
If southern Whigs found a general in Nathanael Greene, the French in India found an admiral in Pierre André de Suffren. “He is an excellent and resourceful tactician, full of audacity and lust for action,” his superior said. The naval ministry recommended him to the king: “This captain will perhaps be the best squadron commander that His Majesty could have.”2
A generation later, Napoleon rued not having Suffren in his navy: “Oh, why did not Suffren live till my time, or why did I not light on a man of his stamp?” With an aide, he discussed Suffren’s merits: He “possessed genius, invention, ardor, ambition, and inflexible steadiness . . . Suffren, who was harsh, capricious, egotistical, and a very unpleasant companion, was loved by nobody, though he was valued and admired by all. He was a man with whom no one could live on good terms.”3
A British traveler who met Suffren in India wrote a memorable description: “He looked much more like a little fat vulgar English butler than a Frenchman of consequence. In height, he was about five feet five, very corpulent, scarce any hair upon the crown of his head, the sides and back tolerably thick. Although quite grey, he wore neither powder nor pomatum [pomade] nor any curl, having a short queue of three to four inches tied with a piece of old spun yarn. He was in slippers, or, rather, a pair of old shoes, the straps being cut off, blue cloth breeches unbuttoned at the knees, cotton or thread stockings (none of the cleanest) hanging about his legs, no waistcoat or cravat, a coarse linen shirt entirely wet with perspiration, open at the neck, the sleeves bei
ng rolled up above his elbows as if just going to wash his hands and arms.” Despite his obesity, Suffren was agile—“as quick and as light as any midshipman.”4
In habits, he usually ate with his fingers, and preferred spicy food. During battle, he wore a lucky beaver hat an older brother had given him; it helped him stay visible to his men. He often chewed on a cigar. Despite his own appearance, he tried to keep his crews healthy by requiring them to use soap.5
To critics, he became known as “Admiral Satan”—“l’amiral Satan”—a mid-twentieth-century French biographer reported. The nickname might be apocryphal, but his behavior wasn’t. One contemporary said he had inborn authority, genius, ardor, ambition, and an iron character, but was egotistic, a bad comrade, liked by none, but admired and appreciated by all. “Courageous even to rashness, he showed an inflexible rigor toward officers whom he suspected of weakness or cowardice,” said another.6
Suffren was about nine years older than Hughes, born in 1729 to a modestly wealthy, noble family. As a younger son, however, he had to earn a living. He chose the navy, and started his apprenticeship just before a French-English war broke out. From 1744 to 1747, he crossed the Atlantic three times. His first battle was at Toulon, where, 50 years later, another war would result in Charles O’Hara’s capture. Before the war ended, the British captured Suffren and he spent three months in an English prison.7
Between wars, Suffren joined the Maltese navy and the career path of a knight of the Order of Malta, protecting Mediterranean shipping from pirates. As a knight, he took an oath of celibacy; historians haven’t found any accounts of mistresses or bastard children. During the Seven Years’ War, he was again with the French navy, fighting first at Minorca, and then captured again off Portugal. This time, he was a prisoner for two years. After the war, he returned to the Maltese navy, where he was a frigate captain, again fighting pirates.
With the American rebellion, Suffren returned to the French navy and commanded his first large warship. Off Rhode Island in 1778, he forced two British frigates to beach and burn themselves. Later that year, he saw action in the Caribbean. Like Kempenfelt, Suffren sent a litany of suggestions to the ministry he believed would improve the fleet: Copper the ships’ hulls. Require the sailors to wash with soap. Install fire pumps. Attach lightning rods. Add more launches. Use mortars to fire grapeshot.
Suffren never seemed to alienate his superiors, but in private letters—many to Marie-Thérèse de Perrot de Seillans, the Countess d’Alès, a close friend, possibly a distant cousin—he railed against them and his peers. January 5, 1779: “You cannot imagine the idiotic maneuvers that have been made. . . . They have gotten annoyed with me for wanting to attack seven small ships with 12 big ones, simply because the former were defended by some land batteries.” January 8: “I am extremely disgusted . . .” April 2: “Imagine a fleet commander whose least fault is to be not one whit a seaman.” July 10: “Had his seamanship matched his courage, we would not have let four dismasted British ships escape.”8
By late 1780, at 51, he returned to France a squadron commander who, although respected, played no major role in the war. About that time, the navy minister lost a political battle and was replaced. Suffren immediate lobbied the new minister for an expanded role. The new minister gave him a choice: Return to North America, or go to India.
In March 1781, Suffren and his small squadron sailed out of Brest with Grasse’s fleet, which was headed for the Caribbean and, ultimately, Yorktown. Near Madeira, Suffren left the fleet, veering south for India via the Cape Verde Islands, Cape Town, and Île de France. One of his orders was to land reinforcements for the Dutch fort at the Cape to ensure the British wouldn’t attack the strategic port, as intelligence said they were planning.
Off the town of Porto Praya (Praia) at Portugese Cape Verde on April 15, Suffren saw a British squadron, presumably the one headed for Cape Town. He attacked—violating Portuguese neutrality—and damaged the enemy ships. When the fighting broke off at sundown, Suffren immediately left for Cape Town, where he arrived in mid-June. The British arrived from Porto Praya in July, but seeing the reinforcements and Suffren’s squadron, they sailed away, some returning to Britain, others reinforcing Hughes in India.
It’s 2,565 miles from Cape Town to Île de France, and bad weather and the need for refitting delayed Suffren’s sailing until September. He arrived in the Île de France capital, Port Louis, on October 25. There, he found his superior officer, d’Orves, ill; d’Orves’s officers insubordinate because Suffren refused to follow seniority in naming captains (d’Orves overruled Suffren); and “the military spirit has been forgotten.”9
The Île-de-France governor told d’Orves that “Madras is the important object that we cannot attend to too soon; the quicker we attack this place, the less resistance it will offer.” D’Orves now commanded a squadron of eleven warships, three frigates, assorted other ships and transports, 8,550 sailors, and 3,100 army troops. They left port on December 7—but didn’t head to Madras as Suffren and the governor wanted. Instead, the fleet sailed toward Trincomalee, which, unknown to d’Orves, was now British. On the way, in mid-January 1782, Suffren captured a British warship, thus augmenting the squadron. Other than that action, Suffren chafed—but not for long. On February 3, 1782, d’Orves’ health worsened, and he turned command over to Suffren. D’Orves died six days later.10
Suffren immediately changed plans. He told his captains to change course for Madras. And unlike traditional French navy strategies that focused on defense and keeping a line in battle, Suffren told his captains to use their own judgment in attacking the enemy.11
He was, a French admiral later wrote, “the first to disdain the routine . . . of ranging the squadron in one single line of battle. He cared not for the traditions which required one to fight at a moderate distance. He engaged within pistol-shot.” Suffren’s objectives—to attack, not defend; to concentrate fire, not dilute it along the line—were “too original for his officers’ mentality,” said another admiral. By the time Suffren was done in India, he had fired nine captains, returning them to France in disgrace, three of them under arrest.12
Again and again, Suffren complained to Île de France and Paris that annihilation of the British fleet was thwarted by captains who didn’t obey his orders. “I am absolutely brokenhearted by the most general of defections,” he wrote the navy minister after one battle. “I just missed the chance to destroy the English squadron.” He described his second-in-command as “the born enemy of his commanders, and he would go into despair if they did well. You understand how awful it is to have such a second. I dare not speak to you about the others [captains].”13
Suffren also felt at a disadvantage because few of his ships had coppered bottoms, making them slower and needing more frequent maintenance. And, with the loss of Trincomalee to Hughes, Suffren had no major harbor where he could shelter his ships from the monsoons or adequately resupply the fleet.
40. The Final Battles
SUFFREN’S SQUADRON ARRIVED OFF MADRAS ON FEBRUARY 14, 1782. There, he saw Hughes’s ships anchored under the town’s land batteries. Suffren sent most of his transports to Porto Novo (which Coote had abandoned). Hughes left the harbor to engage Suffren. What followed was the first of five battles between Suffren and Hughes over the next seventeen months:
SADRAS: Sunday, February 17, 1782. Hughes chased Suffren to the waters off Sadras (Kalpakkam), about forty miles south of Madras, but Suffren attacked first. The enemies fought from the late afternoon until sunset. Although Hughes captured six French transports, his ships suffered severe damage—one ship, he said, “reduced almost to the state of a wreck.” Both sides suffered roughly the same number of casualties: about thirty dead and one hundred wounded. Suffren blamed four of his captains for the battle’s inconclusiveness; those captains refused to obey his orders to close, firing their weapons only from a distance. Hughes sailed his squadron to Trincomalee for repairs; Suffren sailed to Porto Novo.1
At Porto N
ovo, he talked with Hyder’s envoys and agreed to leave 2,000 to 3,000 troops there, including an African regiment, that Hyder could use to take Cuddalore. That town fell to the Mysoreans and French in early May. Suffren promised that more reinforcements were on the way from France. In March, Suffren received new orders, written in France: Return to Île de France to refit his ships and wait for the reinforcements. He refused to do so, angering more of his captains. “It would be better to sink the squadron under the walls of Madras than to retire from before Sir Edward Hughes,” he told them. Relations with Hyder were too fragile, Suffren believed, and he wasn’t going to give Hughes five months of peaceful sailing. “I take this step, though the only right one, with regret, for it will please no one and be disapproved by all,” he said. He then sailed to Ceylon in hopes of a rendezvous with promised reinforcements and the possibility of taking Trincomalee itself. (Île-de-France’s governor supported Suffren’s disobedience: “The brave decision by M. de Suffren may save India.”)2
PROVEDIEN: Friday, April 12, 1782. While Suffren worked with Hyder’s envoys at Porto Novo, Hughes returned to Madras. Then, hearing from scouts that Suffren was headed to Ceylon, Hughes returned to Trincomalee to shore up its defenses with his squadron and army reinforcements. He arrived there on April 8. For three days, the French and British stayed in sight of each other, but Suffren couldn’t attack because of unfavorable winds.
Despite what one contemporary called “baffling and uncertain” winds, the squadrons engaged on the 12th off the coast of Provedian (probably Challitivu Islet), thirty miles south of Trincomalee. The battle was again indecisive, with both squadrons being crippled, and Suffren again complained about his captains. Suffren’s flagship lost one of its masts and became difficult to sail; he was forced to move to another ship. The French had about 1,300 wounded or ill men; the British had nearly 1,900. Hughes said his vessels were “more like hospital ships than men-of-war.”3
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