For several days after the battle, the enemies eyed each other from a distance. At one point, the two admirals discussed a prisoner exchange, but Hughes refused, saying he didn’t have the power to authorize one. Possibly, he might have wanted Suffren to remain burdened with guarding and feeding them. Suffren didn’t let that happen. He eventually handed over his prisoners to Hyder, “clearly contrary to the custom of civilized war” because Hyder was “in reality, a barbarian,” the British said. Hyder’s mistreatment of British prisoners became part of anti-Suffren propaganda and the post-war subject of horrific first-person accounts. When some prisoners got a message to Suffren about their treatment, he indignantly replied that their leaders had refused an exchange. “It is them you are to thank.” He later apologized for his sarcasm, saying he was reacting to the notorious British treatment of French and American rebel prisoners in New York, “crowded into a prison ship and dying of an epidemical disease.” He ordered his prisoners’ rations increased.4
(Hyder himself refused at least one exchange with the British. In December 1781, when offered one thousand native troops for his Europeans prisoners, Hyder replied that “he knew better than to exchange European prisoners for a set of dastardly scoundrels whose heads, to a man, when they return to him, he would assuredly chop off.”)5
At a standoff, Hughes returned to Trincomalee, and Suffren sailed seventy miles south to the still-Dutch town of Batacola (Batticaloa). His squadron, like Hughes’s, was in bad shape. “Scurvy was making frightful ravages in the fleet,” an officer said. “The country round Batacola was unhealthy, and . . . it was impossible to get either fruits or vegetables. . . . Our supply of rope exhausted; the provisions running short; the crews, sadly diminished in number, overworked; the certainty of more battles in which we could not promise ourselves any advantage more decisive than in those we had fought—all these were considerations that threw a dark cloud over our future prospects, and gave rise to the most embarrassing reflections.”6
NEGAPATAM: Saturday, July 6, 1782. Suffren left Batacola on June 3 with some provisions, got more at neutral Danish Tranquebar on the Indian mainland several days later, and captured a few British supply ships en route. The squadron arrived in Cuddalore on June 20. There, he learned that the French general left in command—who would be superseded by the new general that Paris promised—had alienated Hyder and refused to work with him to attack Negapatam, 80 miles to the south.
Suffren repaired relations with his ally, and they agreed to proceed with the attack. The first step, however, was to defeat Hughes, who had learned about Suffren’s moves, and sailed to defend Negapatam. On July 5, Suffren sailed near the town and saw that Hughes beat him to the anchorage. Suffren signaled for an attack, but a sudden squall damaged one of his ships and gave Hughes the advantage of the wind. Suffren disengaged from a battle.
The next day was different. The enemies began fighting in mid-morning. It was another bloody battle. Hughes seemed to have the upper hand when the wind shifted against his favor around 12:30 P.M. Had the wind not changed, “I have good reason to believe it would have ended in the capture of several of their line-of-battle ships,” he said. Suffren again blamed his captains for disobeying orders. He later arrested three of them: One had tried to surrender, but his officers mutinied to save their ship. Another simply refused to fight, saying he hadn’t had time to repair damage. Hughes thwarted Suffren’s attempt to take Negapatam, and his ships killed nearly 180 French sailors, while wounding more than six hundred—significantly higher losses than the British suffered. Suffren sailed back to Cuddalore, but Hughes’s ships were too damaged to pursue.7
On July 20, Hughes arrived back in Madras. “After three long and severe engagements,” he said, “there was not a line of battleship in the squadron that had not to stop their holes . . .”8
The French also suffered. “I assure you it is no easy matter to keep to sea on a coast without money, without magazines, with a squadron in many respects badly furnished, and after having sustained three combats,” Suffren wrote Île de France. “I am at the end of my resources. . . . The squadron has 2,000 men in hospital, of whom 600 are wounded.”9
Hyder and Suffren met on July 26 for the first time at Hyder’s camp outside Cuddalore. The Mysorean leader praised the first Frenchman who was as aggressive as he was. “At last, the English have found their master,” he told Suffren. “Here is the man who will help me to exterminate them.” He called Suffren “extraordinary.” He also was impressed by Suffren’s appetite at a banquet; apparently, Suffren inhaled the spicy Indian food. The two men discussed strategy over the course of three days. Suffren promised Hyder that once reinforcements arrived, he would attack Hughes, and “God willing, I shall destroy him.” Hyder replied, “Suffren, now that I have seen you, I have seen all.” Suffren’s report to Paris was equally enthusiastic: “If we had known how to deal with him from the start, we could have had him do anything we wanted. My only cunning in dealing with him was to use none and to tell him always what was strictly true.”10
But where were the long-awaited reinforcements?
The general that Paris chose to send to India as commander was an India veteran.
Charles-Joseph Patissier, the Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau, 64, had lost his father at a young age. He joined the army and, in 1737, went to India as a soldier of fortune with the French East India Company army. He trained native troops, led them against the British company army, and earned for France territory and concessions. In 1750, with 1,250 native and European troops, he defeated a native army of ten thousand. A decade later, however, Bussy met his match: Coote captured him. The British released him on parole, and he retired to a French estate, where he suffered from periodic bouts of malaria and gout. When the government asked him to prepare a plan for conquering India, he recommended not relying on native allies or demanding concessions from them. In 1781, Bussy agreed to return to India, but only if an army of nine thousand French soldiers accompanied him, and, to coordinate fighting, he commanded both the army and navy. The government agreed to the command, but could promise only six to seven thousand men.11
Suffren complained to the ministry that Bussy didn’t understand the navy. But he promised, “I will do my best to prevent harm arising.” Harm, however, had already come to Bussy. He left Cádiz, Spain, on January 4, 1782, but with only four thousand men. Kempenfelt’s victory over Guichen on December 12 meant many of Bussy’s supplies never arrived. The men on his expedition suffered from scurvy, and Bussy himself had a serious, two-month-long illness. He didn’t arrive in Île de France until the end of May, minus 1,700 men he left in Cape Town for its defense.12
Another convoy, sent to reinforce Bussy, was star-crossed. It was hit by scurvy, and by the time it arrived in Île-de-France, seven hundred men were dead, 2,800 soldiers needed hospitalization, and of these, 1,200 would die.13
A small French convoy—two warships, a frigate, nine transport ships, and eight hundred soldiers—finally arrived in July in Dutch Galle on Ceylon’s south shore, three hundred miles from Trincomalee and Batacola. Suffren wrote Bussy, still in Île de France, that his squadron intended to attack Trincomalee in an effort to defeat Hughes before expected British reinforcements arrived. “Of all the imaginable combinations, there is only one—in which I defeat the English squadron before their reinforcements come—that can give us an existence in India.” Suffren arrived there on August 9, and reinforcements arrived starting on August 18.14
With those reinforcements came a message: The Order of Malta had promoted Suffren to Bailli, its highest honor. Suffren used that title, rather than his French rank, for the rest of his life.
TRINCOMALEE: Tuesday, September 3, 1782. Suffren arrived at Trincomalee the night of August 25. He landed 2,300 soldiers and 500 marines, then prepared to besiege the British at Fort Ostenburg, which overlooked the harbor. Suffren opened fire on August 29; the British surrendered the next day, extracting from Suffren a pledge to return the 150 European and three h
undred native troops to Madras.
Hughes appeared off Trincomalee on September 2, unaware the port was lost. Suffren planned to attack, but some of his captains hesitated, wanting to stay in the harbor under Fort Ostenburg’s guns. Suffren replied, “If the enemy had more ships than I have, I would abstain. If he had an equal number, I could scarcely refrain. But as he has fewer, there is no choice: We must go out and fight him.”15
The fight started the next day at mid-afternoon and continued until dark. Again, Suffren’s captains failed to get good position: Two collided with each other; three couldn’t raise their anchors. Even a British account said the French captains were “unworthy to serve so great a man.” The Calcutta Gazette said Suffren was “badly seconded.”16
And again, the battle was indecisive. Both enemies suffered severe damage. It took Suffren three days to maneuver four damaged ships back to Trincomalee.17 Three of Hughes’s ships were in danger of sinking. He couldn’t chase Suffren because, he said, “The ships of our squadron had apparently suffered so much as to be in no condition to pursue them.” Both sides lost about the same number of men: the French had eighty-two killed and 255 wounded, the British fifty-one killed and 282 wounded.18
Hughes made his way back to Madras, and eventually to Bombay, to refit during the monsoons.
Suffren found himself with a mixed blessing: Four of his captains resigned, three ostensibly for health reasons, the fourth for personal reasons. Suffren’s dilemma was that while Trincomalee was a great harbor, the area, as Wilks said, was “utterly destitute of every resource.” Suffren sailed first to Cuddalore to land reinforcements, and then one thousand miles east to neutral Achin (Aceh), Sumatra.19
Over the winter, Suffren heard that on the same day he fought Hughes off Provedien, Grasse was captured at the Battle of the Saintes.
A second piece of news directly affected Suffren. Hyder died from an infected abscess on December 7, 1782. His court biographer reported his last days: “Hyder, on hearing that it was a deadly boil which had appeared on his neck, became certain that his last hour had arrived. But without allowing fear or apprehension to take place in his mind, he remained, as usual, absorbed in the order and regulation of his army and kingdom. . . .” He sent for his son to assume command, authorized a bonus for his soldiers, sent cavalry out to frighten villages (presumably to divert attention), then “swallowed a little broth and laid down to rest. The same night, his ever-victorious spirit took its flight to Paradise.”20
Hyder’s son and successor, Tipu Sultan, was born around 1753. (He wasn’t a sultan; it’s a common name.) He was an experienced and successful commander. Like his father, he was controversial. Wilks heard secondhand that Hyder believed his son’s intellect “was of an inferior order, and his disposition wantonly cruel, deceitful, vicious, and intractable.” Others accused Tipu of forced conversions to Islam—“a reign of Islamic terror and oppression.” An eighteenth-century British admirer said, “He acted with so much equity and mildness that no prince was ever more popular in his own dominions. . . . He was seldom deceived in his politics as a statesman or cruel to his captives as a conqueror.” Nonetheless, he worked toward a greater role for Islam in India, with Europeans reduced to trading stations only. Most modern Hindu writers, however, argue that Tipu was “a great patriot, a nationalist, and a freedom fighter” slandered by the British, who “hated him because he was an ardent fighter for national integration.” Forcing Hindus to convert to Islam was something some of his governors did; fourteen of Tipu’s twenty-four cabinet ministers were Hindu.21
Tipu’s immediate concern were attacks by the British and their allies against Mysorean positions on the Malabar. Accordingly, he left the east and the French in Cuddalore to address his enemies in the west. A British force had taken Mangalore; it would be several months before Tipu retook the town and defeated the British.
Suffren needed to be closer to the action. He left Achin for Cuddalore before 1782 was out. At that point, he didn’t know that Bussy had finally left Île-de-France having survived an epidemic there. Bussy said the knowledge that the government was depending on him, “constrain me to sacrifice the little health that remains to me, and depart for India, despite the weakness of my present means.”22
CUDDALORE: June 20, 1783. For the first part of 1783, the enemies did little. They captured a few of each other’s ships. Tipu besieged Mangalore. Hughes refitted in Bombay. Suffren sailed from Cuddalore to Trincomalee to complete his refitting. Food was scarce in southeastern India. In Madras, the British garrison was on rations; a famine killed thousands in the region. “Wretched mothers might be seen loaded with grief and affliction, offering to enslave their darling children for as much rice as would only prolong their miseries for perhaps eight dreadful days,” an officer wrote. “Crows, vultures, and jackals, allured by the scent of death, flocked in crowds to the scene.”23
On March 10, Bussy finally arrived in Trincomalee. He brought with him three warships, a frigate, and transports carrying 2,300 troops. Suffren escorted them to India, dropping Bussy and his men off to reinforce Porto Novo and then Cuddalore. In Cuddalore, Bussy found a garrison of six hundred French soldiers, four thousand native soldiers, and eight thousand of Tipu’s cavalry. Suffren, needing further refitting, returned to Trincomalee.
In April, Bussy passed on to Suffren the intelligence that a combined British land–sea expedition against Cuddalore was imminent. He wrote Suffren pleading for “food, wood, bullets—but above all food.” The intelligence was correct. Hughes had arrived in Madras on April 13. Coote’s successor, Major General James Stuart, vowed to Hughes: “Our next campaign will, I trust, put an end to French consequence in India.” Their plan was for Hughes to besiege Cuddalore from the sea and maintain a supply chain to Stuart. Stuart would march from Madras to Cuddalore and capture a suitable beach outside the town for Hughes’s supply ships.24
Stuart was one of Coote’s trusted and experienced generals. During the Seven Years’ War, Stuart had fought in Nova Scotia, Martinique, and France, rising to lieutenant colonel and serving as a quartermaster general. He was posted to India in 1775. There, on orders of the Madras presidency, Stuart arrested the governor. The company board in London suspended him. He was cleared by a court-martial five years later, given back pay, promoted to brigadier general (and later, major general), and restored to the Madras command. In a battle against Hyder, a cannonball shot away one of Stuart’s legs. Like Coote, he fought with Governor Macartney.25
Stuart and 15,000 men left Madras for Cuddalore on April 21, 1783. What he had planned as an eleven-day march, took forty-seven days. Hampered by sickness, weather, difficult terrain, and low food supplies, he didn’t arrive on the outskirts of Cuddalore until June 7.26
Bussy, once an aggressive general, didn’t attack. Instead, he abandoned his outer defense perimeter and, one eyewitness said, stayed “invisible in his tent like a rich nabob.” (Failing health might have been a factor; he died in India in 1785.)27
Hughes, who arrived off Cuddalore on June 6, landed reinforcements and supplies for Stuart at the beachhead. Now, Bussy was besieged, and his only chance of relief was from Tipu, still on the Malabar, or Suffren, still refitting in Trincomalee.
On the 13th, Stuart attacked Bussy’s inner defense perimeter. “A most bloody and desperate conflict ensued,” said one fighter. “The usual carnage,” Wilks said. At the end of the day, the British and their allies suffered one thousand men killed, wounded, or missing. The French and their allies suffered half that number. Still, Bussy was pessimistic about his ability to hold Cuddalore with Hughes’s 18 warships sailing off the coast between Porto Novo and Cuddalore, protecting British transports that supplied Stuart. Now, Bussy waited for Suffren.28
Suffren, with three fewer warships than Hughes, five of them commanded by lieutenants, approached the coast off Porto Novo on June 13. Thanks to their fast scouting ships, the two admirals knew roughly where the other was. For the next seven days, without favorable winds, they
eyed each other, jockeying for position. In the meantime, Suffren seized the Cuddalore anchorage, where his officers conferred with Bussy. They concluded that Cuddalore would be lost if Suffren couldn’t defeat Hughes, and Bussy loaned Suffren more than one thousand men.29
Finally, in the mid-afternoon of June 20, the winds cooperated, and the battle began. Cuddalore became the largest naval battle fought in the Indian Ocean during the sailing era. As with the previous four battles, the casualties were similar—about one hundred dead and four hundred wounded on each side. But as evening came, Hughes withdrew, sailing back to Madras. In the preceding month, three thousand of his men contracted scurvy; although he had more ships, he had fewer sailors—half their normal complement. What’s more, he was running out of water.30
The next day, Suffren re-anchored at Cuddalore, returned the borrowed soldiers, added some of his marines, and went ashore where he was carried through the streets as the hero of the day. Bussy greeted him with four words: “Messieurs, voila notre sauveur.” (“Gentlemen, behold our savior.”)31
But Stuart’s army remained camped outside Cuddalore’s walls. Stuart had seen the French ships return and his British lifeline disappear. This, he said, gave the French “infinite superiority” to him. His position was “almost insupportable.” As for him personally, “this is now nine days since our fleet and provision ships left us . . . my mind is upon the rack without a moment’s rest.”32
Bussy attacked Stuart around 3 A.M. on June 25. The sortie was a disaster. He had sent too few men led by an incompetent commander, a “recognized disability,” a French officer said. The result was forty dead Frenchmen and one hundred prisoners.33
Suffren now planned a sea bombardment of Stuart’s position.
After Yorktown Page 36