but so much time was consumed
in getting the men into the required formation, owing to the inexperience
and want of discipline among both officers and men, that the enemy took
heart again and advanced to meet them. When the square at last moved
forward, with Gordon at their head, they were met with a hot fire, and
Gordon was a mark for every aim. Before long he fell, shot in the breast,
and Captain Smith, 'commonly called Old Woman,' on whom the command
devolved, at once gave the word to retreat. According to Hamilton, 'he
pulled off his red coat and vanished.' The Rajah's horsemen charged down,
sword in hand, on the disordered ranks; the men threw down their arms and
fled to the boats, leaving some two hundred and fifty of their number dead
on the field. Fortunately, the floating batteries covered the embarkation,
and prevented the enemy, who had suffered some loss, from gathering the
spoils of the fallen. Eighty seamen were sent on shore, and brought back
about two hundred muskets that had been thrown away in flight, most of
them loaded. Thus ingloriously ended the attempts at landing.

The factory was by this time reduced to great straits for food, and this
fresh disaster made peace imperative; the Rajah, in spite of his success
so far, was anxious to come to an accommodation. The expense of
maintaining so many armed men threatened to ruin him; the sea blockade and
the detention of the horses were events on which he had not reckoned: and,
worse still, his northern borders were harried by the Sow Bajah, 'which
made him incline very much towards a peace:' so an agreement was quickly
arrived at, and, on the 29th November, peace was proclaimed on easy terms
for both parties. The expedition had cost the Company Rs.68,372 in hard
cash. The inability of the landing force to advance beyond range of the
ships' guns bears witness to their military incapacity.

His short experience of six months under the Company had completely
disgusted Alexander Hamilton. Immediately on his return to Bombay he
resigned his post as Commander-in-Chief of their ships-of-war, and resumed
business as a private trader. His relations with the military officers
during the expedition appear to have been satisfactory, but against Taylor,
the head of the Carwar factory, he formulated a series of charges,
accusing him of having been the cause of the trouble with the Rajah,
through his indiscretion and bad faith. Taylor retaliated by accusing
Hamilton of