wo consorts. Nothing but this
circumstance could have prevented a British ship of sixty-five guns,
indifferently manned in respect to numbers, from taking a French ship
of the line, mounted with seventy-four pieces of cannon, provided
with seven hundred men, and assisted by two large frigates, one of
thirty-eight guns, and the other wanting two of this number. The loss
of the Buckingham, in this action, did not exceed twenty men killed and
wounded; whereas the number of the slain on board the Florissant did not
fall short of one hundred and eighty, and that of her wounded is said to
have exceeded three hundred. She was so disabled in her hull, that she
could hardly be kept afloat until she reached Martinique, where she was
repaired; and the largest frigate, together with the loss of forty men,
received such damage as to be for some time quite unserviceable.

TRANSACTIONS IN THE EAST INDIES.

In the East Indies the transactions of the war were chequered with a
variety of success; but, on the whole, the designs of the enemy were
entirely defeated. The French commander, M. de Bussy, had, in the year
one thousand seven hundred and fifty-six, quarrelled with Salabatzing,
viceroy of Decan, because this last would not put him in possession
of the fortress of Golconda. In the course of the next year, while the
English forces were employed in Bengal, M. de Bussy made himself master
of the British factories of Ingeram, Bandermalanka, and Vizagapatam,
and the reduction of this last left the enemy in possession of the whole
coast of Coro-mandel, from Ganjam to Massulapatam. While a body of the
English company's forces, under captain Caillaud, endeavoured to
reduce the important fortress and town of Madura, the French, under
M. d'Anteuil, invested Trichinopoly. Caillaud no sooner received
intelligence of the danger to which this place was exposed, than he
hastened to its relief, and obliged the enemy to abandon the siege. Then
he returned to Madura, and, after an unsuccessful assault, made himself
master of it by capitulation. During these transactions, colonel
Forde made an attempt upon the fort of Nelloure, a strong place at the
distance of twenty-four miles from Madras, but miscarried; and this was
also the fate of an expedition against Wandewash, undertaken by colonel
Aldercron. The first was repulsed in storming the place, the other was
anticipated by the French army, which marched from Pondicherry to
the relief of the g