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Updated: April 30, 2025
In order to assure to Suffren the full credit of his subsequent course, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that Bussy, though commander-in-chief both by land and sea, did not venture to order him to leave Trincomalee and come to his support.
Trincomalee is but a poor town, the only buildings of importance being those belonging to Government. There are also a number of Hindu temples kept up, but they are in the most barbarous style.
Being thus alone, Suffren, after communicating with Tippoo-Saib, the new sultan of Mysore, went to Trincomalee; and there he was at last joined, on the 10th of March, by Bussy, accompanied by three ships-of-the-line and numerous transports. Eager to bring the troops into the field, Suffren sailed on the 15th with his fastest ships, and landed them the next day at Porto Novo.
With his usual promptness the French commodore had prepared for further immediate action as soon as Trincomalee surrendered. The cannon and men landed from the ships were at once re-embarked, and the port secured by a garrison strong enough to relieve him of any anxiety about holding it.
I recollect some eight years ago crossing the Mahawelli river upon a raft which my coolies had hastily constructed, and reaching a miserable village near Monampitya, in the extreme north of the Veddah country. The river is here about four hundred paces wide, and, in the rainy season a fine volume of water rolls along in a rapid stream toward Trincomalee, at which place it meets the sea.
From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland.
An experiment might be commenced on a small scale by the repair of one tank say Kandellai, which is only twenty-six miles from Trincomalee on the highroad to Kandy. This tank, when the dam and sluices were repaired, would rise to about nine feet above its present level, and would irrigate many thousand acres.
The capture of Trincomalee, essential as it was to the French squadron which had no other base, was, like that of Sta. Lucia, a surprise, and could only have been effected by the defeat, or, as happened, by the absence of the enemy's fleet.
For this he was too late; the two seventy-fours joined the main body at Madras, March 30th. Hughes had refitted at Trincomalee in a fortnight, and reached Madras again on the 12th of March. Soon after the reinforcement had joined him, he sailed again for Trincomalee with troops and military stores for the garrison.
In September, the combined forces of France and Spain were beaten off with still heavier loss from the impregnable fortress of Gibraltar; and the only region in which a French admiral escaped disaster was the Indian Sea, where the Bailli de Suffrein, an officer of rare energy and ability, encountered the British admiral, Sir Edward Hughes, in a series of severe actions, and, except on one occasion in which he lost a few transports, never permitted his antagonist to claim any advantage over him; the single loss which he sustained in his first combat being more than counterbalanced by his success on land, where, by the aid of Hyder Ali's son, the celebrated Tippoo, be made himself master of Cuddalore; and then, dropping down to the Cingalese coast, recaptured Trincomalee, the conquest of which had been one of Hughes's most recent achievements.
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