THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
431 
THE SIEGE OF IAM1S. 
BY SIDNEY OWEN, M.A. 
lee’s HEADER IK - LAW AND HISTORY AT CHRIST CHURCH; AND READER IN INDIAN LAW 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OE OXEORD. 
The following paragraphs formed part of a Lecture which I had the 
honor of delivering, last spring, at the Loyal Artillery Institution. The 
general subject was “ The British Conquest of the Carnatic;” and the 
lecture included a concise survey of the principal operations of the war in 
which Count Lally, undertaking to exterminate the English, after capturing 
and destroying Fort St David, and unsuccessfully besieging Tanjore and 
Madras, was defeated at Wandiwash by Colonel Coote, and blockaded and 
compelled to surrender at Pondicherry. Several circumstances seemed to 
make it worth while to reproduce this very summary account of a siege 
which, in Orme's narrative, occupies some eighty 4to pages. An idea has 
prevailed extensively, that the Royal Artillery were not employed in India 
until recent times. This idea, incidentally refuted by a series of drawings 
executed by Lieut. J. Hunter of that Corps, about the year 1790, and lately 
presented to the R.A. Institution by Gen. Lefroy, here gives place to thnfact, 
that Madras was defended by a body of Royal Artillerymen, under the active 
and able command of an experienced officer of that branch of the King's 
service. Again, though the sieges of Seringapatam were not less eventful 
either in themselves, or in their bearing on the growth of our power in India; 
they cannot vie with that of Madras either as an exhibition of our perilous 
situation in the East, or as integral and characteristic parts, on a new scene, 
of the long, obstinate, and world-wide struggle between ourselves, and those 
whom, until very lately, it was the fashion to consider our natural enemies. 
Thirdly, as has been pointed out below, the siege of Madras was, under the 
circumstances, the experimentum crucis of the whole war. Had Madras fallen, 
as it so very nearly did fall, Rally's history and our own would alike probably 
have been much modified. Lastly, it is hoped that this short but (I trust), 
as far as it goes, faithful account of an achievement in which their predecessors 
took so prominent a part may serve to attract the attention of Officers of the 
Corps, who may not be familiar with the pages of Orme, to a work that 
possesses, in so high a degree, the indispensable qualities and exemplary 
merits of a Military History. Rally's own explanation, full of interest and 
now very scarce, is too long to quote.* 
* Cambridge’s War in India contains a useful working Journal of the operations, by Mr Call/ 
the Chief Engineer. 
[VOL. V.] 
58 
