252 THE GOVERNOR - GENERALSHIP OF HASTINGS

farewell minute his satisfaction at leaving the southern Presidency in perfect tranquillity; yet a few months later Hyder Ali, whose preparations had long been notorious, burst upon the low country like a thunder- storm, and his cavalry ravaged the Karnatic up to the suburbs of Madras, in an irruption which Burke de- scribes with splendid rhetoric in his speech on the Nawab of Arkot's debts. The English troops sent to oppose him were surrounded and almost annihilated; the treasury was empty; and there were no supplies in the town, which might easily have been taken if Hyder Ali had resolutely assailed it in force. Hastings lost no time in despatching money and reinforcements from Calcutta under Sir Eyre Coote, who defeated Hyder Ali in the battle of Porto Novo, in July, 1781, and managed to drive him off from the vicinity of the Presidency town; but the irruption had dislocated all the Governor-General's plans. He now had both Mysore and the Marathas simultaneously on his hands. His finances were exhausted; his military strength overstrained; his attempts to create disunion among the Maratha chiefs had been frustrated; he had to fight one of them, Sind, in the northwest near Gwa- lior, another, the Peshwa, near Bombay; and his offers of peace, on terms very favourable to the Marathas, were ill received. The utmost military exertions hardly kept the Ma- rathas in check on the western coast, while at Madras the army which was confronting Hyder Ali was in the greatest straits for provisions, and the Presidency