It was clear to all that, before any force capable of withstanding him could be put in the field, the whole country, beyond reach of the guns of the forts at Madras, would be at the mercy of Hyder.
"What that mercy was, had been shown elsewhere.

Whole populations had been either massacred, or carried off as slaves.

Therefore, when the storm was clearly about to burst, almost all of them sent secret messages to Hyder, to assure him that their sympathies were with him, and that they would gladly hail him as ruler of the Carnatic.
"My father was in no way inclined to take such a step.

His marriage with an English woman, the white blood in my veins, and his long-known partiality for the English, would have marked him for certain destruction; and, as soon as he received news that Hyder's troops were in movement, he rode with me to Madras.

At that time, his force was comparatively large, and he took three hundred men down with us.