Hyder crossed the Ghauts, and passed down into the Carnatic with 100,000 men, directed by a staff of French officers, and plundered up to the very gates of Madras.

Everything was in the greatest confusion; the English troops were dispersed in garrisons, and could not easily be brought together; and one small detachment under Colonel Baillie, who were made prisoners at Conjiveram, suffered a frightful captivity.

Sir Eyre Coote did, indeed, keep the enemy in check, and defeat him in several battles, but had not at first sufficient numbers or stores effectually to drive him back; and the whole province of Tanjore was horribly wasted.

The irrigation of the district had been broken up by the invaders; there was for three years neither seed-time nor harvest, and the miserable peasants crawled into the towns to perish there, often with their sons carried off to form a regiment of youths whom Hyder Ali was bringing up as a sort of Janissaries.
The unhappy creatures lay dying along the sides of the road, and among them moved from one to another that homely figure in the black dimity dress, and his catechists with him, feeding those who could still swallow, and speaking words of comfort to those who could hear.

Some of the English sent a monthly subscription, which enabled Swartz to keep up the supply, so that a hundred and twenty a day were fed; but often in the morning he found the dead lying in heaps, and in one of his letters he mentions that his catechists are alive, as though he regarded it as a wonder and a mercy.