The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

Extract of a letter from Paris, April 18.

"By a sloop of war lately arrived at L'Orient, Government has received dispatches from the East Indies, dated the 15th of November: the contents of these dispatches are of a very unpleasant nature. The famine which rages at Madras is dreadful indeed, as it carries off weekly 1800 in that city, and the adjacent districts: but this calamity is not confined to the English settlements—it has reached the French army and dominions of Hyder Ali Khan; its ravages were so great among our forces, that Mons. D'Offalis, who succeeded to the command, on the death of Mons. Duchemin, found it impossible to maintain his post near Madras, and fell back two days march from his former station near the town. The supplies which used to be sent to our army from Hyder's dominions, have greatly fallen short, and that Prince is scarcely able to subsist his army: the Carnatic is so ravaged, that it can draw very sparingly from home, for there the famine rages with infinitely more fury than at Madras, for, by computation, 12000 of his subjects are carried off by it. This has saved Madras, which, weakened by famine, must necessarily have fallen into our hands, if the famine had not made its appearance in our army. Hyder Ali cannot recruit his army with the numbers he expected, as men begin to be as scarce as provisions in his once most populous provinces.—While the Carnatic is thus distressed, the utmost plenty reigns in Bengal, where the last crops were as plentiful as could have been wished for; so that there is a redundancy of rice in that kingdom sufficient to supply the wants of the Carnatic: but what with the superiority of our fleet, and the storms that have raged of late, the unfortunate Carnatic derives little or no benefit from the plenty of Bengal.

About a month before the sloop of war left the East-Indies, a fleet of transports, laden with provisions, appeared off Madras, but was dispersed by a dreadful storm, in which most of the ships were lost, and with them an immense quantity of rice, which the Governor General of Bengal was sending to Madras. It was computed, when the dispatches came away, upwards of 300,000 persons had perished by famine in the English territories, and those of Hyder Ali Khan, so that if this scourge should rage for any great length of time, as dreadful consequences may be apprehended from it, as were produced from the famine in Bengal some years ago, which carried off two millions of people."