Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Coote, Eyre (1726-1783)
COOTE, Sir EYRE (1726–1783), general, fourth son of the Rev. Chidley Coote, D.D., of Ash Hill, co. Limerick, a descendant, like the Cootes, Earls of Bellamont, and the Cootes, Earls of Mountrath, of Sir Charles Coote, bart., provost-marshal of Connaught, by Jane Evans, sister of the first Lord Carbery, was born at Ash Hill in 1726. He entered the army at an early age, is said to have served in Germany and took some part against the rebels of 1745 in Scotland. In 1754 he sailed for India with the 39th regiment, then known as Adlercron's from its colonel's name, which was the first English regiment ever sent to India, and received in consequence the famous motto ‘Primus in Indis.’ In the ‘Army List’ of 1755 it appears that he was gazetted a captain in the 39th on 18 June 1755, and there is no doubt that he was in India in the following year, when his regiment formed part of the expedition sent to Bengal from Madras in that year to punish Surajah Dowlah for the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ atrocity. He was present at the capture of Calcutta, where he hoisted the English colours on Fort William, and of Chandernagore, and then occupied Katwa, from which place Colonel Clive advanced against Surajah Dowlah with 750 European soldiers from the 39th regiment and the French prisoners taken at Chandernagore, one hundred artillerymen, sixty sailors, 2,100 sepoys, and seven 6-pounders. When he came face to face with Surajah Dowlah's army, Colonel Clive called his famous council of war, consisting of twenty European officers. Clive first gave his opinion against immediate action, and was supported by Major Kilpatrick, commanding the company's troops, and Major Archibald Grant, commanding the 39th, and by the majority of the officers present. In opposition to this weight of opinion, Captain Eyre Coote—who is everywhere called major, though there is no evidence that he held that local rank, and he certainly had not been gazetted to it—argued that it was better to fight at once. The men were in high spirits, and any delay would give time for Law to arrive with his Frenchmen to the assistance of Surajah Dowlah, to whom their French prisoners of war would at once desert. After the council Clive retired for a time to think, and on his return he showed that Coote's arguments had convinced him, for he gave orders to prepare for battle. In the victory of Plassey Coote himself played a great part, for he commanded the 3rd division in the field, and was afterwards sent against M. Law. His services were not forgotten by Clive, and it was upon his recommendation that Coote was gazetted on 20 Jan. 1759 lieutenant-colonel commandant of a new regiment, which was numbered the 84th, specially raised in England for service in India.
This new battalion he joined at Madras in October 1759, when, as senior officer, he assumed the command of all the troops in the Madras presidency. The first news he heard was that the Comte de Lally was threatening the important fortress of Trichinopoly with a powerful army, and he at once marched south from Madras with seventeen hundred English soldiers and three thousand sepoys to make a diversion. He moved with great rapidity and took the important town of Wandewash on 30 Nov. 1759 after a three days' siege, and immediately afterwards reduced the fort of Carangooly. His movements had their intended effect, and Lally, abandoning his attack on Trichinopoly, came against the small English army at the head of 2,200 Europeans and 10,300 sepoys, and at once besieged it in Wandewash. Coote closely watched the besiegers, and on 22 Jan. 1760 he suddenly burst out of the town, and in spite of the disparity in numbers he utterly defeated the French in their entrenchments. This great victory sealed the downfall of the French in India. It is second only to Plassey in its importance, and even the Comte de Bussy, who was taken prisoner, and had been second in command to Lally, expressed his admiration for Coote's courage and admirable generalship. The French never again made head in India; Lally's prestige was gone, and Coote, after taking Arcot, prepared to besiege Pondicherry, the last refuge of the defeated general. At this moment Major the Hon. William Monson arrived at Madras with a commission to take command of the forces in the Madras presidency, and with directions for Coote to proceed with his regiment to Bengal. The Madras council, however, protested against this measure, and Monson declared that he could not besiege Pondicherry without the 84th, when Coote, with admirable self-abnegation, allowed his regiment to serve under Monson, and remained himself at Madras. Monson, however, soon fell ill, and on 20 Sept. 1760 Coote assumed the command of the investing army, while Admiral Stevens blockaded Pondicherry at sea. Owing to the rains Coote could not undertake regular siege operations, but the garrison of the blockaded city was soon reduced to the extremity of famine. On 1 Jan. 1761 a tremendous storm blew the English fleet to the northward, and Lally hoped for succour from M. Raymond at Pulicat, but Admiral Stevens, by great exertions, got back in four days before assistance arrived, and Lally was forced to surrender to Coote, who took fourteen hundred prisoners and immense booty. This conquest completed the destruction of the French power in India, and in 1762 Coote returned to England. He purchased the fine estate of West Park in Hampshire, and was presented with a diamond-hilted sword worth 700l. by the directors of the East India Company. He was also promoted colonel on 4 April 1765 and elected M.P. for Leicester in 1768. In 1769 he was again appointed commander-in-chief in the Madras presidency, but he soon found that he could not get on with the governor of Madras, Josias Du Pré, so he abruptly threw up his command and came back to England by the overland route through Egypt, which he was one of the first to adopt, in October 1770. The king and the court of directors expressed approval of Coote's conduct; he was invested a K.B. on 31 Aug. 1771, promoted major-general on 29 Sept. 1775, made colonel of the 27th regiment in 1771 and of the Inniskillings on 19 Feb. 1773, was M.P. for Poole 1774–80, and finally appointed commander-in-chief in India on 17 April 1777, being promoted lieutenant-general on 29 Aug.
Coote assumed the command-in-chief at Calcutta on 25 March 1779, in the place of General Clavering, and Warren Hastings at once attempted to win him over to his side in the internecine conflict between himself and certain members of his council at Calcutta. It was one of the articles in the impeachment of Hastings that he had worked upon the general's reputed avarice by allowing him 18,000l. a year field allowances, even when not actively employed, in addition to his salary of 16,000l. a year. There is little doubt that Hastings did make use of his knowledge of Coote's weakness, and that he saddled the Nabob of Oude with the payment of this additional sum. Coote, however, was not a man to be bribed, and his temper was too like that of Hastings himself to permit of opposition to the governor-general. Hyder Ali, who had made himself rajah of Mysore, rushed like a whirlwind over the Carnatic, and by his defeat and capture of Colonel Baillie at Parambakam had Madras at his mercy. Warren Hastings at once suspended Governor Whitehill, and despatched Coote with full powers and all the money he could spare to Madras, while he ordered all the troops available to march down the coast under the command of Colonel Pearse. Coote reached Madras on 5 Nov. 1780, and on 17 Jan. 1781 marched northwards from Madras with all the troops he could muster, in order to draw Hyder Ali after him. His march was successful, and he raised the siege of Wandewash; but Hyder Ali, artfully enticing him further by threatening Cuddalore, induced him to march on that city, when the Mahometan suddenly interposed his great army between Coote and his supplies and base of action at Madras. Coote's position at Cuddalore would have been desperate if the French admiral d'Orves had kept him from receiving supplies from the sea, for the Nabob of Arcot was playing a double part and really deceiving his English allies; but fortunately d'Orves soon sailed away and left Sir Edward Hughes in command of the sea. Yet Coote's position at Cuddalore was very precarious; he could not bring Hyder Ali to an action, and his men were losing courage. On 16 June he left Cuddalore, and on the 18th he attacked the pagoda of Chelambakam, but was repulsed, and he then retreated to Porto Novo, close to the sea, to concert measures for a new attack on the pagoda with Admiral Hughes. Then Hyder Ali came out to fight; the repulse at Chelambakam had been greatly exaggerated, and he thought himself sure of an easy victory. Coote was at once told that the enemy was fortifying himself only seven miles off, and he called a council of war, which, even when he pointed out that defeat meant the loss of the Madras presidency, unanimously decided to fight. Coote accordingly marched out at 7 a.m. on the morning of 1 July 1781 with 2,070 Europeans and six thousand sepoys, and found Hyder Ali with forty thousand soldiers and many camp-followers in a strong position resting on the sea, defended by heavy artillery. Coote examined the position for an hour under a heavy fire, and then ordered Major-general James Stuart to turn the enemy's right upon the sandhills and attack him in flank. Stuart advanced at 4 p.m. and was twice repulsed, but at last, aided by the fire of an English schooner, he was successful. Coote then ordered his first line under Major-general Munro to advance, and Hyder Ali was utterly defeated. Coote followed up his great victory by a series of successes. He joined Pearse at Pulicat on 2 Aug.; he took Tripassoor on 22 Aug.; and, with his army increased to twelve thousand men, he stormed Parambakam on 27 Aug., and defeated Hyder Ali on the very spot where but a year before he had captured Colonel Baillie's force. He continued his successes until 7 Jan. 1782, defeating Hyder Ali in four more regular engagements, and retaking fortresses from him, and then he was forced by ill-health to return to Bengal, handing over the command of the troops to Major-general James Stuart. His stay in Calcutta partially restored his health, but on his way back to Madras the ship he sailed in was chased by a French cruiser, which so upset his enfeebled frame that he died, two days after reaching Madras, on 26 April 1783. The victory of Porto Novo as surely saved Madras from Hyder Ali as Wandewash had saved it from Lally. Coote's body was brought back from India, and landed at Plymouth with great pomp on 2 Sept.; it was interred at Rockburne Church in Hampshire, close to his estate of West Park, where the East India Company erected a monument over it with an epitaph by Mr. Henry Bankes, M.P. Coote was married, but had no children, and left his vast property to his nephew, the second Sir Eyre Coote, K.B. [q. v.]
Colonel Wilks, in his ‘Historical Sketches of the South of India,’ thus shortly describes the character of Coote, under whom he served: ‘Nature had given to Colonel Coote all that nature can confer in the formation of a soldier; and the regular study of every branch of his profession, and experience in most of them, had formed an accomplished officer. A bodily frame of unusual vigour and activity, and mental energy always awake, were restrained from excessive action by a patience and temper which never allowed the spirit of enterprise to outmarch the dictates of prudence. Daring valour and cool reflection strove for the mastery in the composition of this great man. The conception and execution of his designs equally commanded the confidence of his officers; and a master at once of human nature and of the science of war, his rigid discipline was tempered with an unaffected kindness and consideration for the wants and even the prejudices of the European soldiers, and rendered him the idol of the native troops.’ His portrait still hangs in the exchange at Madras, and, when Colonel Wilks wrote, no sepoy who had served under him ever entered the room without making his obeisance to Coote Bahadur (Wilks, Historical Sketches of the South of India, ed. 1869, i. 251, 252).
[There is no good biography of Coote extant. For his Indian career, see all histories of British India, but more especially Cambridge's War on the Coromandel; Orme's History of the late Events in India; Wilks's Historical Sketches of the South of India; while a good modern account of the battle of Porto Novo is given in Malleson's Decisive Battles of British India.]