Dupleix

By Colonel G. B. Malleson

A biographical sketch of Joseph-François, Marquis Dupleix (1 January 1697 - 10 November 1763), Governor-General of French India, written by noted historian G. B. Malleson. He highlights the ‘system of Dupleix’ and his qualities, describing him as a great organizer, a man of comprehensive and accurate views and a man of resolute will.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Release date: Oct 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781787201460

Colonel G. B. Malleson

George Bruce Malleson (8 May 1825 - 1 March 1898) was an English officer in India and an author, born in Wimbledon. Educated at Winchester, he obtained a cadetship in the Bengal infantry in 1842, and served through the second Burmese War. His subsequent appointments were in the civil line, the last being that of guardian to the young maharaja of Mysore. He retired with the rank of colonel in 1877, having been created C.S.I. in 1872. He was a voluminous writer, his first work to attract attention being the famous “Red Pamphlet”, published at Calcutta in 1857, when the Sepoy Mutiny was at its height. He continued, and considerably rewrote the History of the Indian Mutiny 1857-8 (6 vols., 1878-1880), which was begun but left unfinished by Sir John Kaye. Among his other books the most valuable are History of the French in India (2nd ed., 1893) and The Decisive Battles of India (3rd ed., 1888). He authored the biographies of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, the French governor-general Dupleix and the British officer Robert Clive for the Rulers of India series. He died at 27 West Cromwell Road, London, on 1 March 1898.

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Text originally published in 1890 under the same title.

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DUPLEIX

BY

COLONEL MALLESON, C.S.I.

Author Of ‘The History Of The French In India’ Etc.

EDITED BY SIR WILLIAM WILSON HUNTER, K.C.S.I. M.A. (Oxford), LL.D. (Cambridge)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

AUTHOR’S NOTE 5

CHAPTER I—INTRODUCTORY 6

CHAPTER II—THE SYSTEM OF DUPLEIX 18

CHAPTER III—THE FIRST BLOW FOR PREDOMINANCE 24

CHAPTER IV—THE FLAW IN THE MACHINE 28

CHAPTER V—THE ENGLISH BESIEGE PONDICHERY 31

CHAPTER VI—THE ZENITH OF HIS SUCCESS 34

CHAPTER VII—THE ENGLISH ARE ROUSED TO ACTION 46

CHAPTER VIII—ROBERT CLIVE 51

CHAPTER IX—A GREAT MAN WRESTLING WITH FORTUNE 57

CHAPTER X—TOO HEAVILY HANDICAPPED 61

CHAPTER XI—THE FALL OF DUPLEIX 69

CHAPTER XII—THE FINAL COLLAPSE 75

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 84

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I have to acknowledge the obligations under which I am to the undermentioned writers: (1) Orme’s History of India; (2) Cambridge’s Account of the War in India, containing the Journal of Colonel Stringer Lawrence; (3) The Abbé Guyon’s History of the East Indies, 1757; (4) The Memoirs of Dupleix, and of Labourdonnais, and a contemporary Memoir of Lally; (5) Laude’s Le Siége de Pondichery en 1748, containing the Journal of Rangapoulé; and many modern works. I have also with me information which I gathered from Pondichery and Chandarnagar, relating to the events here recorded, during my service in India.

CHAPTER I—INTRODUCTORY

‘THE immense riches,’ wrote the Abbé Guyon in 1774, ‘which the Portuguese, the English, and the Dutch had drawn from the East Indies, invited the French to follow them in those remote and unknown countries, in order to partake of the advantages of which commerce was there productive.’ For many years, indeed, the ‘invitation.’ as the Abbé calls it, had dangled before the French people. For many years they had failed successfully to respond to it. In vain had Francis I in 1537 and 1543, and Henry III in 1578, exhorted their subjects to make long voyages. As these exhortations were unaccompanied by any promise of a State subsidy, as had been similar offers in the three countries which preceded France in the race for the commerce of the East, they produced no effect whatever. Nor was it till 1615 that a Company, which four years previously had obtained from Louis XIII letters patent for the monopoly of the Eastern trade for twelve years, stimulated by two merchants of Rouen, MM. Muisson and Canis, made a beginning by despatching two vessels to the Indian Ocean.

The vessels equipped and despatched by this Company touched indeed at Madagascar, but did not touch India. But the account they brought home of the riches of Madagascar stimulated to a certain extent the spirit of enterprise among the public, and to a still greater degree in the ruling circle, then directed by the illustrious Richelieu. On the 24th of June, 1642, that eminent statesman granted to a new Company the exclusive privilege of settling colonies in Madagascar and the adjacent islands, and taking possession of them in the name of the King of France. Richelieu died in December of the same year, and Louis XIII in May of the year following. But the idea had taken root, and on the 20th of September, 1643, the Council of Regency confirmed the privileges of the new Company.

Its success was but moderate. The Company did indeed effect a settlement on Madagascar, and every year of its existence it despatched thither at least one well-freighted trading vessel. For a time the proprietors hoped. The arrival of one ship laden with yellow sandal-wood, hides, aloe-wood, and gums, and of another bringing twenty-five tons of rock-crystal, kept up their spirits. But these were only transient successes, which were far from counter-balancing the losses sustained by wrecks and the insalubrity of the climate. When, therefore, the twenty years for which exclusive rights had been granted to it expired, the Company did not ask for a renewal of its privileges.

Its place, however, was at once occupied by a famous nobleman, who had won by his services in the field a dukedom and the baton of a Marshal of France. This was the Duke de la Meilleraye. He threw into the scheme all the ardour of his nature, but without success, and when he died in February, 1664, after ten years of commercial enterprise, he left behind him a record of failure.

At this crisis France was well served by the statesman whom Mazarin, in his dying moments{1}, had recommended to Louis XXV as his successor. The fertile mind of Colbert recognised not only the advantage but the necessity of pushing colonial enterprise. He had noticed with the deepest interest the success of England, Holland, and Portugal in that field. Why, he asked himself, should France fail where those powers had shown that it required but good direction to ensure success? In 1664, then, the very year that the death of the Duke de la Meilleraye had left the field open, he constituted a Company with a capital of fifteen million francs and a concession for exclusive trading for fifty years. So far he followed, on a larger scale, the lines on which his predecessors had marched. But his genius recognised that something more was necessary. He saw that the preceding French companies had failed because they had not had the backing which had made the success of the rivals of France. He therefore, to insure them against the losses which unless provided for might dishearten the proprietors, conceded to the Company an advance of three millions of francs, and charged the State with all the losses it might suffer during the first ten years of its existence. In order, moreover, to induce the nobility to participate in the scheme, Louis XIV, at the instance of his minister, issued an edict declaring that it was not derogatory to the nobility to take part in commerce with the Indies. That, moreover, he might the more certainly obtain the necessary subscriptions, Colbert inserted a clause in the articles by which foreigners were invited to subscribe to the funds of the Company, and were promised letters of naturalisation, free of any formality, provided that any of them should subscribe to the extent of ten thousand francs. Another clause provided that the directors of the Company should be chosen exclusively from the mercantile class, inclusive of foreign merchants, on the conditions regarding the latter, that their money-interest in the Company should be considerable, and that they and their families should reside in France. The statutes of the Company are forty-seven in number. They assure to the Company full power and jurisdiction over Madagascar and all the territories its servants might conquer or occupy, and they contain a promise to defend those places against a foreign enemy with all the force of France. The ordinance was dated August, 1664, and was registered in the parliament in September. Before, however, that registration had taken place, the King, on his own authority, had given an order on the royal treasury for three hundred thousand francs, to be paid into the coffers of the Company.

The wise provisions of the Minister met with success. The money came in rapidly, and in March of the following year (1665), four ships of the new Company, partly armed as ships of war, and carrying 520 men, sailed from Brest for Madagascar. The idea of the Company was to establish on that island a settlement which should serve as a half-way house to India. To this end they offered all sorts of inducements to adventurous natures. They affixed to the walls of the principal cities and towns of France notices wherein they declared that they had resolved to make those who settled in the Colony proprietors of as much land as they, their families, and their servants could till. These notices contained a glowing description of the Ile Dauphine—for such was the new name given to Madagascar—stating that the climate was ‘very temperate,’ that ‘two-thirds of the year are like spring;’ that ‘the other third is not hotter than the summer of France;’ that people lived there ‘to the age of a hundred, and even of a hundred and twenty;’ that ‘fruits were good and plentiful;’ that there were ‘quantities of oxen, cows, goats, hogs, and other cattle;’ that there were ‘gold, silver, lead, cotton, wax, sugar, tobacco, black and white pepper, ebony, dyeing-wood of all sorts,’ and other merchandise; and that it was not even necessary that the settler should himself work to obtain all these things, All that was required of him was to set to work the negroes, ‘who are docile, obedient, and submissive,’ to gain all that he required. Probably a description more glowing of an island, but one small extremity of which had been explored, was never forced on the attention of any people.

But in spite of these glowing pictures, the colony at Madagascar, as I shall continue to call the island, did not prosper. The adventurers who accepted service under the Company found that the natives, far from being willing to work for them, were actually hostile; that the climate was not only far hotter than that of France, but at certain seasons was actually deadly; that the soil was only moderately fertile; and that many of the richer merchandise promised in the notices existed only in the fertile imaginations of those who had drawn them. After many years of striving against the natives and the climate, the colonists who survived packed up their household goods, and migrated to the neighbouring islands of France and Bourbon, which, discovered and abandoned by the Portuguese, occupied and abandoned by the Dutch, and then nominally taken possession of by France (1649), had remained unoccupied by Europeans until 1672. In that year the baffled colonists of Madagascar, inconsiderable in number, took possession of them, and formed there the nucleus of a settlement which was one day to be powerful.

But the attempts made to colonise Madagascar had not exhausted all the resources of the French Company. Colbert had recognised that the special requirement to ensure success was a man. Hitherto the chiefs of the exploring expeditions had been mere machines. He wanted a man who could think and act for himself, who had a brain to devise and a strong will to execute his daring plans, and who should be, at the same time, patient, laborious, and steadfast. Such a man he believed he had found in 1666 in Francis Caron. Caron, though of French origin, had been born in Holland, and had risen to a high rank in the service of the Dutch East India Company. He was a self-made man who had risen by force of character, and who, on being refused by his masters a post of the highest importance in Batavia, had resigned all his appointments, and tendered his services to Colbert. Colbert accepted them with alacrity, nominated him Director-General of French commerce in India, and despatched him with a new expedition to the Indian seas at the beginning of 1667.

Caron touched at Madagascar. He found the colonists there in a condition so deplorable, that recognising the place to be impossible for the purposes for which it had been originally destined, he did not waste his time there, but pushed on for India. On December 24th of the same year he touched at Cochin, proceeded thence to Surat, and established there the first French factory in India. Caron had brought with him a Persian called Mercara, in the hope of being able to communicate through him with the native rulers of the adjoining territories. He at once employed Mercara on this service; sent him to the court of the King of Golconda with a request that he might be granted all the trading privileges conceded to foreign nations, and that he might be allowed to establish a settlement at the town of Masulipatam. Whilst Mercara was on this mission Caron busied himself at Surat, and sent thence to Madagascar a valuable cargo. The news of this success was received with enthusiasm in France, and Louis conferred upon Caron the riband of St. Michael.

Meanwhile Caron’s agent, Mercara, had obtained all that he asked for at Golconda, He had the usual difficulties to contend