Part 4

On the 1st of January, a violent tempest of wind, accompanied by torrents of rain, had almost ruined the works of Coote, and blown the fleet off the coast. The French became elated by the delay this occasioned, and the consequent prospect of relief; but the sudden reappearance of Admiral Stevens with his vessels caused their hopes to fade away; and once more this little band of starving and desperate men betook them to their muskets and lintstocks; for, still pressing on, Coote, on the 29th, formed a fifth battery, called _the Hanover_, at only 450 yards' distance, for ten cannon and three mortars, which opened a fire of shot and shell against the counter-guard and curtain.

At last, being driven frantic by their sufferings, the soldiers and citizens demanded that the place should be surrendered. Lally was immovable, but yet feeling keenly for what they endured, dissatisfied with the state of the French Indian affairs, and greatly exasperated by the disorderly conduct of his troops, and the baseness of their commissaries, he frequently burst into passionate exclamations which showed the keenness of his agitation.

"Hell has spewed me into this country of wickedness," he said on one occasion, "and like Jonas I wait until the whale shall receive me into its belly!"

"I will go among the Caffres, rather than remain longer in this Sodom," he exclaimed on another occasion.

But, nevertheless, he still defended the town like a good soldier, and on the disappearance of the British fleet during the storm, wrote the following letter to M. de Raymond, the Resident at Pullicot:--

"M. Raymond, the English squadron is no more! Out of twelve ships they had in our roads seven are lost, crews and all; four others are dismasted, and it appears that only one frigate has escaped, therefore lose not an instant to send us chelingoes upon chelingoes loaded with rice. The Dutch have nothing to fear now; besides--according to the law of nations--they are only to send us no provisions _themselves_, and we are no longer blocked up by sea.

"The saving of Pondicherry has once already been in your power. If you miss the present, it will be entirely your own fault. Don't forget some small chelingoes--offer great rewards. I expect 17,000 Mahrattas in four days; in short, risk all! attempt! force all! but send us some rice, should it be but a half garse at a time.

"Lally.

"Pondicherry, 2nd January, 1761."

The British fleet suffered considerably; many vessels which had to cut their cables, were totally dismasted, and the _Queensberry_, _Newcastle_, and _Protector_ were driven on shore; while _Le Duc d'Acquitaine_ of sixty-four guns (French prize), commanded by Sir William Hewitt, Bart., and the _Sunderland_ of sixty guns, commanded by the Hon. James Colville, both foundered, and all on board perished. Captain Colville was the son of Lord Colville, of Culross, a Scottish peer, who died on the Carthagena expedition in 1740, and brother of Alexander Lord Colville, who in 1764 was Commodore in North America.

On the reappearance of Admiral Cornish with more of the fleet, the hope of the French sank again, and Lally, enraged at what he considered the mutinous repining of his soldiers, met their remonstrances with turbulence and contempt, and by an unwise, and perhaps over-strained exercise of authority, at this fatal and desperate crisis, most unfortunately contrived to render himself unpopular with the Governor, the Council, and the proud chevaliers of old France, who officered his little band of troops.

Still, however, the siege was pressed, and still the defence went on.

On the 5th January, Coote attacked the redoubt of San Thome, sword in hand, at the head of a body of Scottish Highlanders and English grenadiers, and won it, thus silencing four 28-pounders; but two days afterwards, Lally retook it by 300 grenadiers, from the sepoys who were left in charge of it.

On the 13th Coote sent 700 Europeans, 400 Lascars, and a company of pioneers under a major, to erect another battery of eleven guns and three mortars. Under the clear splendour of an Oriental moon, these works were carried on within 500 yards of the walls; and this _Batterie Royale_ was permitted to be erected without molestation, for in their sullen despair the garrison never fired a shot at it. On the 14th the _Hanover Battery_ ruined the north-west bastion, and on the following day the _Batterie Royale_ beat down the ravelin at the Madras gate; thus by the 15th of January a great and practicable breach was effected, and the cannon of the gallant Lally were silenced or dismounted.

In the evening a parley was beat, and four envoys came from the ruined walls towards the British trenches. These were Colonel Dure (Durie?) of the French Royal Artillery, Father Lavacer, Superior of the Jesuits, and two civilians. These were unprovided by "any authority from the Governor," says Vicomte de Vaux; but Colonel Coote, in his dispatch to Mr. Pitt, affirms that they came direct from Lally with proposals for delivering up the garrison. In the town, at that moment, there were only three days provisions of the wretched kind described; thus the extremity of famine would admit of no hesitation. Rendered ungovernable by what they had endured, Lally's officers declared the defence to be frantic obstinacy, and murmuring aloud, also averred that illness, pride, and the climate had disordered his imagination; and that it was criminal rather than valiant to defend an untenable fortress.

The following were the proposals of Lally, presented by Colonel Dure to Colonel Coote:--

"The troops of the king and Company, by want of provisions, will surrender themselves prisoners of war to his Britannic Majesty, on terms of the cartel, which I claim equally for all the inhabitants of Pondicherry, as well as for the exercise of the Roman religion, the religious houses, hospitals, chaplains, surgeons, serjeants, reserving and referring myself to the decision of our two Courts, in proportion to the violation of a treaty so solemn. (He refers to the treacherous capture of Chandernagore.)

"Accordingly M. Coote may take possession of the Villenour Gate at eight o'clock to-morrow morning; and after to-morrow, at the same hour, that of Fort St. Lewis.

"I demand, merely from a principle of justice and humanity, that the mother and sisters of Raza Sahib may be permitted to seek an asylum where they please, or that they remain prisoners among the English, and not be delivered into the hands of Mohammed Ali Khan, which are still red with the blood of the husband and father, which he has spilt, to the shame of those who gave them up to him; but not less to the shame of the commander of the English army, who should not have allowed such a piece of barbarity to be committed in his camp.

"As I am tied up by the cartel, in the declaration which I make to M. Coote, I consent that the Council of Pondicherry may make their own representations to him with regard to what may concern their own private interests as well as the interests of the inhabitants of the colony.

"Done at Fort Lewis, Pondicherry, 15th day of January, 1761.

"Lally."

To these the Colonel replied briefly by stating that the capture of Chandernagore was beyond his cognizance, and had no relation to Pondicherry; that he merely required the soldiers of its garrison to yield as prisoners of war, promising that they should be treated with every honour and humanity; that he would send the grenadiers of his own regiment to receive possession of the Villenour Gate, and that of Fort St. Lewis; and that according to the kind and humane request of M. Lally, the mother and sisters of Raza Sahib should be escorted to Madras, and on no account be permitted to fall into the hands of their enemy, the Nabob Mohammed Ali Khan.

To eight articles proposed by Father Lavacer, Superior of the Jesuits, requiring that the inhabitants should be treated in every respect like subjects of his Britannic Majesty; that they should have full liberty to exercise the Catholic religion; that the churches should be rejected; that all public papers should be sent to France; and that forty-one soldiers of the Volunteers of Bourbon should be permitted to return to their homes--Colonel Coote declined to make any reply.

At eight o'clock on the morning of the 16th July, Lally with a bitter heart ordered the standard of France to be hauled down on Fort St. Lewis, and at that hour Coote's grenadiers received the Villenour Gate from the Regiment de Lally, while those of the 79th Regiment took possession of the citadel.[2] Thus fell Pondicherry after a blockade and siege which Lally's skill and valour had protracted under a thousand difficulties for the long period of eight months, against forces treble in number to those he commanded.

Notwithstanding his fallen condition and the severe effects of a long illness, aggravated by the sultry climate, by bodily sufferings and anxiety, Lally marched out of the citadel with the air of a conqueror. "He is now as proud and haughty as ever," says an officer (who beheld him) in a letter to a periodical of the time; "but his great share of wit, sense, and martial ability are obscured by a savage ferocity, and an undisguised contempt for every person below the rank of general." This writer was ignorant of the high qualities of Lally, and the difficulties with which he had contended, or he would never have written thus.

According to the "_exact state of the troops of his most Christian Majesty, under the command of Lieutenant-General Arthur Count de Lally, when he surrendered at discretion on the 16th of January, 1761,_" he marched out with the following--a miserable and famished band, hollow-eyed and gaunt--the few survivors of the Indian war:--

Artillery of Louis XV., officers and men 83 The Regiment de Lorraine, ditto 327 The Regiment de Lally, ditto (of the Irish Brigade) 230 The Regiment of the Marine, ditto 295

Artillery of the French India Company 94 Cavalry of ditto 15 Volunteers of Bourbon 40 The Battalion d'India 192 Invalides 124

In all there were only 1400. One of their first acts was to cut their commissary to pieces. Among the officers of the king's artillery was Jean Baptiste Louis Romee de l'Isle, the celebrated crystallographer, who was then secretary to a corps of engineers. The quantity of military stores delivered over by Lally to Coote is almost incredible.

There were 671 brass and iron cannon and mortars; 438 mortar-beds and carriages; 84,041 shot and shell, round, double-headed, and grape; 230,580 lbs. of powder; 538,137 rounds of cartridge for arquebuses, muskets, carbines, pistols, and gingals; 910 pairs of pistols; 12,580 other firearms; 4895 swords, bayonets and sabres; 1200 poleaxes, and every other warlike munition in proportion. Tidings of the fall of Pondicherry occasioned the utmost joy in Britain; and on Sunday, the 2nd August, there were prayers and thanksgiving in all the English churches.

On that day Lally arrived at Fort St. George a prisoner of parole. He had begged to be sent to Cudalore that he might have the attendance of French as well as British surgeons; but the Governor of Madras insisted upon his removal to that place, whither he conveyed him in his own palanquin.

A regiment of Highlanders garrisoned Pondicherry, and as Lally had destroyed many of the British fortifications, Colonel--afterwards Sir Eyre--Coote retaliated by blowing up the works and hurling the glacis into the ditch. The plunder acquired amounted to 2,000,000_l._ sterling. The quantity of lead discovered in the stores was immense. Lally found means to convey his own cash and Valuables (200,000 pagodas of eight shillings each) out of the garrison, but he was deprived of it by Coote's orders.

The plunder of the magnificent palace was a subject for regret to the officers who beheld it. It had been built by M. Dupleix, a former resident, at the cost of one million. On the same day that Lally surrendered, his Scottish compatriot, M. Law, on whose assistance he had for a time mainly relied, was defeated by Major Carnac.

M. Law was a nephew of the famous financial projector, John Law, of Lauriston, near Edinburgh, who, in 1720, was Premier of France, and Comptroller-General of Finance--the same whose desperate schemes brought the kingdom to the verge of bankruptcy. M. Law had made himself useful to the Schah Zaddah, son of the late Mogul, in supporting the young prince's hereditary claims, and enforcing his authority on the provinces of the empire. With 200 Frenchmen (principally fugitives from Lally's outposts) he persuaded the schah to turn his arms against Bengal; and accordingly the young and rash prince entered that rich and fertile province at the head of 80,000 Indians, whose operations were directed by Law, and certain chevaliers his friends. In the eye of the British (who had then become the arbiters of Oriental thrones), the presence of the Scottish refugee and his followers was more prejudicial to the title of Zaddah than any other objection, and they joined the Subah of Bengal to oppose his progress. A battle ensued at Guya, when Major Carnac, with 500 British, 2500 sepoys, and 20,000 blacks, cut the vast force of the young prince to pieces, and took prisoner M. Law, with sixty French officers.

Soon after the fall of Pondicherry, the French settlement of Mahe, on the coast of Malabar, was reduced by Major Hector Munro, of the 89th Highlanders, who captured there 200 pieces of cannon, and thus the whole commerce of the mighty peninsula of India, from the point of the Carnatic to the banks of the Ganges, fell under the dominion of Britain, together with the extensive trade of the vast and wealthy provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orixa.

On the 3rd February, the nabob made his triumphal entry into Pondicherry, seated in a wooden castle on the back of a gigantic elephant, accompanied by twelve of his wives, escorted by British troops and by his own guards armed with lances, bows, and matchlocks.

Ultimately Lally received back his property, to the amount of 100,000_l._ in cash, and being brought to Britain a prisoner of war in H.M.S. _Onslow_, landed in September, 1761. He was confined for a time to a certain limit in Nottinghamshire; and on obtaining leave of George III. to depart, most unfortunately for himself, turned his steps towards France, the land of his father's adoption.

Having given his parole of honour to return whenever the British Government should require his presence, the count, on the 14th October, "after having discharged all his debts to tradesmen and servants" (as the London papers of the time state), sailed for France.

Notwithstanding the long and gallant defence he had maintained at Pondicherry, thus affording the highest proofs of firmness and fidelity, bravery and activity, he was arrested soon after his return, and committed to that prison of so many terrible memories--the Bastille--accused of many grievous things by the Government, which now instituted a severe inquiry into the conduct of the civil and military officials who had commanded in Canada, the Carnatic, and other possessions taken by Britain.

Among the charges brought against Lally were, betraying the interests of King Louis and of the French East India Company; abusing the high authority with which he had been invested; unwarrantable exactions from the subjects of his most Christian Majesty, and from foreigners resident in Pondicherry; for _permitting_ that place to fall into the hands of the British; and generally for mismanaging the public affairs committed to his care.

In vain did this brave and unfortunate officer urge his many services, his many wounds, his grey hairs, his health broken by toil, by anxiety, and by a torrid clime, in the cause of France. In vain did he urge the numerous remonstrances he had sent to Paris, and Count d'Ache's detention of M. de Lequille's military chest; that at Madras he had resigned a desperate command, which the Chevalier des Soupirs declined to accept; in vain was the _protest_ signed in the hall of Fort St. Lewis adduced to show how his efforts had been baffled, and rendered more than futile, by the insubordination of Count d'Ache; in vain did he explain how the Marquis de Bussy had loitered in Arcot; that he had long and frequently been without pay and without provision for his troops; how the Rajah of Mysore had failed in his promises; how his soldiers had deserted, and how famine in the streets of Pondicherry was a source of deadlier fear than the British cannon-shot; how his detachment sent to Gingi had been cut off to a man; how Chandernagore had been taken by treachery, contrary to the faith of treaties and that neutrality which had subsisted between the French and British in India, and immediately after the former had rendered the latter a signal service in not taking part with the Nabob of Bengal. The weak Government of Louis XV. required a victim to satisfy the people; thus his defence was useless. Brigadier-General the Marquis de Bussy and Admiral Count d'Ache, whose honour and safety were chiefly interested in his condemnation, were the principal witnesses examined against him. He was detained for four years in a close prison, and, according to the cruel and barbarous laws then existing in France, "the bequest of ages of violence and anarchy," was _repeatedly tortured_. Though his infamous judges were convinced of his perfect innocence, yet it was stated that, in consequence of the severe conclusions of the Procureur-General against the Count de Lally, on the night of Sunday, the 4th May, 1763, he was removed from the Bastille to the prison of the Conciergerie, which adjoined the Court of Parliament.

"Though it was but one o'clock in the morning when he arrived at the Conciergerie (to quote the report of his condemnation), he refused to go to bed; and about seven he appeared before his judges. They ordered him to be divested of his red riband and cross, to which he submitted with the most perfect indifference; and he was then placed on the stool to undergo a new course of interrogation."

At that crisis a pang of bitterness shot through his heart; clasping his hands, and raising his eyes--

"My God!" he exclaimed; "oh, my God! is _this the reward_ of forty years faithful service as a soldier?"

The interrogatory lasted six hours, and D'Ache and De Bussy were successively examined against him. By nine in the evening the examination was over, and the count was re-conducted to the Bastille, surrounded by guards and several companies of the watch of Paris.

At six o'clock next morning the judges delivered their opinions, which were so various, that the clock of the Conciergerie struck four in the afternoon before they came to a conclusion and pronounced their _arret_ or decree, which contained a brief recital of the charges against De Lally, without specifying the facts on which they were respectively founded; but for the reparation of which it was declared that he should be stripped of all his civil titles, his military rank, and dignities; that all his property should be confiscated to the king; and that his head should be struck from his body on the public scaffold.

Without emotion the count had heard their sentence, and with the utmost resolution prepared to die; yet he was detained, hovering as it were between life and death, until the morning of the 9th May, 1766, when he was drawn on a hurdle to the _Place de Greve_, and hastily, almost privately, beheaded, with his mouth filled by a wooden gag, to prevent him addressing the people--thus adding another to the many barbarous judicial murders which disgrace the annals of France.

His son, Trophine Gerard, who had been kept at the College of Harcourt in entire ignorance of his birth and of the proceedings against his father, only learned all these secrets when the public interest and commiseration became too great to conceal them longer. On the 9th the poor boy learned that the great General Lally, who was to die, _was his father_. He rushed, as he tells us, to the place of execution to bid this father, so recently found, "an eternal adieu--to let him hear the voice of a son amid the voices of his executioners, and embrace him on the scaffold when he was about to perish;" but he arrived only in time to see the axe descending and his father's blood pouring from a dismembered trunk upon a sanded scaffold. Overcome with horror, Trophine--afterwards the great Count Lally Tollendal--swooned in the street, and was borne away insensible to the College of Harcourt.

Thus in his sixty-fourth year terminated the eventful career of Count Lally, the victim surrendered by a weak and tyrannical ministry to popular clamour, affording by his fate a memorable instance of the injustice, ingratitude, and barbarity of the Court of Versailles.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The MS. original of these interesting instructions was presented to Charles Grant, Viscount de Vaux, by the directors of the English East India Company.]

[Footnote 2: The 79th, or Draper's Regiment, lost in this siege, and encounters before it, thirty-four officers, whose names were inscribed on a beautiful cenotaph, erected on Clifton Downs by Colonel Sir W. Drapes and which he dedicated as,

"Sacred to the Memory of those departed Warriors, Of the Seventy-ninth Regiment, By whose Valour, Discipline, and Perseverance The French land Forces in Asia were first withstood and repulsed."]

JOHN CAMERON, OF FASSIFERN,

K.T.S.,

COLONEL OF THE GORDON HIGHLANDERS; SLAIN AT QUATRE-BRAS, 1815.

From among the many distinguished Scottish officers who served under Wellington, if we could select one for the delineation of his career, it would be John Cameron of the House of Fassifern and Locheil.

This brave soldier was the eldest of the seven children of Ewen Cameron, Laird of Fassifern (_i.e._ the Point of Alders), and his wife, Lucy Campbell, of Barcaldine, whose father succeeded to the estate of Glenure on the death of her uncle, Colin Campbell, who was shot at the Ferry of Ballachulish, in Appin, by Allan Breac Stewart, otherwise known as _Vic Ian_, _Vic Alaster_,--a crime for which the Laird of Ardsheil was judicially murdered by the Duke of Argyle at the Castle of Inverary.

Ewen Cameron was the son of John _the Tanister_, a younger brother of the great Locheil, who commenced the insurrection of 1745; and it is said that this powerful chief, on being summoned by Prince Charles to attend his memorable lauding in Moidart on the 25th July, was predisposed to warn him against the projected rising of the clans.

"If such be your intention, Donald," said John of Fassifern, "_write_ your opinion to the Prince, but do not trust yourself within the fascination of his presence. I know you better than you know yourself, and foresee that you will be unable to refuse compliance."

But Locheil preferred an interview with the Prince, and the event proved the truth of Fassifern's prophecy. He joined him immediately with all the clan Cameron, and the gallant revolt of the clans immediately followed. Fassifern was taken prisoner after Culloden, and was long detained in the Castle of Edinburgh; there he was kept so close that the year 1752 arrived, yet he heard nothing of the barbarous execution of his brother, the amiable and unfortunate Dr. Archibald Cameron, until one evening a soldier brought him a kettle with hot water. He took off a paper which was twisted round the handle, and found it to be the "last speech and dying confession, &c., of the traitor Archibald Cameron." He immediately ordered a suit of the deepest mourning, and on appearing in it before the authorities was brutally upbraided by the Lord Justice Clerk for putting on mourning for a traitor.