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Frederick, too, saw the advantage of possessing a fleet, but he had his hands full with France and Russia, and reluctantly had to decline the offer of the French naval hero, Labourdonnais, to build him a battle-fleet. At this period, and in the Great Elector's time, Emden was the Plymouth of Prussia.
Meanwhile Captain Peyton, having repaired his ships, was unaware of what had happened at Madras, and sailed from Ceylon to Bengal, without touching at Fort St. George. Possibly he was lured to Bengal by bogus messages of French origin; for, as soon as he was out of the way, Labourdonnais reappeared off Madras, better prepared than before.
In the beginning there were several engagements at sea between a French squadron under Labourdonnais and an English squadron under Captain Peyton. The English squadron was worsted, and had to put into Trincomalee Harbour, in Ceylon, to refit.
As soon as the war of the Austrian Succession broke out the superiority of the French in power and influence tempted them to expel the English from India. Labourdonnais, the governor of the French colony of the Mauritius, besieged Madras, razed it to the ground, and carried its clerks and merchants prisoners to Pondicherry.
Thereupon Labourdonnais, after making quick preparations at Pondicherry, sailed for Madras; and the alarm in the Fort and in the city must have been great when his ships appeared off the coast and proceeded to bombard the settlement. His guns, however, did but little damage, and the citizens woke up the next morning to find, to their great content, that the enemy had sailed away during the night.
There was, however, a foundation in fact, quite enough for the purpose of a prose poem, in the loves and deaths of Paul and Virginia: it is doubtless the island scenes alone that Mr. Pike would satirize. The great shipwreck was in 1744, a year of famine, which the wise and prudent French governor, the most able man who ever adorned the colony, M. Mahé de Labourdonnais, was unable to avert.
Labourdonnais, the governor of the French colony in the Mauritius, suddenly appeared before Madras, and, as the town and fort were not prepared for defence, both were surrendered on honorable terms. But Dupleix, the French governor of Pondicherry, denying the right of Labourdonnais to grant any terms, refused to ratify the capitulation, and directed Madras to be razed to the ground.
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