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Updated: July 15, 2025
Just at this moment, the news came in that reinforcements from Pondicherry were marching to meet Riza Sahib at Arni, a place seventeen miles south of Arcot, twenty south of Vellore. It was stated that, with these reinforcements, a large sum of money was being brought, for the use of Riza Sahib's army.
It was clear enough to see for some distance, but Thaddeus Sholto took down one of the side-lamps from the carriage to give us a better light upon our way. Pondicherry Lodge stood in its own grounds, and was girt round with a very high stone wall topped with broken glass. A single narrow iron-clamped door formed the only means of entrance.
Orders were sent to Madras that Pondicherry should instantly be occupied. Near Calcutta, works were thrown up which were thought to render the approach of a hostile force impossible. A maritime establishment was formed for the defence of the river. Nine new battalions of sepoys were raised, and a corps of native artillery was formed out of the hardy Lascars of the Bay of Bengal.
After having doubled the shoals of La Fortune and Saya de Malha, and passed off the Seychelles, whilst among the atolls to the south of the Maldive Islands, which are level with the surface of the water and covered with bushy trees ending in a cluster of cocoas, they sighted the island of Ceylon and the Coromandel coast, and cast anchor before Pondicherry.
One of the French ships which were at anchor in the bay, was the Ajax Indiaman, bound to Pondicherry, commanded by Captain Crozet. He had been second in command with Captain Marion, who sailed from this place with two ships, in March 1772, as hath been already mentioned.
To the exchange of conquests between France and England was added the cession to France of the island of Tobago and of the Senegal River with its dependencies. The territory of Pondicherry and Karikal received some augmentation. For the first time for more than a hundred years the English renounced the humiliating conditions so often demanded on the subject of the harbor of Dunkerque.
"This house at Calcutta owes considerable sums both to me and our colleague at Pondicherry, and it is said that M. Tripeaud has involved himself to a dangerous extent in attempting to ruin, by opposition, a very flourishing establishment, founded some time ago by M. Francois Hardy, an eminent manufacturer.
"I wish to tell the story of a Frenchman, which I think will interest the party," said the professor. "Claude Martine was a Breton soldier who went with his regiment to Pondicherry, the principal French settlement in India, which has been tossed back and forth between the English, Dutch, and French like a shuttlecock, but has been in possession of my country since 1816.
I then reflected that since he had certainly been in London some time as we had evidence that he maintained a continual watch over Pondicherry Lodge he could hardly leave at a moment's notice, but would need some little time, if it were only a day, to arrange his affairs. That was the balance of probability, at any rate."
The fire of the siege-artillery scarcely reached the ramparts; the sallies of the besieged intercepted the communications between the camp and the squadron, which, on its side, was bombarding the walls of Pondicherry without any serious result.
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