French occupation of Madras

Picture: Robert Clive

A French student I met the other day wanted to know whether I could tell him something about the French occupation of Madras in the first half of the 18th Century. 

That’s a long, long story which I’ll get to telling in this column in bits and pieces in the days ahead. 

But suffice it to say for now that the first of the Anglo-French conflicts in the Carnatic ended 265 years ago tomorrow with the English occupying San Thomé for the first time, taking it over from the French.

That conflict had begun with Adm. Mahé de la Bourdonnais capturing Madras on September 10, 1746 and agreeing to return it for ransom. Dupleix repudiated the agreement on October 30 but had to return the town to the English under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle signed by the English and the French in Europe on October 7, 1748.

 The rendition of the town to the English, however, was only on August 21, 1749. It’s a long, long complicated story that needs telling in parts, but while going through it to tell my French visitor the highlights, I came across the order making Robert Clive the Writer a soldier.

Before Fort St. George surrendered, many of its 300-strong garrison (100 of them incapacitated) and several civilians had fled to Fort St. David, Cuddalore, and there they had performed, under the leadership of the newly arrived commandant, Major Stringer Lawrence, much better than at Fort St. George.

 They beat off three French attacks successfully and held what was effectively the only English bolt-hole on the Coromandel. One of those civilians was Robert Clive. The Fort St. David Council in March1747 advised London: “Mr. Robert Clive, Writer in the Service, being of a Martial Disposition and having acted as Volunteer in our late Engagements,

 We have Granted him an Ensign’s commission upon his Application for the same.” Well thought of by his mentor, Lawrence, Clive was made Quartermaster in January 1749. A month later, however, he seemed to be in trouble.

The irascible, abusive chaplain of the fort, the Rev. Francis Fordyce, complained to the Council that Clive had physically attacked him. Clive deposed that Fordyce had publicly called him “a Scoundrel and a Coward”, had “shook his cane over him” in public, and threatened “to break every Bone in his Skin.”

 These “repeated abuses so irritated him that he could not forebear… to reproach him for his Behaviour… (and) thereupon struck him two three times with his Cane, which Mr. Fordyce returned, and then clos’d in with him, (till they were) parted…”

When Fordyce disputed the Council’s right to decide on the matter, he was dismissed for insubordination. 

The Council then wrote to London, “It is not to be doubted that Mr. Fordyce will set forth his story to your Honours, and least the same should be to Mr. Clive’s Prejudice, We think it not improper to assure You that he is Generally Esteem’d a very quiet Person, and no ways guilty of Disturbances.” 

No doubt too London looked on Clive with favour — thus enabling him to head for Arcot and fame.

H :Madras miscellany : S Muthiah :10 Nov 2014