Siege and Fall of Pondicherry
Pondicherry surrendered in January 1761 and French power in India ended with it. The town was the capital of the French establishments, a planned settlement with boulevards and a governor's palace, and it had been the base from which Dupleix had spent the 1740s demonstrating that European-trained sepoys could decide Indian dynastic quarrels. The war in the Carnatic had been decided at Wandiwash a year earlier, and what followed was a siege of eight months. The French position was hopeless for reasons that had nothing to do with the fighting. The Royal Navy controlled the sea after Pocock's actions off the coast, so no reinforcement or money arrived; Lally could not pay his troops, quarrelled with everyone including his own officers and the Jesuits, and had alienated the local population by seizing property. The garrison ate elephants and dogs before it capitulated with some 1,400 effective men left. The British then demolished the fortifications and much of the town systematically. Pondicherry was returned at the peace of 1763 as a trading station without troops or walls, which is the arrangement that mattered: France kept the buildings and lost the possibility of a state. Lally was sent home, tried in Paris for treason, and beheaded in 1766 with a gag in his mouth. Voltaire took up the case and had the verdict annulled after his death. The French position in India afterwards was five small enclaves without troops, and they remained French until 1954. Pondicherry today has boulevards on a grid, French street names and a police force in red kepis.
- Year: 1760 CE
- Category: Military
