In September 1746, the Anglo-French war began off the Coromandel coast. Commodore Barnett was dead by then and was succeeded by Captain Peyton. When the French fleet that was sent to attack Madras came face to face with Peyton, he panicked at seeing their new row of guns and fled the battle, heading for Bengal. When the British fleet did not reappear, the French fleet under Bourdonnais approached Madras and opened fire. The three hundred men in the fort were hardly fighters. A stray French shot opened the locks of an arrack godown and the British troops proceeded to get themselves drunk.
The Nawab once again asked Dupleix not to attack the British. To this diktat, Dupleix airily replied that he was planning to capture and then hand over Madras to the Nawab. Five hundred French troops, alighting from their ships led the force and called for the surrender of Madras. The British Governor Morse, not the most active of men, asked the Nawab for help. Meanwhile, the French attacked. The firing from land forces and from the sea unnerved the British and Morse decided to negotiate with the French.
A daughter of Madame Dupleix who was married to an Englishman lived in Madras, and she wrote to La Bourdonnais that Morse was ready to talk of surrender. The French occupied the city of Madras on 21 September 1746. La Bourdonnais seemed to be willing to settle for a ransom from the British for the city, and began negotiating the amount with a private gift for himself. La Bourdonnais, interested in loot rather than establishing a long-term political state, had thoroughly looted the village of St Thome along with his brother.
Even the capture of Madras did not really spur the French into making any plans to build an Indian Empire. The entire focus then was to secure an advantage in trade over the British. Bourdonnais was seriously contemplating selling Madras back to the British. His relations with Governor Dupleix, however, were far from cordial. Dupleix refused to acknowledge the Naval chief as his equal. When his victorious ships reached Pondicherry, Dupleix – by firing only fifteen guns in welcome – signalled his own superior rank to Bourdonnais. This led to acrimony between the Governor and the chief of the Navy, at a time when the French needed unity of command. An incisive observation by Ananda Ranga Pillai in his diary says, “The Governor and he entertain a mutual dislike for one another. The former is aggrieved because M de la Bourdonnais does not regard himself as his subordinate, maintains a guard of honour of troopers, keeps at his residence a party of soldiers and troopers, and conducts everything independently, and without consultation with him, whilst M de la Bourdonnais holds that he is on a par with the Governor, and is consequently entitled to all the honours accorded to that functionary.”
The dispute between the Governor and Bourdonnais was eventually settled with an early onset of the northeast monsoon that wrecked the French ships and drowned 1200 men, effectively ending Bourdonnais’ power-base. Leaving Madras in the hands of Dupleix’s troops, La Bourdonnais sailed back to the Isle of France, ending his involvement in Indian affairs. On his way home, Bourdonnais was even taken prisoner by the British. Later, he was paroled and sent to France, where he was charged with maladministration and imprisoned for three long years in the Bastille. He died shortly after his release in 1753.
The capture of Madras had raised French hopes. Dupleix himself wished the destruction of British trade in India. However, he had disobeyed Anwaruddin Khan and feared an attack. And on the departure of the French fleet, Dupleix feared a British reprisal. He considered a complete removal of British interests on the east coast, therefore, as the best way forward.
Dupleix cancelled La Bourdonnais’ treaty for the handover of Madras and transferred all the British to Pondicherry. Among the British prisoners was young Robert Clive. When La Bourdonnais’ agreement about Madras was cancelled, Clive broke his parole and escaped from Pondicherry to reach Fort St David, a small British fort near Cuddalore just a few miles from Pondicherry. Ironically, this place had once been offered for sale to the French by the Maratha ruler Rajaram in 1690. They did not have the money to pay for it and the British merchants quickly moved in to buy from the Marathas. It was here that Clive joined other Englishmen in preparations to defend themselves from another assault by French troops. To kill British trade, Dupleix also tried to remove all the traders at Madras to Pondicherry with their goods. Although this did not meet with success, French officials enriched themselves with the plunder of Madras.
To be continued…
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