Cross Channel

Some times we wonder whether things would have panned out differently had some piece of the puzzle not fallen into place. Had the meteor not struck the earth would the world as we know it have been populated by a race of intelligent bipeds of reptilian ancestry- probably reading into the fossils of extinct mammals and wondering as to what these would have evolved into? If jimmy Connors had not lost to the great Arthur Ashe, would the record books have been rewritten?  The past is dead but never buried and its good as else it may well be forgotten. And the past is the lap where the present sprang from, about to do its share in shaping the future as evidenced in the works of many an enlightened mind. This tale concerns the fate of one such man, Count de Lally, often described as the Irish Frenchman. Fighting for his adopted country in a foreign land, he almost pulled off a breathtaking victory against the English East India company, and setting up an empire on Indian soil. Had he succeeded he would have completed the task that the peerless Joseph Francois dupleix had started. Instead, he was doomed to failure by a matter of timing and was hanged by the French government for his pains, which, had they succeeded have almost certainly ensured that these lines you are reading may well have been written in French. It was the period of the Carnatic wars  when the English and the French  were embroiled in a deadly war. After a series of reverses in the early phases of the carnatic wars, the English recovered lost ground under the able stewardship of Rober Clive, a clerk who rose to become on of the great leaders of the carnatic war era. de Lally ,a nobleman of Irish descent   was the man chosen at a late stage when the French were crumbling in India. His objective was to seize the initiative from the English by snatching Madras, the English bastion in south India, but being short of funds he decided to besiege Tanjore, and the delay in preparing his finances were instrumental in the English being better prepared. The delay was also compounded by the timely(If you are pro English )  arrival of the monsoons.

Madras in 1758 was divided broadly into two distinct parts. The "Black town", unfortified and the dominion of the natives of India,  and the "White town" , home to the Europeans,  Fort St George being the bastion. On 14 December, French troops entered the Black town unopposed, and finding it undefended, began to loot the houses, which is a common enough occurance in all wars. The English retaliated with a sortie , with 600 men under Colonel William Draper, attacking the scattered French. Bloody street fighting broke out which left 300 dead on each side, before Draper's men withdrew into the fort. While the result had been indecisive, and casualties even, the fight had a devastating effect on French morale. The two French commanders Lally and Bussy began arguing over the failure to cut off and trap Draper's raiding force. Lally fiercely criticised Bussy in public, but did not dismiss him from his post as second-in-command. It was an indication of the foul temper that didn’t endear de Lally to his colleagues, subordinates and certainly not his superiors and was not the first of such a series of unfortunate events.

As the French took up their positions around the city, read to besiege Fort St George, they were unable to open fire as they were still waiting for artillery ammunition to be brought up for the major siege guns.years earlier the same problem of shortage of supplies had haunted Hannibal barca from taking rome while he had the chance. For three weeks the guns stood silent, until on 2 January 1759 they began firing on the citadel. In spite of an intense five day bombardment, and several infantry assaults the French failed to make the breakthrough they were hoping to - as the British defences remained largely intact. A large mine was detonated under the fortress, but this made little impact on the defences. French morale fell further as they realised how little effect their attacks had had on the defenders. Many of the soldiers grew disgruntled and deserted, including 150 who switched sides to join the garrison. Lally was also facing an attack on his lines of supply by Muhammed Yusuf Khan the British Sepoy commander at Chingleput, the only force that had not withdrawn into Madras upon the approach of the French. Lally managed to beat off the British attack, but they still remained in the vicinity menacing his rear stealing much needed supplies and blocking the passage of many to his forces.

After several weeks of heavy bombardment, the French were at last starting to breach the town's defences. The main bastion had been destroyed, and a breach opened in the walls. The heavy exchange of fire had flattened much of Madras, with most of the town's houses gutted by shells.

On 30 January a Royal Navy frigate ran the French blockade and carried a large sum of money and a company of reinforcemnts into Madras. Significantly they brought the news that the British fleet under Admiral George Pocock was on its way from Calcutta. When Lally discovered this news he became aware that he would have to launch an all-or-nothing assault to storm the fortress before Pocock arrived. He convened a council of war, where it was agreed to launch an intense bombardment on the British guns, to knock them out of action.

On 16 February six British vessels, carrying 600 troops, arrived off Madras. Faced with this imminent threat Lally wisely took the immediate decision to  withdraw south. It marked the beginning of the end for the French cause in India.

 The rest as they say is history. De Lally was hanged upon his return to France on account of his failure. Success or failure is largely a matter of inches. And what may have well been the French empire in India never came into being. The following would have been the repercussions worldwide

1)    Well we would have become French in our tastes morals opinions and intellect.

2)    Legal system may well have been based on the French doctrine of guilty till proven innocent

3)    The heavy resources may have enabled France to avert the revolution

4)    If the revolution had taken place, Napoleon, who came much later may have garnered enough resources to decisively hold Europe – waterloo may never have happened.

The imponderabilia of history. Of course we will never know