Page:History of the French in India.djvu/32

THE EARLY FRENCH IN INDIA. race, detesting strangers, and preferring savage freedom to foreign domination. By the bulk of these, the French settlers were received, from the very outset, with marked hostility. This feeling was increased to absolute hatred in consequence of the treacherous seizure and deportation to the neighbouring island of Mauritius, as slaves, of a number of natives who had voluntarily entered the limits of the French territory. This act was ruinous in its consequences to the French settlers. Not content from that time with repulsing every effort of the French to penetrate into the interior, the inhabitants, gaining boldness from success, assumed the offensive, and began in their turn to attack the wretched wooden stockades which the colonists had erected with infinite labour and expense, and had digni- fied by the name of " Forts." So numerous were the islanders, and so determinedly hostile, that the French experienced very great difficulty in offering to them an effectual resistance. The time and the labour employed in so doing drew them away almost entirely from culti- vation ; and, though they were ultimately successful in defending their forts, it was a success which was as costly as a defeat ; for it sank all the large sums which had been expended on the enterprise without the chance of a return. It would be surprising that, under these circumstances, and though the French India Company relinquished their claims to the island in 1672, the French Government should have continued to main- tain their hold of the seaboard several years longer, were it not for the fact that the retention at all costs of a portion of the country, was considered eminently desirable as forming a resting-place and a shelter in the long voyage to India. The ill-success of this enterprise was not, however, at once recognised in France, although for a time there appeared no desire to renew it. The long minority ot Louis XIV., the ministry of Cardinal Mazarin, with its