Page:History of the French in India.djvu/54

32 THE EARLY FRENCH IN INDIA. dhap. was the e ff ec t on the native merchants that when, a few ' years afterwards (1714), a company, formed at St. Malo, 1693. despatched ships to trade at Surat, the ships were seized and sequestered on account of the debts of the French India Company, with which that of St. Malo was in no way connected. In dealing with the French intercourse with this place we have advanced beyond the main point of the narrative ; but it is of the less consequence, as we shall have little further occasion to make any reference to Surat. The French factory at Machhlipatan was, as we have seen, founded by the Persian Marcara, in 1669, under a patent obtained from the King of Golkonda. Its trade at the outset was extremely flourishing; but the expulsion of the French from St. Thome, by the aid, it will be remembered, of the Golkonda army, was a heavy blow to its prosperity. It exerted for a long time after little political influence on the march of affairs. It revived, however, with the rise of Pondi- chery. In 1693, the French obtained permission to build a square, which is still in existence, and is known by the name of France pata. Machhlipatan became later one of the most important of the minor French settlements. To the circumstances connected with its rise we shall have occasion to refer further on. In the year 1663, Shayista Khan, the maternal uncle of the Emperor Aurangzeb, having been driven out of the Dakhan, and compelled to flee for his life by Sivaji, whom he had been sent to repress, was appointed, to compensate him for his humiliation, Subadar of Bengal. It was during his vice-royalty* that a French fleet entered the Hugli, and disembarked a body of settlers at the village of Chandranagar. This village was ceded to those settlers by an edict of Aurangzeb in 1688. Eight years later, Subhan Singh, a landed proprietor of Stewart, in bis History of Bengal, says "about the year 1676."