36 THE EARLY FRENCH IN INDIA. chap. Surat had become so unprofitable that it was resolved ' , to abandon the factory there. How the factory was 1697. abandoned, we have already seen. But, prior to that not very creditable episode, letters patent had been issued, by which the Superior Council of the Indies, as it was called, was transferred from Surat to Pondichery, and this place was made the seat of the Director or Governor-general, with supreme authority over the other French factories in any part of India. Almost im- mediately afterwards, Martin was appointed President of the Superior Council, and Director-general of French affairs in India.* Meanwhile, the affairs of the French Company in France, always badly managed, did not reap much advantage from the peace. Unable, from paucity of funds, to fit out trading expeditions of their own, they were compelled to have recourse to the system of sell- ing trading licenses to others. With funds and good management in Paris, and a Martin at Pondichery, the French might have established an inland trade in India, which it would not have been easy to destroy, and which would have immensely aided the ambitious projects of some of the successors of Martin. But at the close of the seventeenth century, the resources of the French Company were nearly exhausted. They struggled on, indeed, by means of the shifts to which we have adverted, for some time longer. But the material aid which they afforded to the settlement at Pondichery was of the slightest description. The traders who purchased their licenses made fortunes ; whilst the Directors of the Company which granted those licenses were just able by their sale to realise sufficient to keep their servants from starving. This was an immense misfortune at a time when the affairs of the Company were being managed in India by a man
- Letters patent signed by Louis XIV., dated February, 1701.
