Page:History of the French in India.djvu/605

FINAL COLLAPSE OF THE FRENCH. 570 The fall of Pondichery was the natural precursor of c ^f* m the capture of the other places yet remaining to the ^-^^ French in Southern India. On February 4, Thiagar 1761. surrendered to Major Preston, and on the 13th, Mahe to Major Munro. Jinji presented greater difficulties than either of those places to an attacking force, but on April 5, the garrison, seeing the helplessness of its con- dition, surrendered on favourable terms to Captain Stephen Smith. Of the French troops in the service of the Company, 300 who were on detached duty at the time of the siege, under MM. Alain and Hugel, took service with Haidar Ali ; 100 were embodied in the English army, in which, however, they showed them- selves as mutinously disposed as when commanded by their own countrymen ; the remainder became prisoners of war. We have now brought to a conclusion the history of that stirring episode, adorned with so many brilliant names, and boasting of some of the most original and striking achievements ever performed on Eastern soil. Beginning with small means, then suddenly astonishing the world by its dazzling promise, the venture of the French in India was destined to end thus early, in humiliation and failure. It was the sad fate of France, in this, the most unfortunate of her wars, to be dis- graced on the Continent, and to lose simultaneously her possessions in the East and in the West. First, in en- deavouring to save Canada, she lost the best chance she ever had of conquering Southern India, for it cannot be doubted, but that the troops, the ships, and the money, which the French Government diverted at the last moment from Lally's expedition, would have sufficed to make him victorious everywhere on the Koromandel coast, might possibly even have enabled him to carry out his meditated designs upon Bengal. The diversion, whilst it caused the failure of the blow struck at English India, did not save Canada. After Canada rp 2