40 CHAPTER II. THE rERFETUAL COMPANY OF THE INDIES. chap. Eight years after the death of Francis Martin the fifty
- , years' monopoly of the Company of the Indies, granted
1714. by Louis XIV. in 1664, came to an end. It was in- deed time. For several years the Company had been unable, in consequence of its numerous debts and its want of funds, to use the privileges with which it had been invested for its own advantage. Even so far back as 1682, being unable to purchase a sufficiency of goods wherewith to load its vessels, it had permitted private speculators to forward merchandise to India, on the sole condition that such merchandise should be despatched on board the vessels of the Company, and that it should be paid for as freight. In 1708, it allowed a M. Creuzat to equip two vessels under the name of the Company, on condition that he should pay it fifteen per cent, of the gross sum realised by the sale of his wares, and two per cent, on the product of the captures his vessels might make beyond the Line. The Company reserved to itself at the same time the right of retaining for its agents in India ten tons of the wares of Pondichery for the home voyage. These expedients, however, failed to produce such a return as would enable the Company either to pay its debts or to re-enter upon its legitimate trade. To such an extent did resources fail, that, in 1712, two years before the expiration of its charter, the Company was compelled to abandon entirely even the attempt to despatch vessels to the Indies, and to con- tent itself with giving up its rights in this respect to the merchants of St. Malo, in consideration of an
