Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c56.s1.1

v4.c56.s1.1

Pierre-Francois Cuillier (who in India changed his name to Cuillier Perron, by which he is known) was born in Southern France and baptised on 6th August, 1753. Driven by poverty he enlisted in the French Royal service, first as a soldier, and later as a sailor in the East Indies. After running away from his ship when it touched at Pondicherry, he travelled to North India in search of fortune, and at first (in 1781) entered the corps which René Madec had raised and sold to the Rānā of Gohad. Its commandant at that time was a Scotsman named Sangster, a good mechanic. Perron had learnt the technique of casting guns, when a youth in France, and his first office was that of an artilleryman or at best an overseer in Sangster's cannon foundry.[*] When the Rānā of Gohad was crushed by Mahādji Sindhiā (in 1783), this corps was broken up, and Perron found employment in Lesteneau's battalion in the Bharatpur Raja's service, as a quarter-master sergeant on Rs. 60 a month (1784). When in January 1789, Lesteneau fled away with Ghulām Qādir's saddle-bags crammed with jewels looted from the Delhi palace, his sepoys mutinied for their