Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c56.s3: § 3. Perron secretly turns against Sindhia
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c56.s3
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§ 3. Perron secretly turns against Sindhia
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When Perron returned from Ujjain to Aligarh in May 1802, he was seemingly at the height of his power. But he had already received at Sindhia’s capital clear proof that he could expect neither consistency nor gratitude from such a master, and that every Maratha minister and noble was his jealous enemy. Within a month of his return he received from Daulat Rao Sindhia peremptory orders to give up all the *mahals* in his possession not appertaining to his *jāidād*. Such an order highly displeased the General and he immediately sent in his resignation to Sindha (early in June), saying, “If Daulat Rao so wished he might reduce the military establishment of his 44 battalions, which cost 50 lakhs annually, . . . and likewise assign a *jāidād* for the payment of the same to some other officer who might be deemed competent to the command.” But Daulat Rao was in no position to part with such an army chief at a time when he was sinking deeper and deeper into the quick sand of his war with Jaswant Rao Holkar. [PRC. ix. 64, 65.]
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So, Perron continued to govern Sindhia’s northern dominions, and utilised the respite to pile up the fortune to be carried home. In May next year, when Daulat Rao had marched to Burhanpur and his war with the English loomed close ahead, Perron sent him a formal letter seeking permission to resign his office and return to France. At the same time he obtained the British commander-in-chief’s permission to proceed to Lucknow. In British official circles it was well-known in July that Perron “anxiously desired to retire to Europe with his wealth and to dispose of his actual command and of his territorial possessions to some person.” [*As. An. Reg.* for 1804, Country News, p. 7, *PRC.* ix. 119 and 221.]
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∗ “Sindhia’s repeated acts of treachery towards his sardārs have so completely disgusted and alarmed the old adherents of his family that, were it not for the support of the brigades commanded by the European officers, . . . his power would be soon annihilated.” Res. Collins to G.G., 9 June 1800. PRC. ix. 15.
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§ 4. Perron was no agent of the French Government
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Marquess Wellesley and his British admirers were not tired of saying that Perron was building up “a French State in the heart of India” with the aim of “extending it to the Satlaj and beyond”.* Such a theory ignores the practical, mercenary character of Perron and the basic facts of Indian geography. With all the Indian sea-ports under British control and the British navy dominating the Indian Ocean, Perron’s army isolated in the heart of North India, however initially supplied with European officers and military engines, would have had to live “in the air” and ultimately die of inanition.
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Napoleon and the Chauvinistic school of French writers have denounced Perron as a traitor to his native land. He was nothing of the kind. He had never written to the Government in France or to its representatives in India, offering himself as an instrument of French imperialist ambitions on the Indian soil, as René Madec had done repeatedly 25 years earlier. No official letter of the French ministers, no emissary of the Government of France, had succeeded in reaching Perron up to his surrender to the English (7 September 1803), while René Madec was in frequent correspondence with the ministers in Paris and the governors of the French settlements in India.* Marquess Wellesley himself admitted in a letter to Lord Hobart (20th November 1803), that Perron “had not yet been formally connected with the present Government of France.” [MM. iii. 467.]
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∗ Perron’s alliance with the Cis-Satlaj Sikh chieftains who hired his armed aid against George Thomas and their domestic enemies, was a purely mercenary contract. The idea that he was planning to found a French dominion in the Panjab beyond his Agra-Delhi charge is chimerical. After the fall of George Thomas (end of the year 1801), “Bourquien’s brigade overawed the Sikh country, and that bold brigadier was engaged in levying tribute from his recent allies [Sikhs], under the guise of collecting a contribution towards the expenses of the [late] war, so that the cost of expelling Thomas was defrayed by the chiefs of Patiala, Jind and Kaithai.” (Compton, p. 271.)
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In 1794 Pondicherry passed under English occupation and the French had not a single port left in India which could have enabled them to communicate with any Maratha court either directly or through anti-British States. In Dec. 1802 Tipu was dead, and the Nizām and the Peshwā were British vassals. Aboukir Bay had annihilated the French naval power in the Eastern waters (Aug. 1798); Napoleon’s land-route to India had been closed by Sir Sidney Smith at Acre (May 1799). Napoleon’s plan of smuggling a body of French trainers, munition-manufacturers, captains and gun-layers *viâ* Pondicherry to Sindhia’s camp, came too late for Perron, and it was nipped in the bud by the alertness of the British Governor of Madras and the sagacity of Marquess Wellesley.† No French governmental force in India could have been kept supplied with reinforcements of *matériel* and provisions from Home, so long as the English supremacy at sea was not broken,—and of breaking it there was not the faintest hope.
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∗ Full details of these intrigues are given with the texts of the letters in E. Barbé’s extremely valuable biography, *Le Nabab René Madec* (Paris, 1894).
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† On 11th July 1803, a French squadron arrived at Pondicherry from Brest, having on board General De Caen with a military force reported to number between 600 and 700 European troops. The officers were really designed for training and commanding new brigades for Sindhia, and the skilled mechanics for gun-casting and gun-laying; there was also a smail corps of administrative officers to look after the supply and other interests of the projected army. On 12th July one of these ships, the *La Belle Poule* landed at Pondicherry 24 military and 9 administrative officers and 160 white soldiers out of this corps. But in the night of the 13th, De Caen suddenly sailed away with the remainder of the force, on getting secret news of the rupture of the Peace of Amiens. The officers and men who had been landed were detained by the English as prisoners of war, and on 1st October the British again took over the control of Pondicherry and sent these French prisoners back to France. Lake had already stormed Aligarh fort on 4 September. MM. iii. 465, 659, iv. 660.