Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan.djvu/295



HE new year opened in the Carnatic with as little activity as the last had closed. The French troops remained in Pondicherry waiting the arrival of their expected armament from Europe, during which, Mr. Soupire, as he says in a memoir he has published, entered into a negociation with two Jemautdars of the English Sepoys to surprize Tritchinopoly, by means of the French prisoners. Four hundred were in confinement in the city, and 50 or 60 had at various times been received into the English service, and in the end of December, soon after Calliaud returned from Madrass, two of the enlisted Frenchmen accused one De la Forge, who had been accepted as a surgeon's mate, that he had tampered with them to concur in a project, by which the foreigners in the service of the garrison were to murder the English guards in the night, then open the prisons, arm the prisoners, and with their assistance, overpower the rest of the troops. Four other Frenchmen avowed the same conversation with De la Forge, who, with much obstinacy, denied that he had ever spoken one word to any one of them: he was however hanged two days after his trial. This might have been the first opening of Mr. Soupire's scheme, although he says nothing of it; but nothing was discovered of his conspiracy with the Sepoys, which he seems to have protracted until the end of April.

Ensign Banatyne at Outramalore, receiving intelligence that 200 of the French Sepoys at Carangoly had deserted on some dispute with