Page:Dupleix and the Struggle for India by the European Nations.djvu/182

Rh Eyre Coote. The victory of the English was decisive. 'It dealt a fatal and decisive blow to French domination in India: it shattered to the ground the mighty fabric which Martin, Dumas, and Dupleix had contributed to erect: it dissipated all the hopes of Lally: it sealed the fate of Pondichery.' As an immediate consequence, Arcot, Devikota, Karikál fell into the hands of the English. In September Pondichery was invested. On the 15th of January following it surrendered. Lally, taken prisoner, was sent to England. Learning there that the most shameless charges were preferred against him by the Franco-Indian colony which had thwarted him in India, he asked and obtained permission to return to France to defend himself. But there the influences of the governing clique, always powerful, were too strong. He was condemned on the most casual evidence, and after three years of lingering agony was condemned to be beheaded. On May 8, 1766, he was transferred from prison to a dung-cart, and with a gag thrust into his mouth, was taken through the streets of Paris to the scaffold. The Directors of the Company of the Indies had prevailed against him as they had prevailed against Dupleix. It was not till some years later that the incessant exertions of his son, the famous Lally-Tollendal, obtained the rehabilitation of the memory of his father.

But there was yet to be another and a final attempt to restore the policy of Dupleix in Southern India.