Siege of Pondicherry (1793)

Last updated

Siege of Pondicherry
Part of the French Revolutionary Wars
Pondicherry1778.jpg
Defences of Pondicherry, 1778
Date1–23 August 1793
Location
Pondicherry, French India
11°55′48.00″N79°49′48.00″E / 11.9300000°N 79.8300000°E / 11.9300000; 79.8300000
Result British victory
Belligerents
Union flag 1606 (Kings Colors).svg  Great Britain Flag of France (1790-1794).svg  France
Commanders and leaders
Colonel John Braithwaite
Rear-Admiral William Cornwallis 		Colonel Prosper de Chermont
Strength
1,659
Casualties and losses
93 killed, 131 wounded Negligible losses, all captured. Pondicherry surrendered.
Puducherry District Outline.png
Red pog.svg
class=notpageimage|
Location within Puducherry
India relief location map.jpg
Red pog.svg
Siege of Pondicherry (1793) (India)

The siege of Pondicherry was a colonial military operation in the early stages of the French Revolutionary Wars. Britain and France both controlled colonies on the Indian Subcontinent and when the French National Convention declared war on Britain on 1 February 1793, both sides were prepared for conflict in India. British India was centred on the principal ports of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, administered by the East India Company. French India was governed from Pondicherry (modern Puducherry) on the Coromandel Coast. British forces in India were considerably stronger than the French, with the British Indian Army supported by British Army detachments and a Royal Navy squadron under Rear-Admiral William Cornwallis. Pondicherry's defenses were strong, but the garrison was too small to effectively man the walls, and although a French frigate squadron was stationed at the distant Île de France, it was unable to effectively protect the French Indian coast.

Contents

News of the outbreak of war took five months to reach the Indian Ocean but British forces, recently engaged in the Third Anglo-Mysore War, were mobilised in preparation and immediately seized the ports of French India. Only Pondicherry was able to resist, and a siege was instigated on 1 August 1793 by Colonel John Braithwaite while Cornwallis imposed a naval blockade. British forces constructed trenches and batteries, often under heavy fire, over the following weeks. Twenty days after the city was cut off, Braithwaite began a bombardment of the defences. Within hours the French commander Colonel Prosper de Chermont requested a truce, followed the next morning by an unconditional surrender.

Background

In the 1790s Great Britain was the largest colonial power on the Indian Subcontinent, its administration based at the port of Calcutta in Bengal, supported by the cities of Madras and Bombay and a network of subsidiary coastal trading stations. [1] The administration of British India was largely delegated to the East India Company, which maintained the standing British Indian Army supported by detachments from the regular British Army. This force had been heavily engaged in the Third Anglo-Mysore War of 1789 to 1792. Naval support was provided by a squadron under Rear-Admiral William Cornwallis in the frigate HMS Minerva, which had blockaded Tellicherry during the Mysore War. [2]

The French military position in India was considerably weaker than the British, with no significant investment in the colonies since the outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1754. [3] The French held a number of small trading ports, including Karaikal, Yanam, Mahé and Chandernagore but the most important colony was at Pondicherry, close to Madras. [4] Pondicherry was formidably fortified, the extensive and modern defences designed by Camille Charles Leclerc, Chevalier de Fresne, but the garrison was far too small to effectively man the walls in the face of a determined siege. [4] The French Navy presence in the Indian Ocean at the outbreak of war comprised the two frigates Cybèle and Prudente under Contre-amiral Saint-Félix but were not based in India at all, but on the distant Île de France (modern Mauritius). [5]

Tensions in Europe had been steadily mounting since the French Revolution of 1789 and in 1792 the French Revolutionary Wars began with war between the new French Republic and the Austrian and Prussian Empires. Great Britain was not initially engaged in this conflict, but diplomatic relations with France were rapidly deteriorating. On 1 February 1793, shortly after the execution of the deposed King Louis XVI, the French National Convention declared war on Britain and the Dutch Republic. [6] Due to the long distances involved, it took five months for news of the outbreak of war to reach India, passing through the British consul at Alexandria, George Baldwin. On 2 June the news arrived at Madras and passed to Calcutta on 11 June. [7] The Governor-General of India Lord Cornwallis issued instructions for operations against the territories of French India. Lord Cornwallis, brother to William, originally intended to participate in the surrender of Pondicherry himself in the seized French merchant ship Bien Aimé, but was eventually dissuaded. [8]

Siege of Pondicherry

Admiral Cornwallis was anchored at Trincomalee in Dutch Ceylon when he learned of the outbreak of war on 19 June. He immediately gave orders to sail for Pondicherry, which he placed under blockade. Shortly afterward he captured a merchant ship carrying ammunition supplies to the French port and, after a brief stop at Madras, Minerva and three accompanying East Indiamen captured the French privateer Concorde leaving Pondicherry on 3 July and seized a snow in the roads on 9 July. [8] On 13 July sails appeared to the southeast, and Cornwallis assumed they belonged to British reinforcements. On investigation, however, this ship proved to be the 40-gun Cybèle and three smaller vessels, carrying supplies and a unit of artillerymen to Pondicherry to reinforce the garrison. [9] On closing with the French frigate, Cornwallis discovered that the East India Company ships supporting his blockade had become scattered, and in the delay gathering them Cybèle escaped pursuit. [10]

On land, the army at Madras was placed under the command of Colonel John Braithwaite. After assembling his forces at Wallyabad, Braithwaite marched on Pondicherry, occupying Villenore to the southwest and Arian Coupang to the south, cutting off the garrison from the supporting hinterland of the city. [10] On 28 July, Braithwaite reached the city and established positions on the Red Hill overlooking Pondicherry, sending a demand to its commander Colonel Prosper de Chermont that he surrender. The demand was refused, and Braithwaite ordered detachments from the 71st and 74th Regiments of Foot to occupy positions to the south of the city's walls on 30 July, a manoeuvre which prompted heavy fire from the bastions. This move was however a feint, Braithwaite planned to launch his main assault on the northeast corner where the defences were weaker and the ground drier. [10]

Attempts were then made to establish batteries to the west and north of the city, but these efforts were hampered by heavy rain, delaying the construction of defensive earthworks which allowed the garrison to maintain a constant fire on the work parties, which suffered consequent casualties. Fire was especially heavy against the siege lines to the north of the city, which were easily targeted by the French gunners on 12 August. [10] Operations to establish batteries on this front continued for several days even as losses mounted; on 15 August, Lieutenant Colonel George Maule, Braithwaite's chief engineer, was killed by cannon fire while returning from a night inspection of the trenches. On the night of 21 August the main battery, known as the Royal Battery, came under heavy shellfire and was damaged, but repairs were successful and on the morning of 22 August its 24-pounder long guns opened return fire on the city. [10]

Within hours of the first shots from the Royal Battery, the French defenses opposite fell silent, the only return fire coming from more distant flanking batteries. British fire intensified at noon when a battery of mortars opened a bombardment, and at 16:30 flags of truce were raised over the city's bastions. de Chermont's offer requested a 24-hour ceasefire to negotiate terms, but Braithwaite allowed only until 08:00 the following morning, during which time the construction of British earthworks would continue. [10] de Chermont, isolated and unsupported, accepted the terms, and the following morning Braithwaite's army entered the city and took possession, although the French garrison had seized liquor supplies during the night and were too drunk to surrender formally. [10]

Aftermath

British losses during the siege of 88 killed and 131 wounded were relatively heavy; French casualties were not recorded but were thought to be negligible as few defenders were exposed to British fire during the only day of bombardment. Captured in the city were 645 French soldiers and 1,014 sepoys with 167 guns of varying sizes and materials and substantial quantities of ammunition. [10] Elsewhere the other French Indian colonies of Karaikal, Yanam, Mahé and Chandernagore all surrendered when summoned without conflict, assuring British dominance among the European powers on the Indian Subcontinent. [11] It has been noted that British naval forces in the Bay of Bengal were unusually weak during this period, Minerva the only warship on active operations, and had the French managed to concentrate their forces in the region they might have considerably extended the siege of Pondicherry and caused considerable damage to British merchant shipping in the region. [12] The French made no efforts to recapture their lost Indian territories during the war, but regained them under the terms of the Peace of Amiens in 1802. [13]

Citations

  1. ↑ Parkinson 1954, p. 13.
  2. ↑ James 2002, p. 119.
  3. ↑ Parkinson 1954, p. 11.
  4. 1 2 Parkinson 1954, p. 14.
  5. ↑ Parkinson 1954, p. 72.
  6. ↑ Chandler 1999, p. 373.
  7. ↑ Parkinson 1954, p. 60.
  8. 1 2 Parkinson 1954, p. 61.
  9. ↑ James 2002, p. 120.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "No. 13621". The London Gazette . 4 February 1794. pp. 115–119.
  11. ↑ Clowes 1997, p. 214.
  12. ↑ Parkinson 1954, p. 62.
  13. ↑ Chandler 1999, p. 10.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglo-Mysore wars</span> Conflicts mainly between the Kingdom of Mysore and the British East India Company (late 1700s)

The Anglo-Mysore Wars were a series of four wars fought during the last three decades of the 18th century between the Sultanate of Mysore on the one hand, and the British East India Company, Maratha Empire, Kingdom of Travancore, and the Kingdom of Hyderabad on the other. Hyder Ali and his succeeding son Tipu fought the wars on four fronts: with the British attacking from the west, south and east and the Nizam's forces attacking from the north. The fourth war resulted in the overthrow of the house of Hyder Ali and Tipu, and the dismantlement of Mysore to the benefit of the East India Company, which took control of much of the Indian subcontinent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811</span> Amphibious and naval operations by the British during the Napoleonic Wars

The Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 was a series of amphibious operations and naval actions fought to determine possession of the French Indian Ocean colonies of Isle de France and Isle Bonaparte during the Napoleonic Wars. The campaign lasted from the spring of 1809 until the spring of 1811, and saw both the Royal Navy and the French Navy deploy substantial frigate squadrons with the intention of disrupting or protecting trade from British India. In a war in which the Royal Navy was almost universally dominant at sea, the campaign is especially notable for the local superiority enjoyed by the French Navy in the autumn of 1810 following the British disaster at the Battle of Grand Port, the most significant defeat for the Royal Navy in the entire conflict. After their victory, the British used the original Dutch name of Mauritius for Isle de France. In 1814, Isle Bonaparte was returned to France, who eventually renamed it La Réunion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Madras</span> Part of Seven Years War

Madras, held by the British, was besieged between December 1758 and February 1759 by French forces under the command of Comte de Lally during the Seven Years' War. The British garrison was able to hold out until it was relieved.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Pondicherry (1778)</span> Part of the American Revolutionary War

The siege of Pondicherry was the first military action on the Indian subcontinent following the declaration of war between Great Britain and France in the American Revolutionary War. A British force besieged the French-controlled port of Pondicherry in August 1778, which capitulated after ten weeks of siege.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Tellicherry</span> Battle of the Third Anglo-Mysore War

The Battle of Tellicherry was a naval action fought off the Indian port of Tellicherry between British and French warships on 18 November 1791 during the Third Anglo-Mysore War. Britain and France were not at war at the time of the engagement, but French support for the Kingdom of Mysore in the conflict with the British East India Company had led to Royal Navy patrols stopping and searching French ships sailing for the Mysorean port of Mangalore. When a French convoy from Mahé passed the British port of Tellicherry in November 1791, Commodore William Cornwallis sent a small squadron to intercept the French ships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sunda Strait campaign of January 1794</span> 18th century conflict between British and French

The Sunda Strait campaign of January 1794 was a series of manoeuvres and naval actions fought between warships and privateers of the French Republic and a squadron of vessels sent by the British East India Company to protect trade in the region, later augmented by Dutch warships. The campaign developed as French forces based on Île de France reacted more quickly than the British forces in the Indian Ocean to the expansion of the French Revolutionary Wars on 1 February 1793. French privateers rapidly spread along the British trade routes in the Far East, becoming concentrated around the narrow Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies. These ships were soon joined by French Navy frigates and began to inflict losses on shipping in the region. The Royal Navy forces in the Indian Ocean were deployed elsewhere and so the East India Company, the private enterprise that ruled much of British India in the 1790s and maintained their own fleet and navy, raised a squadron of armed merchant ships to patrol the Strait and drive off the raiders.

The action of 5 May 1794 was a minor naval engagement fought in the Indian Ocean during the French Revolutionary Wars. A British squadron had been blockading the French island of Isle de France since early in the year, and early on 5 May discovered two ships approaching their position. As the strange vessels came closer, they were recognised as the French frigate Duguay Trouin, which had been captured from the East India Company the year before, and a small brig. Making use of a favourable wind, the British squadron gave chase to the new arrivals, which fled. The chase was short, as Duguay Trouin was a poor sailor with many of the crew sick and unable to report for duty. The British frigate HMS Orpheus was the first to arrive, and soon completely disabled the French frigate, successfully raking the wallowing ship. After an hour and twenty minutes the French captain surrendered, Captain Henry Newcome of Orpheus taking over the captured ship and bringing his prize back to port in India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of Calvi</span> Siege of the War of the First Coalition

The siege of Calvi was a combined British and Corsican military operation during the Invasion of Corsica in the early stages of the French Revolutionary Wars. The Corsican people had risen up against the French garrison of the island in 1793, and sought support from the British Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet under Lord Hood. Hood's fleet was delayed by the Siege of Toulon, but in February 1794 supplied a small expeditionary force which successfully defeated the French garrison of San Fiorenzo and then a larger force which besieged the town of Bastia. The British force, now led by General Charles Stuart, then turned their attention to the fortress of Calvi, the only remaining French-held fortress in Corsica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Siege of San Fiorenzo</span> Siege of the War of the First Coalition

The siege of San Fiorenzo was a British military operation, supported by Corsican partisans early in the French Revolutionary Wars against the French-held town of San Fiorenzo on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. The Corsican people had risen up against the French Republican garrison in 1793 after an attempt to arrest the Corsican leader Pasquale Paoli during the Reign of Terror. The French had then been driven into three fortified towns on the northern coast; San Fiorenzo, Calvi, and Bastia and Paoli appealed to the British Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet, commanded by Lord Hood, for assistance against the French garrison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Invasion of Ceylon</span> British takeover of the Dutch colony of Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka (1795–96)

The Invasion of Ceylon was a military campaign fought as a series of amphibious operations between the summer of 1795 and spring of 1796 between the garrison of the Batavian colonies on the Indian Ocean island of Ceylon and a British invasion force sent from British India. The Dutch Republic had been a British ally during the French Revolutionary Wars, but was overrun by the French Republic in the winter of 1794 and reformed into the client state of the Batavian Republic. The British government, working with the exiled Stadtholder William of Orange, ordered the seizure of Batavian assets including colonies of the former Dutch Empire. Among the first territories to be attacked were those on the coast of the island of Ceylon, with operations initially focused on the trading port at Trincomalee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Île Ronde</span> Part of the French Revolutionary Wars

The Battle of Île Ronde was a minor naval engagement between small French Navy and British Royal Navy squadrons off Île de France, now named Mauritius, in the early stages of the French Revolutionary Wars. The battle was fought over control of the waters around Île de France, which was under blockade from the British squadron as French warships and privateers operating from the island posed a significant threat to vital British trade routes connected to British India and China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Mahé</span> Minor naval engagement of the last year of the French Revolutionary Wars

The Battle of Mahé was a minor naval engagement of the last year of the French Revolution, fought on 19 August 1801 in the harbor of Mahé in the Seychelles, a French colony in the Indian Ocean. Since the demise of the French Indian Ocean squadron in 1799, the Royal Navy had maintained dominance in the East Indies, controlling the shipping routes along which trade flowed and allowing the rapid movement of military forces around the theatre. French First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte had long-harboured ambitions of threatening British India, and in 1798 had launched an invasion of Egypt as an initial step to achieving this goal. The campaign had failed, and the French army in Egypt was under severe pressure by early 1801, partly due to the presence of a British squadron acting with impunity in the Red Sea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">East Indies theatre of the French Revolutionary Wars</span>

The East Indies theatre of the French Revolutionary Wars was a series of campaigns related to the major European conflict known as the French Revolutionary Wars, fought between 1793 and 1801 between the new French Republic and its allies and a shifting alliance of rival powers. Although the Indian Ocean was separated by vast distance from the principal theatre of the conflict in Western Europe, it played a significant role due to the economic importance of the region to Great Britain, France's most constant opponent, of its colonies in India and the Far Eastern trade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Action of 28 February 1799</span> Minor naval engagement during the French Revolutionary Wars

The action of 28 February 1799 was a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought off the mouth of the Hooghly River in the Bay of Bengal between the French frigate Forte and the Royal Navy frigate HMS Sybille. Forte was an exceptionally large and powerful ship engaged on a commerce raiding operation against British merchant shipping off the port of Calcutta in British India. To eliminate this threat, Sybille was sent from Madras in pursuit. Acting on information from released prisoners, Edward Cooke, captain of Sybille, was sailing off Balasore when distant gunfire alerted him to the presence of Forte on the evening of 28 February. The French frigate was discovered at anchor in the sandbanks at the mouth of the Hooghly with two recently captured British merchant ships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Action of 9 September 1796</span> Anglo-French naval battle off of Sumatra

The action of 9 September 1796 was an inconclusive minor naval engagement between small French Navy and British Royal Navy squadrons off northwestern Sumatra, near Banda Aceh, during the French Revolutionary Wars. The French squadron comprised six frigates engaged in commerce raiding against British trade routes passing through captured parts of the Dutch East Indies, and posed a considerable threat to the weakened British naval forces in the region. The British force consisted of two 74-gun ships of the line hastily paired to oppose the eastward advance of the French squadron.

The action of 9 February 1799 was a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars between a British Royal Navy frigate and a French privateer frigate fought 100 nautical miles (190 km) west of the southeastern coast of what is now Natal in South Africa. The 32-gun French frigate Prudente had since the start of the war been part of a squadron operating from Île de France. This squadron had dispersed during 1798, with the ships sent on independent commerce raiding operations across the British trade routes in the Indian Ocean. Prudente had subsequently been seized in the autumn of that year by Anne Joseph Hippolyte de Maurès, Comte de Malartic, the Governor of Île de France, and sold to a private raiding company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Port Louis</span> Minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars

The Battle of Port Louis was a minor naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars, fought on 11 December 1799 at the mouth of the Tombeau River near Port Louis on the French Indian Ocean island of Île de France, later known as Mauritius. Preneuse had originally been part of a powerful squadron of six frigates sent to the Indian Ocean in 1796 under the command of Contre-amiral Pierre César Charles de Sercey, but the squadron dispersed in 1798 and by the summer of 1799 Preneuse was the only significant French warship remaining in the region. The battle was the culmination of a three-month raiding cruise by the 40-gun French Navy frigate Preneuse, commanded by Captain Jean-Matthieu-Adrien Lhermitte. Ordered to raid British commerce in the Mozambique Channel, Lhermitte's cruise had been eventful, with an inconclusive encounter with a squadron of small British warships in Algoa Bay on 20 September and an engagement with the 50-gun HMS Jupiter during heavy weather on 9–11 October.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Invasion of the Cape Colony</span> British invasion of the Dutch Cape Colony in 1795

The invasion of the Cape Colony, also known as the Battle of Muizenberg, was a British military expedition launched in 1795 against the Dutch Cape Colony at the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutch colony at the Cape, established and controlled by the United East India Company in the seventeenth century, was at the time the only viable South African port for ships making the journey from Europe to the European colonies in the East Indies. It therefore held vital strategic importance, although it was otherwise economically insignificant. In the winter of 1794, during the French Revolutionary Wars, French troops entered the Dutch Republic, which was reformed into the Batavian Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Invasion of Corsica (1794)</span> Action of the War of the First Coalition

The invasion of Corsica was a campaign fought in the spring and summer of 1794 by combined British military and Corsican irregular forces against a French garrison, early in the French Revolutionary Wars. The campaign centred on sieges of three principal towns in Northern Corsica; San Fiorenzo, Bastia and Calvi, which were in turn surrounded, besieged and bombarded until by August 1794 French forces had been driven from the island entirely.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Invasion of the Spice Islands</span> 1810 British military campaign in the Dutch East Indies

The invasion of the Spice Islands was a military invasion by British forces that took place between February and August 1810 on and around the Dutch owned Maluku Islands also known as the Spice Islands in the Dutch East Indies during the Napoleonic wars.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.