Note 264 — BOOK IV

Thomas Arthur Comte de Lally, Baron Tolendal in Ireland (1702-1766), after contributing to the victory of Fontenoy (1745), was in 1756 appointed Governor of the French possessions in India and drove the English from the Coromandel Coast. He failed, however, before Madras, was himself besieged in Pondichéry, and obliged to surrender with a garrison of 700 men: he had resisted for several months against an army of 22,000 men and a fleet of 14 ships (1761). Nevertheless, he was accused of betraying the King's interests, sent to the Bastille and, after eighteen months' imprisonment and an informal trial, sentenced to death. He was executed on the 9th of May 1766. Voltaire published an eloquent factum in the condemned man's favour and, in 1778, Louis XVI., at the instance of Lally's son, the Marquis de Lally-Tolendal mentioned above, had the iniquitous verdict revised. The sentence was unanimously quashed by a new set of judges, and Lally's memory entirely rehabilitated.—T.