Note 24 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
Possibly we may be allowed to doubt the validity of our author’s opinion on this point; it may be that the monarch of Cochin China in 1822, had heard of the drama of Constantine Phaulkon, M. Chaumont, and the Jesuits, which was acted by command of His Majesty the French king in 1688, at Bankok and Louvo.
For an account of the extraordinary alliance projected between the kings of France and Cochin China, and which was disconcerted only by the breaking out of the French revolution, see the historical sketch in Barrow’s Cochin China from p. 250 throughout. The political importance attaching to such a connexion is incalculable; every one must in this agree with the opinion of Mr. Barrow, that “it is difficult to say what the consequences of such a treaty might have been to our possessions in India, and to the trade of the East India Company with China; but it is sufficiently evident that it had for its object the destruction of both.”