After Waterloo: Reminiscences Of European Travel 1815-1819, By Major W. E Frye













































































































 -  De Boigne had quitted India in 1796, long before
this rupture took place, and at that time Scindiah had a - Page 114
After Waterloo: Reminiscences Of European Travel 1815-1819, By Major W. E Frye - Page 114 of 291 - First - Home

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De Boigne Had Quitted India In 1796, Long Before This Rupture Took Place, And At That Time Scindiah Had A Fine Regular Army Of Thirty Battalions Of 1,000 Men, Each Disciplined, Armed And Equipped In The European Manner.

He had likewise sixty squadrons of regular cavalry and a formidable train of artillery.

At Chambery I met with two French voyageurs de commerce, who with that positiveness, which is often the national characteristic, insisted that De Boigne owed his riches and fortune to his treachery, in having betrayed and sold Tippoo Saib to the English, when he was in Tippoo's service; and I find this is the current report all over Savoy.

Now it is an accusation totally devoid of foundation, as I shall presently show; and I took this opportunity of vindicating the reputation of De Boigne, by simply stating that De Boigne could never have betrayd Tippoo, since he was never in his service; 2dly, that he had, when in the service of Scindiah, fought against Tippoo, when the Mahrattas coalesced with the English against that Prince in 1792; and that had it not been for the assistance given by the Mahrattas to the English (a most impolitic coalition on the part of the Mahrattas, as it turned out afterwards), Tippoo would not have been compelled to conclude so humiliating a treaty of peace; 3dly, that De Boigne had quitted India in 1796, three years before the second war and death of Tippoo in 1799. I stated, too, that I was perfectly well acquainted with these particulars of De Boigne's career, from having served six years in India, and from having been personally acquainted with a gentleman of the name of Lucius Ferdinand Smith, who was the ultimate friend of De Boigne and his lieutenant general in the service of Scindiah; I added that I could not conceive how so unjust and unfounded an aspersion on De Boigne's character could find currency.

I hope that what I said will be effectual towards doing away this injurious report; but very probably it will not, for when the vulgar once imbibe an opinion, it is difficult to eradicate it from their minds, and they are not at all obliged to the person who endeavors to undeceive them, so that General De Boigne's treachery and sale of Tippoo to the English will be handed down to posterity among the Savoyards, as a fact of which it will be as little permitted to doubt as of the treachery of Judas.

CHAMBERY, August 3d.

At the table d'hote this day I nearly lost all patience on hearing an elderly English gentleman extolling the English Ministry to the skies, and abusing the army of the Loire, calling them rebels and traitors. I stood up in defence of these gallant men, and stated that the French Army in the time of the Republic and of the Empire were the most constitutional of all the European armies, since they were taken from and identified with the people; and that it was this brotherly feeling for their fellow citizens that induced them to join the standards of Napoleon, on his return from Elba; that they only followed the voice of the nation; that all France was indignant at the tergiversation and breach of faith on the part of the restored Government, in a variety of instances; and that, had Napoleon and the army been out of the question, the Bourbons would not have failed to be upset, from the indignation their measures had excited among the people.

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