82 
HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR. 
established, as his majesty had not fully determined to have 
a colony at Madagascar.’' 
After a long consultation with his officers, they were 
unanimously of opinion that it was expedient instantly to 
suspend the military operations against the Sakalavas, and 
return to Louisbourg, there to await the farther orders of 
his majesty’s government. On returning to the settlement, 
the assistance of the chiefs being no longer necessary, it 
was expected that they would depart; but they all refused 
to leave, giving as a reason, that intelligence had reached 
them from the Isle of France that the governor was about 
to be displaced, and sent to Europe to take his trial; in 
consequence of which, they had come to a determination to 
resist such a design by force, if it should prove necessary. 
The governor represented that the residence of so many 
troops on the spot tended to impoverish the country; and 
that if they were determined to reside near him, it would be 
expedient to send the troops away to their several provinces, 
as they would always have time to reassemble them. In 
answer to which, they begged him not to urge their depar¬ 
ture any further, being determined rather to perish than 
desert him. 
It is stated in the memoirs of Count Benyowsky, that a 
very singular circumstance had given rise to the idea of his 
being the son of a native chieftain, who having died with¬ 
out an heir, the unappropriated territory was thought by a 
great many to belong to the Count; to whom the urgent 
crisis of his own affairs, deserted as he was by every friend 
except such as he could obtain in a barbarous nation, ren¬ 
dered it justifiable to his own mind to avail himself of this 
and many other superstitious notions of the natives, tending 
to point him out as the possessor of this vacant chieftain- 
