HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
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wliich Messieurs Bonneau and Despremesnil, the Commissaries, kept the keys ; 
and M. Laurent, principal writer, was charged with the office of making out the 
accounts. 
The articles of merchandize, as well as military stores both for land and sea, and 
provisions, were lodged in magazines and warehouses, whose keys were in the hands 
of the Commissaries Desjardins and Villebague, who were charged with the em- 
barkment of all the effects, &c. See. 
He had no sooner made this distribution, than he proposed to evacuate the place 
on the 11th of October, and to get all his ships in the road of Pondicherry on the 
following day. 
It appears from the dispositions made by M. de la Bourdonnais, that, as soon as 
Madras was ransomed and evacuated, he proposed to conduct his squadron 
wherever the monsoons would prove favourable to him. M. Dupleix, on the con¬ 
trary, resisted the evacuation of Madras, and contested that the ships should not 
depart from Pondicherry. His object was to break through the capitulation, and 
to keep Madras. 
No sooner had M. de da Bourdonnais commenced the operations which have 
been already mentioned, than he proposed to enter into a negociation with the 
English, to regulate the articles of the ransom. He received, however, a letter from 
M. Dupleix, by which it appeared, that he did not approve of all these arrange¬ 
ments. In fact, by this letter, which was dated the 21st of September, and 
arrived at Madras in the night of the 23d, he positively declared that he had pro¬ 
mised the Nabob to give up that place to him, as soon as the French should become 
the masters of it; and, as at the moment of writing this letter he was ignorant of 
the capture of the place, he added, that this circumstance should engage the be¬ 
siegers to give new vigour to their attack, and to be deaf to all propositions that 
might be made to ransom it; as the Nabob would otherwise be disposed to join 
our enemies. 
M. de la Bourdonnais found this letter incomprehensible : he could not Conceive 
that M. Dupleix would assume to himself the character of a sovereign; and give 
to one nation, those places which had been conquered from another. Nor could he 
comprehend his imprudence, in engaging to deliver up to the Nabob, a town of 
whose fate he was ignorant, and to which M. de le Bourdonnais might have granted, 
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