414 
HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
interests of the new Company. He therefore abandoned Madagascar, and passed 
with all the troops that he had brought from France, to the Isle of Bourbon. Al¬ 
though this last establishment had not been formed more than five years, there were 
already four plantations. This colony has continued to increase from that period: 
in 1717, it contained two thousand inhabitants, of which eleven hundred were slaves. 
Their number has since doubled. 
With respect to the Island of Madagascar, the Company, after a prodigious ex¬ 
pence in maintaining their establishment there, were forced to abandon it. Chamargou, 
supported by De la Case, another famous adventurer, supported his authority during 
his life ; but, after the death of these two brave men, the French colony was entirely 
ruined. Some have attributed its destruction to the Dutch, who, in a descent 
which they made at Fort Dauphin, towards the year 1672, massacred the greatest 
part of its inhabitants; others pretend that the natives of the island prevailed on 
the slaves who cultivated the plantations of the French, to murder their masters. 
After the French had abandoned Madagascar, Surat became the favourite estab¬ 
lishment of the Company. They had however formed other factories in India: the 
principal ones were in the province of Bengal, on the banks of the Ganges; at 
Mirzeou, in the kingdom of Vizapour; at Balliepatan and Tiheri , in the country 
of Cananor; at Alicote , in the territory of Calicut; at Masulipatan , in the kingdom 
of Golconda; and, lastly, at Pondicherry. It was in 1670, that the Company 
established this last factory, about the middle of the Coromandel coast, in a place 
which was formerly called Boudoutscheri; and here they determined to erect the 
principal entrepot of their Indian commerce. The Governor of the country made 
a grant to them of some ground near the sea, where they first built a spacious edifice, 
which served as a factory. In 1676 he permitted them to fortify it, and even sent 
them three hundred Indian soldiers to augment their feeble garrison, which consisted 
only of sixty men. New buildings were now erected, and an offer of certain ex¬ 
emptions soon filled them with inhabitants ; so that this settlement began to display 
a promising aspect. The first fortifications were planned by M. Martin, who had 
been sent out by the Company to take upon him the care of this establishment; but 
they were inconsiderable, as may be readily imagined when the expence of them 
did not exceed seven hundred ecus. 
In 1680, the famous Sevagi, who was the sovereign of a part of Vizapour, 
having subjugated the province of Gingi, threatened the French factory with an 
