HISTORY OF MAURITIUS, 
455 
CHAPTER XXV. 
Summary of the Life of Count de Lally.—Journal of bis Expeditions in India.—~ 
Report' of the Conquest of Pondicherry.—An Account of the Condemnation of 
M. Lally. 
The Count de Lally was the son of a captain in the regiment of Dillon, who 
passed into France after the capitulation of Limerick, and a French lady of distinc* 
tion. Soon after his birth, which was in 1699, he was entered, as was the custom 
in the French army, a private soldier in his company. He made very considerable 
progress in those sciences which formed a principal part of the education of the 
French nobility. Being the son of an officer of distinguished merit, it was natural 
for him to make military acquaintance; and being, by his mother’s side, allied to 
some of the first families of France, he had more favourable opportunities than the 
generality of his companions, to form connections of the first class. These advan¬ 
tages, superadded to a fine person, advanced young Lally, at the age of nineteen 
years, to a company in the Irish brigade. 
Though he was known to possess those qualities that form the soldier, he was 
equally qualified to succeed in civil employments; for at a period when young men 
are seldom more than equal to the inferior departments of the state, he was suddenly 
elevated to one of the most important situations that belong to political government. 
At the age of twenty-five he was sent by the court of France to negotiate some im¬ 
portant affairs at the court of Russia, where his address and fidelity secured to him 
the confidence of the King his master, and won the esteem of the Czarina. On his 
return to France he was considered as one of the most distinguished men at Ver¬ 
sailles, and was soon promoted to the rank of colonel of a regiment, in which he 
conducted himself with uncommon distinction wherever he was employed. 
In the year 1745, when the young Pretender made a descent in Scotland, M. 
Lally came into England, under the pretext of claiming some lands which his father 
had possessed in Ireland, and to which he pretended to have a legal title: though, 
in fact, the real object of his errand was to serve the cause of the Pretender as a 
