On 6 May 1766, Thomas-Arthur Lally heard the Parlement of Paris pronounce his sentence of death for treason, abuse of authority, vexatious oppressions, and extortion. The general was sixty-eight years of age and could claim fifty years in the service of the King. The trial that led him thither had commenced far from Paris, in a distant colony that France was no longer able to defend.
Dispatched to India in 1757, Lally had been charged with protecting Pondicherry and the other French trading settlements against the British. Of Irish descent, he had served at Fontenoy, distinguishing himself in action against the selfsame enemy. The decision of the Cabinet of Versailles had rested in part upon this martial experience. Yet, according to the account left by Champagnac, the general had formed an overly sanguine conception of the resources at his disposal: he expected to find ample treasury funds, abundant munitions, and disciplined regiments. Instead, he discovered a nearly empty treasury, meager reserves, and an utterly disorganized chain of command.
Lally first secured a success at Fort St. David, near Pondicherry, whose fortifications he promptly razed to the ground. Thereafter, it fell to him to secure the provisions necessary to prosecute the campaign. From his encampment, he wrote to Governor Duval Leyrit, who administered the settlement on behalf of the French East India Company. In this letter, he maintained that he had advanced one hundred thousand livres of his private fortune to defray costs, and he reproved the Governor and his council for failing to furnish him with either specie or credit. He threatened to apprise the King and the Company of the gross lack of zeal among their civil servants, and to adopt measures that would render him wholly independent of their deliberations.
This dispatch did nothing to reconcile the two men. An officer cited by Champagnac records that Lally spoke incessantly of chains and dungeons, paying no regard to the age or rank of those he addressed. He complained of everyone, and everyone complained of him. The general exhausted his vigor in these acrimonious quarrels at the very moment the colony stood in desperate need of concerted action. The French forces sustained grievous losses and were driven into retreat within the walls of Pondicherry.
The city was under close blockade. Resolved to hold out to the very last extremity, Lally forbade any mention of surrender under pain of death. He then commanded that domiciliary searches for provisions be conducted throughout all private dwellings, including those of the council members and senior officers. This measure utterly alienated minds already turned against him. Champagnac recounts that during one expedition, Lally went so far as to threaten to harness the Governor and the councilors to the munitions wagons should the ordnance fail to arrive. The turn of phrase epitomizes a commander who met every delay with humiliation and rage.
When Pondicherry at last surrendered at discretion, the inhabitants sought to lynch the general. The British commander was obliged to provide him with an armed guard. Ailing, Lally was carried away upon a palanquin, clutching two loaded pistols to ward off anyone who dared approach him. Subordinate employees of the Company subsequently obtained leave to break open his chests, expecting to uncover vast hoards of plunder; they found only a few modest personal effects, apparel, and papers. The British impounded these possessions until the satisfaction of the debts Lally claimed to have contracted in his own name for the defense of the place.
Held captive at Madras, he petitioned to delay his transport to England, but in vain. Champagnac notes that the master of the merchant vessel treated him with great harshness throughout the voyage, affording him nothing for sustenance but pork broth. Lally arrived in England alongside more than two thousand fellow prisoners of war. Mutual recriminations regarding the loss of the colony persisted unabated throughout the passage.
In November 1762, while still a prisoner of war on parole, Lally repaired to Fontainebleau and offered to surrender himself at the Bastille. He was taken at his word and cast into confinement. For fifteen months, he underwent no interrogation whatever. He was subsequently brought before the Châtelet and then before the Parlement of Paris, the preliminary judicial inquiry dragging on for two full years. The indictment drawn up by the public prosecutor charged him with high treason and lèse-majesté. He was denied the assistance of counsel and was compelled to conduct his defense alone.
The grievances brought against him were manifold. He was upbraided for his conduct at Pondicherry, his invective against the councilors, disciplinary punishments exceeding his orders, and even private habits and trivial domestic anecdotes which Champagnac dismisses as derisory. The crux of the prosecution consisted in the claim that he had sold the stronghold to the British. Among the presumptive evidence adduced, the chronicle cites certain signal rockets discharged during the blockade, the purpose of which was unknown, and a nocturnal patrol conducted to the beating of drums. The text records neither clandestine commerce with the enemy nor the delivery of military intelligence; rather, it presents these incidents as mere circumstantial tokens from which an accusation of venal betrayal was deduced. One hundred and sixty counts of indictment, according to the chapter, conflated the complaints of the Company, the officers, and the colonial burghers. Some pertained to discipline and tactical operations; others concerned his paroxysms of wrath, punishments, humiliating remarks, or private social calls. Among the grievances depicted as utterly ludicrous, he was accused of having fed rice to his horses when in fact he possessed none. This indiscriminate accumulation placed the conduct of a commander in the field on the very same footing as mere salon gossip.
Champagnac himself contested the very foundations of these proceedings: Lally had received neither the King’s treasure nor the funds of the Company, a circumstance which, in the author's judgment, dismissed any charge of defalcation. He deemed treason equally improbable, given that the general had voluntarily returned to France to surrender himself as a prisoner, and that the British had been in a position to reduce Pondicherry by force of arms. An intrigue surrounding certain documents further confounded the dossier. Father Lavaur, a Jesuit previously resident in Pondicherry, died in Paris. Among his effects were found two conflicting memorials: one entirely favorable to Lally, the other accusing him of every conceivable crime. The hostile document was remitted to the Procureur Général. Champagnac asserts that Lavaur intended to produce the one or the other according as events might turn; the documents themselves are not reproduced, rendering it impossible to establish independent proof of the intention imputed to the Jesuit.
Advocate General Séguier, having perused the depositions with care, is said to have opined that Lally ought to be acquitted. According to the source, he expressed this conviction before fellow magistrates and throughout Paris. Yet his judgment as prosecutor could not sway the collective determination of the Parlement, which upheld the capital charges and pronounced the ultimate sentence. The chronicle attributes this outcome to the fury of the populace and the clamor raised by the shareholders, clerks, officers, and functionaries of the Company. It also suggests that the general’s violent outbursts against his accusers served only to inflame the animosity of which he was the target.
Upon hearing the decree read, Lally struck himself in the breast with a pair of drafting compasses he had used to chart maps within his cell. The self-inflicted blow proved non-fatal. Fearing that he might succumb before reaching the scaffold, the authorities hastened his execution by several hours. He was conveyed to the Place de Grève in a dung-cart. A wooden gag was forced into his mouth to prevent him from addressing the populace or railing against his judges. Champagnac depicts a dense throng of onlookers and notes that certain of his sworn adversaries looked on and applauded.
The decree ordered his decapitation and the confiscation of his worldly goods, while reserving one hundred thousand écus for the indigent of Pondicherry. An appraisal of his estate revealed only a modest patrimony, altogether insufficient to satisfy that sum once outstanding debts were discharged. Yet the Council of Pondicherry had estimated the general’s illicit hoard at seventeen millions. Three days after his execution, a magistrate reportedly confessed that no single specific offense had served as the foundation of the decree: the sentence had rested solely upon the aggregate impression of Lally’s entire conduct.
His son, born of a clandestine marriage, subsequently undertook to vindicate his father’s memory. The King’s Council quashed the initial decree, yet the Parlement of Rouen reaffirmed the conviction; the Council annulled that judgment once more and referred the cause to Dijon. On 23 August 1783, the Parlement of Dijon in its turn confirmed the Parisian decree, and did so with heightened severity, according to the chronicle. Champagnac records that the son devoted years to this defense, and that Voltaire, shortly before his death, rejoiced at the initial annulment. Yet the historical chapter does not conclude upon a definitive judicial rehabilitation: it leaves Lally suspended between contradictory decrees that alternately quash and reinstate one another, upon a dossier whose principal accusation remains a matter of unresolved debate.