"Saved from so many perils and sufficiently fortunate to have won such sensible marks of distinction from our enemies, ought not this, my dear wife, to make me hope that the gentlemen of the French Company will do their utmost to procure me some military honour, in order to prove to the English that my nation is as ready as theirs to recognize my services?[167] "Now, my dear wife, I must end this letter so that it may be ready for despatch. For fear of its being lost I will send in the packet another letter for thee. "Do not disquiet thyself regarding my health. Thanks to God I am now actually pretty well. I dare not talk to thee of the possibility of our meeting. Circumstances are not favourable for thee to make another voyage to the Indies. That must depend upon events, thy health, peace, and wishes, which, in spite of my tender longing for thee, will always be my guide. "If the event of war has not been doubly disastrous to me, thou shouldst have received some small remittances, which I have sent, and of which I have advised thee in duplicate and triplicate. If the decrees of the Lord, after my having endured so many misfortunes and sufferings, have also ordained my death before I am in a position to provide what concerns thee, have I not a right to hope that all my friends will use their influence to induce the Company not to abandon one who will be the widow of two men who have served it well, and with all imaginable disinterestedness? "For the rest I repeat that, thanks to God, I am fairly well. "I kiss thee, etc., etc." One would be glad to be assured that Courtin re-established his fortune. If he is, as I suppose, the Jacques Ignace Courtin, who was afterwards _Conseiller au Conseil des Indes_, we may be satisfied he did so; but French East India Company Records are a hopeless chaos at the present moment, and all that one can extract from the English Records is evidence of still further suffering. From Murshidabad or Cossimbazar, Courtin went down to Chandernagore, whence the majority of the French inhabitants had already been sent to the Madras Coast. The Fort had been blown up, and the private houses were under sentence of destruction, for the English had determined to destroy the town, partly in revenge for the behaviour of Lally, who, acting under instructions from the French East India Company, had shown great severity to the English in Southern India, partly because they did not think themselves strong enough to garrison Chandernagore as well as Calcutta, and feared the Moors would occupy it if they did not place troops there, and partly because they dreaded its restoration to France--which actually happened--when peace was made. At any rate Courtin found the remnants of his countrymen in despair, and in 1759 he wrote a letter[168] to Clive and the Council of Calcutta, from which I quote one or two paragraphs:--