"If, Sirs, you have absolutely imperative reasons for reprisal, change, if you please, the object of them. I offer myself a willing victim, if there must be one, and, if blood were necessary, I should think myself too happy to offer mine a sacrifice. But as these barbarous methods are not made use of in nations so civilized as ours, I have one last offer to make, which is to ransom and buy all the private houses at Chandernagore, for which I will enter into whatever engagements you please, and will give you the best security in my power." The last words seem to imply that Courtin had recovered his property, at least to a great extent; but his pathetic appeal was useless in face of national necessities, and so far was Chandernagore desolated that, in November of the same year, we read that the English army, under Colonel Forde, was ambushed by the Dutch garrison of Chinsurah "amongst the buildings and ruins of Chandernagore." From Chandernagore Courtin went to Pondicherry, where he became a member of the Superior Council. He was one of the chiefs of the faction opposed to Lally, who contemptuously mentions a printed "Memorial" of his adventures which Courtin prepared, probably for presentation to the Directors of the French East India Company.[169] When, in January, 1761, Lally determined to capitulate, Courtin was sent to the English commander on the part of the Council. Still later we find his name attached to a petition, dated August 3, 1762, presented to the King against Lally.[170] This shows that Courtin had arrived in France, so that his elevation to the Council of the Company is by no means improbable. To any one who has lived long in India it seems unnatural that in old days the small colonies of Europeans settled there should have been incited to mutual conflict and mutual ruin, owing to quarrels which originated in far-off Europe, and _which were decided without any reference to the wishes or interests of Europeans living in the colonies_. The British Settlements alone have successfully survived the struggle. The least we can do is to acknowledge the merits, whilst we commiserate the sufferings, of those other gallant men who strove their best to win the great prize for their own countrymen. Of the French especially it would appear that their writers have noticed only those like Dupleix, Bussy, and Lally, who commanded armies in glorious campaigns that somehow always ended to the advantage of the British, and have utterly forgotten the civilians who really kept the game going, and who would have been twice as formidable to their enemies if the military had been subordinate to them. The curse of the French East India Company was Militarism, whilst fortunately for the English our greatest military hero in India, Lord Clive, was so clear-minded that he could write:--