1810.
June.
"King;" yet, after a delay of fifteen months, an application was answered by saying, "that having communicated to His Excellency the marine minister the motives which had determined him to suspend my return to Europe, he could not authorize my departure before having received an answer upon the subject;" in twenty months more, however, he let me go, and declared to Mr. commissary Hope that it was not in consequence of any orders from France.
When first imprisoned in 1803, for having expressed a wish to learn the present state of the colony, there was no suspicion of any projected attack upon it; in 1810, preparations of defence were making against an attack almost immediately expected, and there were few circumstances relating to the island in which I was not as well informed as the generality of the inhabitants; then it was, after giving me the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the town and harbour of Port Louis, that general De Caen suffered me to go away in a ship bound to the place whence the attack was expected, and without laying any restriction upon my communications.
Such are the leading characteristics of the conduct pursued by His Excellency general De Caen, and they will be admitted to be so far contradictory as to make the reconciling them with any uniform principle a difficult task; with the aid however of various collateral circumstances, of opinions entertained by well informed people, and of facts which transpired in the shape of opinions, I will endeavour to give some insight into his policy; requesting the reader to bear in mind that much of what is said must necessarily depend upon conjecture.
After the peace of Amiens, general De Caen went out to Pondicherry as captain-general of all the French possessions to the east of the Cape of Good Hope; he had a few troops and a number of extra officers, some of whom appear to have been intended for seapoy regiments proposed to be raised, and others for the service of the Mahrattas. The plan of operations in India was probably extensive, but the early declaration of war by England put a stop to