of Frenchmen in 1676, and regularly ceded to them by the Emperor Aurangzib in 1688; and of six small plots of ground, comprising a total of about forty-six acres, at Calicut, Balasor, Dacca, Patná, Kásimbázár, and Jogdiá.
It was unfortunate that the failures at Madagascar had dealt so hardly with the fortunes of the Company that the Directors were unable to extend to Martin the full support necessary for the profitable development of the affairs of the French settlements in India. But Martin conquered the impossible, and when he died on the 30th December, 1706, there were grouped round the rising and prosperous town which gave its name to the colony 40,000 natives, whose prosperity depended upon the trade with France. French influence, moreover, was all-powerful with the native chiefs and princes in the vicinity. Martin had made it a cardinal point of his policy to attach those chiefs and princes to the French settlement by appealing alike to their interest and their self-love, two matters with regard to which they were peculiarly sensitive. His success, therefore, far from evoking envy or apprehension, produced only satisfaction and contentment. French good offices were constantly employed to settle local disputes, and when he died, the evidences of the esteem in which he had been held were overwhelming.
Eight years after the death of Martin, the fifty years' monopoly granted by Louis XIV to the Company in 1664 expired. It had long been in a moribund
