Page:Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas.djvu/26

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INTRODUCTION.

to the honest and frugal peasant, and when the higher appointments under Government fall to the intelligent, the well instructed, and the conscientious citizen.

One word as to the authorities upon which I have drawn. The deeds of Suffren have been painted by four eminent French writers, Hennequin, Canat, Trublet, and Roux. I have carefully compared the statements made by these biographers with Dr. Campbell's naval history of the period, with the accounts given by the authors of the Transactions in India, and of the Histoire de la dernière guerre, by Wilks (History of Southern India), and with the information procured for me from the naval archives of France. For the second Book, I am indebted mainly to Canat (Histoire de Surcouf), to Gallas (Les Corsaires Français sous la Republique), to the Asiatic Annual Register, and to the files of Indian papers of the last century which are stored up in the Public Library of Calcutta. The contents of the third Book are based mainly on the memoirs of de Boigne, on a very curious record of the services of his brother officers under native princes during the last century by Major Ferdinand Smith, on the