CHAPTER X
OLD BLACKTOWN AND ITS MERCHANTS
Nothing is more seductive and at the same time more deceitful than wealth. It is extremely troublesome to acquire, to keep, to spend, to lose.-SLOKA.
What the mayor and corporation failed to do, the French effected. They cleaned a large portion of Blacktown by sweeping it off the face of the Coromandel Coast. The market, the Armenian quarters, and most of the Gentoo town disappeared. The densely populated native houses that filled the space between the old wall of the fort and the spot where the Law Courts now stand were annihilated, and the materials afterwards were used to form the glacis. Looking to-day from the top of the north gate over the fort stables and the outworks, it is difficult to imagine that the place was once a labyrinth of streets humming with busy life.
It took some years after the rendition of Madras to the English for the disorganised, half-destroyed town to recover itself. The work of restoration was begun, but it received a check when Lally invested it with his troops, nine years later, in his attack on the fort. In the wake of every invading army in the old days there followed gangs of budmashes, under the protecting title of camp-followers, whose sole object was loot. They rifled the dead on the battlefield, and plundered the living in the conquered and unprotected villages. The remnant of
