Page:On the Coromandel Coast.djvu/339

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CUDDALORE AND PONDICHERRY
327

exonerated from all blame in the matter. It was in Fort St. David that the gambling incident occurred when Clive refused to pay losses which he averred were due to cheating on the part of the men who were playing with him.

When the wars were ended the barracks at Cuddalore were used for the Invalid Battalion. Here the old soldiers of the Company found rest from their labours. They 'married into the country' and lived comfortably on their pensions. There were Hanoverians and Swiss as well as English. When the De Meuron Regiment of Swiss mercenaries was disbanded many of the men went into the Company's Coast Artillery. Like the English, they married the women of the country, as the register books testify, and settled there permanently.

It was at Cuddalore that Forjett (or Forgett), the man who saved Bombay from disaster in the Mutiny, was educated as a boy. His father was a pensioner. He died and left his boy to the care of an old friend and comrade named Hillier, who sent the child to the barrack school. It was a good school, and had a reputation for giving its pupils a better education than was to be obtained from others of the same class in India. Forjett profited by it, being of a studious disposition. General Conway happened to be passing through Cuddalore and remembering Hillier, who had served under him, he went to look up his old sergeant-major. There he saw young Forjett. The appearance of the boy pleased him, and he offered to take him to Bombay, where he was going, and to find an appointment of some kind for him. Hillier accepted the offer gratefully, and shortly afterwards Forjett entered the police service at Bombay. He rose in course of time to a high position in the force. Douglas, in his 'Western India,' tells the story at length of how Bombay was saved from the horrors that overtook other towns through the