East–West Street
Rue Bellecombe
Named after: Guillaume Léonard de Bellecombe, Governor-General of Pondicherry 1777-1778
Welcome to Rue Bellecombe, named after the Governor-General who held Pondicherry against a British siege for ten weeks in 1778 before surrendering. The siege was a side-effect of a war being fought on the other side of the world: the American War of Independence had pulled France and Britain back into conflict, and Pondicherry paid the price.
Guillaume Léonard de Bellecombe arrived as Governor-General in 1777, just as France was being drawn into the American War of Independence on the side of the colonists. When France and Britain went to war in 1778, the British moved quickly to neutralise French India. Pondicherry was besieged. Bellecombe held the city for ten weeks before the military position became untenable. He surrendered. It was the third time in the 18th century that the British had taken Pondicherry by siege: 1748, 1761, and now 1778.
The pattern was becoming grimly familiar. Each time France and Britain went to war in Europe or America, the consequences arrived on the Coromandel Coast. Bellecombe's ten-week resistance was not enough to change the outcome, but it was enough to earn him a street. The city was returned to France in 1783 under the Treaty of Paris that ended the American war, the same treaty that confirmed American independence. Pondicherry's fate was being decided in rooms far from Pondicherry.
Notable on this street
- Bellecombe was Governor-General for just one year: 1777 to 1778. He spent most of it under siege.
- The 1778 siege was a consequence of the American War of Independence. France allied with the American colonists; Britain retaliated in India.
- This was the third British siege of Pondicherry in the 18th century: 1748, 1761, and 1778. The city was returned to France each time.
- The Treaty of Paris 1783, which ended the American War and confirmed US independence, also gave Pondicherry back to France.
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