East–West Street
Rue Bussy
Named after: Charles Joseph Patissier, Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau, Dupleix's lieutenant and later Governor-General (1718–1785)
Welcome to Rue Bussy, named after Dupleix's most gifted lieutenant: the man who spent eight years running the French protectorate at Hyderabad with a handful of troops, was captured at Wandiwash, returned to Europe, and then came back twenty-one years later to fight the British again as Governor-General. He died in this city in 1785. One man, two completely different French Indian careers.
Charles Joseph Patissier, Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau (1718-1785) was Dupleix's right hand in the Deccan. From 1750 to 1758, he maintained a small French force at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, making French bayonets the indispensable support of local power. In 1753 he extracted the Northern Circars, four coastal districts, from the Nizam as territorial grants: France's largest claimed revenue base in India. He did it with never more than a few thousand men.
When Lally ordered him south to concentrate forces in the Carnatic in 1758, Bussy objected. He was right: the moment he left Hyderabad, the French position there collapsed. He was captured at Wandiwash on 22 January 1760 alongside Lally's broken army, spent years as a British prisoner, and eventually returned to France.
Then came Act Two. In 1781, twenty-one years after Wandiwash, Bussy returned to Pondicherry as Governor-General. He was not done. His two years in command were spent in continuous warfare against the British, part of the same conflict that brought Suffren's fleet to fight offshore. A shaky peace was established in 1783. Bussy did not leave. He stayed in Pondicherry and died here on 7 January 1785, in the city he had twice served and once helped make the centre of France's most ambitious Indian enterprise.
Notable on this street
- His full name: Charles Joseph Patissier, Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau. He served French India twice, thirty years apart.
- Eight years at Hyderabad with a few thousand men. He extracted the Northern Circars from the Nizam in 1753: four coastal districts France claimed as its own.
- Captured at Wandiwash, 22 January 1760. Released in Europe. Most men would have stayed. Bussy came back.
- He returned as Governor-General in 1781, twenty-one years after Wandiwash, and spent two more years fighting the British.
- He died in Pondicherry on 7 January 1785. The city was the beginning and the end of his story.
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