Thomas Arthur de Lally-Tollendal

Thomas Arthur de Lally-Tollendal

Thomas Arthur de Lally-Tollendal (* 1702 in Romans in the Dauphiné ; †  May 7, 1766 ) was a French officer.

Thomas Arthur de Lally-Tollendal (Earl of Lally, Baron von Tollendal), from an Irish family who immigrated to France with James II of England , served in an Irish regiment from 1720 under his father Sir Gérard Lally-Tollendal, who fought from 1741 in Flanders, Scotland and the Netherlands, distinguished himself at Fontenoy in 1745, was promoted to Brigadier des armes du roi and in 1756 appointed lieutenant-général and governor of all French-East Indian branches.

As a partner in the Indian Company, Voltaire wrote in a letter on February 15, 1760:

"Nous avons à Pondichéry un Lally ... qui me coûtera tôt ou tard, vingt mille livres tournois annuels ..."

"We have a lally in Pondichéry ... which sooner or later will cost me 20,000 livres a year ..."

Immediately after his arrival he opened the fight against the British possessions, conquered a large number of places and cities and besieged Madras himself, but after a heavy defeat had to retreat under the walls of Vandarachi to the threatened Pondicherry , where he, in March 1760 from a vastly superior British army and a fleet of 14 ships of the line, after brave defense on January 16, 1761, had to surrender to mercy and disgrace and was brought to England as a prisoner of war:

On hearing that he was being accused of cowardice and treason in France, he obtained his liberation, went to Paris in 1764, was thrown into the Bastille and sentenced to death by the sword on May 6, 1766 because he defended the interests of the Betrayed the king and the Indian company, and beheaded the next day .

After ten years, Lally-Tollendal's son, Gérard de Lally-Tollendal , with the assistance of Voltaire in particular, brought about the revision of the process. The convict's innocence was so clearly demonstrated that the king, in a decree of May 21, 1778, conceded the sentence and restored Lally-Tollendal's honor. However, the trial moved on to the Parlementes of Rouen and Dijon and eventually ended with the allegation of high treason being dropped, the remaining charges remaining and Lally never being rehabilitated. The son of Lally-Tollendal was authorized to bear his father's name.

literature

• Hamont: La fin d'un empire français aux Indes sous Louis XV (Paris 1887).
• Pierre Antoine Perrod: L'affaire Lally-Tolendal - une erhur judiciaire au XVIII ^e siècle. Klincksieck, Paris 1976. ISBN 2-252-01908-5 .
• Continued new genealogical-historical news , volume 65, p. 591ff, digitized life and execution of the French general Lally