Benoît de Boigne
After a turbulent life, Benoît de Boigne returned to Europe, first to England, where he married a French emigrant after having repudiated his first, Persian wife; then to France during the Consulate, and finally back to Savoy.
It was brightly colored and featured wild animals including lions, elephants, panthers and tigers, with the motto underneath: "You can go ahead and try something else, you will all come to Leborgne, the fur dealer."
His father, Jean-Baptiste Leborgne, born in 1718, frequently traveled on business to wild-fur markets and brought back bearskins, fox, beaver, and marten furs, and many other animal pelts.
Claude was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror, and later became a deputy for the island of Santo Domingo (now called Hispaniola) in the Council of Five Hundred under the French Directory.
Leborgne began his military career in the north of France in 1768, as an ordinary soldier in Louis XV's Irish Regiment, directed by Lord Clare and quartered in Flanders.
At the time, Russia was attempting to extend its territory to acquire a port on the Black Sea, and was using the anti-Turkish sentiments of people under Ottoman domination to aid its project.
There, Leborgne met merchants from many countries, including India, which was believed to hold much wealth, like the diamonds of Golconda and the sapphires of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
Some of these merchants told him their theories about the existence of trade routes passing north of India, in upper Kashmir or along the glaciers of Karakoram.
He traveled through many extremely poor villages, learning about the culture and religion of India and noted the different Muslim and Hindu neighborhoods in various places.
As Middleton, an Englishman present when Leborgne met the nawab, explained to him afterward, this invitation was in fact an order; if he refused he would have been thrown in prison.
The nawab gave Leborgne a kelat, richly decorated with gold and diamonds, along with letters of exchange for Kandahar and Kabul, and 12,000 rupees.
Along with Claude Martin, his friend from Lyons, de Boigne occupied himself by selling silver jewelry, silk carpets, and arms enameled in gold.
In Delhi, an Englishman named Anderson offered to get de Boigne an audience with Emperor Shah Alam, whose court was at the Red Fort.
In 1790, de Boigne summarized Indian politics of the time: "The respect toward the house of Timur [the Moghul dynasty] is so strong that even though the whole subcontinent has been withdrawn from its authority, no prince of India has taken the title of sovereign.
The Marathas had set up camp to besiege the citadel of Gwalior, in which a Scot named George Sangster, whom de Boigne had met in Lucknow, was commanding the garrison.
De Boigne, wanting revenge, decided to send a discreet message to Sangster in the besieged citadel and proposed an attack on the Maratha camp.
At the battles of Lalsot (May 1787) and of Chaksana (24 April 1788), de Boigne and his two battalions proved their worth by holding the field when the Marathas were losing.
It was at this time that Benoît de Boigne proposed to Sindhia the creation of a brigade of 10,000 men in order to consolidate his conquest of India.
Sindhia refused because his treasury could not afford it, but also because he had doubts about the superiority of the artillery-infantry combination, as opposed to the cavalry that had been the main weapon of the Maratha armies.
De Boigne also carried on a trade in precious stones, copper, gold, silver, indigo, cashmere shawls, silks, and spices.
After a long discussion, the father accepted, even though de Boigne refused to convert to Islam as was normally required for the husband of a Muslim woman.
To be able to pay his men, Sindhia gave his new general a jaghir, a fief given for the lifetime of its holder, against a payment in return to the imperial treasury.
To work with the new brigade, he hired Drugeon from Savoy, Sangster from Scotland, John Hessing, a Dutchman, as well as Frémont and Pierre Cuillier-Perron, two Frenchmen, a German named Anthony Pohlmann and an Italian, Michael Filoze.
Within six months of 1790, in a hostile, hilly terrain, de Boigne's brigade defeated 100,000 men, confiscated 200 camels and 200 cannons, many bazaars, and fifty elephants.
In 1795, after twenty years in India, and in worsening health, de Boigne left his command, installing Perron in his place, and prepared his departure for Europe.
De Boigne had a hard time adapting to European manners after so long in India, and the 30-year difference in age between him and his wife added to the difficulty.
In Paris, de Boigne became friends with General Paul Thiébault, who asked him several times to meet Napoleon so that he could become an officer in the French army.
A funeral oration was given for him on 19 August 1830, in the metropolitan church of Chambéry, by the Canon Vibert, pro-vicar-general of the diocese and member of the royal academic society of Savoy.
Charles-Alexandre, educated in England, had studied law, but spent most of his life as a minor courtier at the Savoy court, managing his land and inheritance.
De Boigne also gave a trust fund of 1650 pounds a year, about 33,000 francs, to help poor prisoners every week with laundry and food.
