Cite
MLA
“Siege of Pondicherry (1778).” Hindu History, 2026, https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/siege-of-pondicherry-1778/. Accessed .
APA
Hindu History. (2026). Siege of Pondicherry (1778). Retrieved , from https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/siege-of-pondicherry-1778/
Pondicherry capitulated after about ten weeks, and its fortifications were demolished.
01War news from Europe
Word that Britain and France had broken off relations reached the Coromandel coast in July 1778. Chandernagore, Karaikal and the other French factories were taken without a fight. Hector Munro marched from Madras to Pondicherry and began the siege in August, while a small squadron under Vernon fought off the French ships of Tronjoly, which then sailed away. Bellecombe’s walls had never been fully rebuilt after the British razed them in 1761.
02Surrender and its sequel
Bellecombe held out through September while the British batteries crept closer. With no fleet to relieve him and a breach opening, he capitulated in mid-October 1778, and the garrison was granted the honours of war. The British pulled down the walls once more. The French loss pushed Haidar Ali, who looked to France for officers and guns, closer to war, and the British seizure of Mahe on his Malabar coast the next year was one of his reasons for the invasion of the Carnatic in 1780.
The fall of Pondicherry left Mysore as France’s only real ally in India and helped bring on the Second Anglo-Mysore War.
