Madrass, Part of the Black Town, and the adjacent ground to the S. and W. with the French Attack from Dec. 12, 1758 to Feb.y. 17, 1759

1778

Copper engraving on paper

Print size: 13.75 x 19.25 in (35 x 49 cm)
Sheet size: 15.5 x 20 in (39.5 x 50.5 cm)

The Siege of Madras and the Destruction of Old Black Town — Orme’s Definitive Plan of the French Assault, 1758–59

This rare and exceptionally detailed engraved plan of the Black Town of Madras illustrates one of the most consequential episodes of the Seven Years’ War in India: the French assault on Madras under the Comte de Lally between December 1758 and February 1759. Issued in 1778 for Robert Orme’s authoritative military histories of the East India Company, the map constitutes one of the earliest printed attempts to visualise European warfare on Indian soil with technical accuracy, drawing upon engineers’ surveys, officers’ reports, and first-hand military intelligence preserved in Company archives. Orme’s plans were conceived not merely as illustrations but as strategic documents, intended to codify the Indian theatre of global conflict into an intelligible imperial geography.

The plan focuses on the Black Town, the large urban precinct lying immediately north of Fort St George, whose dense and irregular fabric formed the principal zone of contest during the siege. It documents with remarkable precision the French parallels and trenches advancing toward the northern approaches, the placement of batteries intended to enfilade and breach the defences, and the distribution of streets, compounds, and native dwellings that complicated the attackers’ progress. The spatial relationship between the Black Town and the angular bastions of Fort St George is carefully articulated, underscoring the tactical significance of the northern perimeter repeatedly targeted during Lally’s operations.

Although the French siege achieved early successes, the British defence—bolstered by naval reinforcements and strengthened fortifications—ultimately withstood the assault. The failure of the siege marked a decisive turning point in French ambitions in the Carnatic and foreshadowed the broader British ascendancy in South India. The heroic resistance of the garrison was widely celebrated as part of the legendary Annus Mirabilis of 1759, a year that came to symbolise Britain’s global military fortunes.

Beyond its military importance, the map is an indispensable urban document. “Black Town” was so called because it housed the many local clerks, porters, weavers, interpreters, merchants, and administrative personnel who sustained the daily functioning of the Fort and the Company’s commercial regime. In the earliest years of Madras (1644–1648), the small square that later became the core of Fort St George was known as the Inner Fort, while the settlement to its north formed Black Town, enclosed by an earthen wall constructed under Agent Ivie. Orme’s plan preserves this precinct as a planned city, enclosed and fortified—yet one that would be dramatically altered by war.

Its topography can still be traced in the modern city: the northern line of fortification ran along what is now China Bazaar (N. S. C. Bose) Road, terminating near present-day Broadway (Prakasam Salai), while the western wall extended toward the area now known as the Esplanade. Thomas Salmon, who visited Madras in 1739, described Old Black Town as inhabited by “Portuguese, Indians, Armenians and a great variety of other people,” capturing the cosmopolitan commercial character of the settlement. He noted that the precinct formed a square “better than a mile and a half in circumference,” surrounded by a brick wall seventeen feet thick, with bastions at proper distances. The quarter was bounded by water on multiple sides: the sea to the east, a river to the west, and a canal cut from river to sea serving as a moat on the northern flank. The river in question was almost certainly the Elambore, which once flowed along the line of today’s N. S. C. Bose Road, now largely absorbed into Madras’s modern street grid.

Old Black Town was heavily damaged—indeed, effectively razed—during the French sieges and subsequently rebuilt and reorganised by the British, later evolving into George Town. As such, early plans such as this are of the highest importance for reconstructing the pre-colonial morphology of Madras and the spatial realities of the Carnatic Wars. Orme’s engraving thus operates on multiple levels: as a military diagram of siegecraft, as a primary record of eighteenth-century urban structure, and as an artefact of the East India Company’s effort to narrate and legitimise its expanding power.

For historians of Madras, the Carnatic theatre, and colonial cartography, the present plan remains a visually compelling and historically foundational document—capturing, with extraordinary clarity, the contested ground upon which the British imperial city would soon be remade.

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