Soldier of Misfortune

Louis Laurent de Federbe, Comte de Modave, like most eighteenth century Europeans came to India in search of fortune. He failed in his quest, dying under tragic circumstances, but his memoirs were saved and brought back to France. However, it was not until 1971 that Jean Deloche of the Ecole Francaise d''Etreme Orient published a properly collated and annotated text. The memoirs present a fascinating contemporary commentary on the political situation of the rapidly decaying Mughal Empire. His pen-portraits of the Emperor Shah Alam II, of Shuja-ud-Daulah, Mirza Najaf Khan, and his fellow adventurer and compat­riot, Rene Madec are particularly valuable. He spent more than a year at the court of Delhi, and had the opportunity to observe the emperor closely. The latter comes across as kindly, courteous and gentle, essentially a family man, always surrounded by his sons, and never shy of showing his affection for them. The age, however, demanded a warrior emperor, perhaps someone like Aurangzeb,?but?unfortunately,?Shah?Alam?had?no?talent?or?taste?for?war.<br><br>The melancholy ruins that marked the twin capitals of Agra and Delhi did not escape the Count''s notice. His tone becomes elegiac as he contemplates the ''prodigious number of old palaces, ruined caravanserais and other buildings, now reduced to an ''immense mass of ruins and rubble''. One is reminded of the concluding chapter of Gibbon''s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the ruins of the Mughal capital also provide ''ample scope for moralizing on the vicissi­tudes of Fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, burying?empires?and?cities?in?a?common?grave''.