Madec - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Rene-Marie MADEC (1736-1784) - called Medoc in AngloIndian writings - French adventurer in India, was born at Quimper in Brittany on the 7th of February 1736, of poor parents. He went out to India and served under Dupleix and Lally, but being taken prisoner by the British he enlisted in the Bengal army. Deserting with some of his companions shortly before the battle of Buxar (1764), he became military instructor to various native princes, organizing successively the forces of Shuja-ud-Dowlah, nawab of Oudh, and of the Jats and Rohillas. He took service under the emperor Shah Alam in 1772, and when that prince was defeated at Delhi by the Mahrattas, Madec rejoined his own countrymen in Pondicherry, where he took an active part in the defence of the town (1778). After the capitulation of Pondicherry he returned to France with a considerable fortune, and died there in 1784. At one time he formed a scheme for a French alliance with the Mogul emperor against the British, but the project came to nothing.

See Emile Barbe, Le Nabab Rene Madec (1894).