I determined on making the journey into Italy this time by Mont-Cenis, and to make it on foot as far as the foot of Mont-Cenis on the Italian side, intending to profit of the opportunity of the first conveyance I should meet with at Suza to proceed to Turin.  I accordingly forwarded my portmanteau to Turin to the care of a banker there, and sallied forth from Geneva at six o’clock on the morning of 1st August.

I stopped to dine at Frangy and reached Romilly at seven in the evening.  There is nothing worthy of remark at Romilly.  The next morning I stopped at Aix to breakfast, and visited the bath establishment.  The scenery is picturesque on this route, and the whole road from Aix to Chambery is aligned with remarkably fine large trees.  At three in the afternoon I arrived at Chambery, the capital of Savoy.  It is a large handsome city, situated in a fruitful valley, with a great many gardens and orchards surrounding it.  There is a strong garrison here.  Among the many maisons de plaisance in the environs of this city, the most distinguishable is the villa of General De Boigne, who has passed the greatest part of his life in India, in the service of Scindiah, one of the Mahratta chiefs;[73] and it was by De Boigne’s assistance that Scindiah, from being a petty chief, with not more than three or four hundred horse, became the founder of a powerful kingdom, comprized chiefly of the provinces of the Ganges and Jumna, torn from the Mogol Empire, whose Sovereign fell into the hands of Scindiah.  Scindiah caused the Mogol Emperor’s eyes to be put out, and kept him as a state prisoner in Delhi, till the year 1805, when on the Mahrattas engaging in war with the English, Scindiah was defeated by Lake and lost the greater part of his conquests.  De Boigne had quitted India in 1796, long before this rupture took place, and at that time Scindiah had a fine regular army of thirty battalions of 1,000 men, each disciplined, armed and equipped in the European manner.  He had likewise sixty squadrons of regular cavalry and a formidable train of artillery.  At Chambery I met with two French voyageurs de commerce, who with that positiveness, which is often the national characteristic, insisted that De Boigne owed his riches and fortune to his treachery, in having betrayed and sold Tippoo Saib to the English, when he was in Tippoo’s service; and I find this is the current report all over Savoy.

Now it is an accusation totally devoid of foundation, as I shall presently show; and I took this opportunity of vindicating the reputation of De Boigne, by simply stating that De Boigne could never have betrayd Tippoo, since he was never in his service; 2dly, that he had, when in the service of Scindiah, fought against Tippoo, when the Mahrattas coalesced with the English against that Prince in 1792; and that had it not been for the assistance given by the Mahrattas to the English (a most impolitic coalition on the part of the Mahrattas,