St Tropez’s ‘India Day’: How a French Town Has Kept Alive a Story of Love & War

A function was held recently in memory of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Francois Allard and Princess Bannu Pandey.

Memories, with the passage of time, can be forgotten, or preserved. A building can collapse, crumble and disappear from people’s memories. A memory may stand erased in the minds of people in one place, but it can also remain alive very far from the place from where it originated.

A few lines in news agencies in the past days highlighted once more this sad truth: “Owing to the Pakistan government’s continuous negligence of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s ancestral ‘haveli’ in Gujranwala city of Pakistan, the roof of the haveli collapsed on Friday. A portion of the haveli of ‘Sher-e-Punjab’ Maharaja Ranjit Singh, collapsed in spite of the authorities, a few days ago declaring it safe to be converted into a historical tourism site. Sher-e-Punjab Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the first maharaja of the Sikh Empire, was born in this house on 13 November 1780. The haveli holds great significance for Sikhs around the world.”

A Thread that Connects India & France

Around the same time, very far from Gujranwala, in the French town of Saint Tropez, a function was held within the frame of the 'India @75' celebrations. It was in memory of the same Maharaja Ranjit Singh whose statue, along with the images of General Francois Allard and the Chamba Princess Bannu Pandey (or ‘Pan Dei’, as the French write it), sit in a pretty little garden of the town, keeping alive the memories of one of the best stories of love and war you can come across. This is a thread that, unknown to most, unites Saint Tropez with India through space and time.

The story virtually begins on the battlefield of Waterloo, after the defeat of Napoleon. Jean Francois Allard, captain of the Seventh Hussars decorated with the Legion of Honor from the hands of the Emperor himself, had survived the massacre of his regiment because he was not there: he had been sent off the battlefield to bring orders. After the defeat, like many officers, he had been confined in his place of birth: Saint Tropez.

Jean Francois, who had left the place many years before, thinking he would leave for good, could not bear the inactivity – he could not bear the confinement. Trying to get out of there, Allard managed to obtain a permit to visit his uncle in Livorno, Italy. He went to Sicily first, then left for Persia, where Abbas Mirza was ruling and where Jean Francois started serving in the Army of the Crown Heir – though for a short while, because the English did not trust or want a captain of Napoleon leading the troops, and forced the king to fire him. Long roads, dust, and adventures.

Why Allard Returned to France With Bannu

The road to the East stopped in Punjab, the independent kingdom led by the great Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It looked like Jean Francois had found his place. The Maharaja instructed Allard to form a chosen shot of dragoons and spears, granted the captain the rank of general and put him at the head of the so-called ‘European Corps’ that fought in his service.

Allard, however, was no ordinary soldier. He was a cultured man, a man who wrote poetry and was a numismatic expert; he had also started studying Urdu and Persian. A charming man, they said, who soon became one of the closest friends of the Maharaja.

Years went by quickly. Jean Francois owned a stunning palace in Lahore when Ranjit Singh sent him to the court of Chamba to collect taxes. The only thing we know is that when Allard went back to Lahore, the 15-year-old Bannu, daughter of the Maharaja of Chamba, was travelling with him.

What is certain is that a year later, Jean Francois married the young Bannu: a marriage of love for which, they say, Bannu was disowned by her family. The two were happy though. In the splendid palace of Lahore, Bannu gave birth to seven children and they occupied an important place at the court of Ranjit Singh.

One day, however, General Allard witnessed a sati incident, a common practice in India at those times, and he was shocked. He imagined what could and would happen to Bannu if he died in India on the battlefield, and thus decided to take the whole family back to Saint Tropez. There, he built a palace for his beloved wife and for the kids – a palace where he barely lived, but which still stands, albeit reduced to half of the original size, at the centre of the little French town.

Allard's Place Today

Leaving his family and half of his heart in France, Allard returned to Lahore and to his army. He went back to France only one more time before dying in combat, in 1839, in Peshawar. Allard’s body was brought in with full ceremonial honours from Peshawar, with salutes being fired at every station through which the cortege passed on its route. Upon his arrival in Lahore, the entire stretch from Shahdara to Anarkali was lined with troops who fired minute guns during the passage of the cortege to its last destination. A grander burial was not to be seen again in Lahore.

Allard’s palace, sadly, now hosts the offices of the Civil Secretariat. Kuri Bagh, the gardens built in memory of his daughter Marie Charlotte, who died when she was just two years old, disappeared many years ago and now host the Income Tax structure. Behind the structure, there’s an access point to a yard where the General and Marie Charlotte’s tombs are placed. They had been abandoned for years until the French government recently undertook an excellent conservation exercise to bring the beautiful structure, an important monument of the Sikh era, to its original glory.

Allards' Strong Bond With India

Back in France, Bannu, learning of Jean Francois’s death, took a decision – that she would convert to Catholicism because, in her own words, when she died, “I'll be in the same Heaven as my husband.” This was her personal way, says Henry Prevost-Allard, a direct descendant of Bannu and Jean Francois, of sacrificing herself over the death of her husband.

In the family, there are several portraits depicting her alone or with her children. There are shawls and dresses with exquisite embroideries, vestiges of a time that seems to belong to fairy tales. There are still the shoes with tiny heels, belonging to little Marie-Charlotte. There's Jean Francois’s Legion d’Honneur, and it is odd to think that Napoleon actually touched that.

But above all, there remains a very strong bond with India that has been passed across generations. Memory, with time or despite it, has been preserved and cherished and General Allard, princess Bannu and Maharaja Ranjit Singh continue to live there – in the form of marble busts, in the street names, in downtown buildings, in the close relationship Allards have with Chamba and Punjab, with India.

Bannu is buried in a local cemetery that overlooks the sea. Forever close to that deep blue she loved so much. Forever reunited, through the sea, to her Jean Francois and, maybe, to India.

(Francesca Marino is a journalist and a South Asia expert who has written ‘Apocalypse Pakistan’ with B Natale. Her latest book is ‘Balochistan — Bruised, Battered and Bloodied’. She tweets @francescam63. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for his reported views.)