Siege of Bangkok - Aftermath

Aftermath

Once arrived in the small French settlement of Pondicherry, some of the French troops remained to bolster the French presence there, but most left for France on February 16, 1689 aboard the French Navy Normande and the French Company Coche, with the engineer Vollant des Verquains and the Jesuit Le Blanc aboard. The two ships were captured by the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope, however, because the War of the Augsburg League had started. After a month in the Cape, the prisoners were sent to Zeeland where they were kept at the prison of Middelburg. They were able to return to France through a general exchange of prisoners.

On April 10, 1689, Desfarges – who had remained in Pondicherry – led an expedition to capture the tin-producing island of Phuket in an attempt to restore some sort of French control in Siam. The island was captured temporarily in 1689, but the occupation led nowhere, and Desfarges returned to Pondicherry in January 1690. Recalled to France, he left 108 troops in Pondicherry to bolster defenses, and left with his remaining troops on the Oriflamme and the Company ships Lonré and Saint-Nicholas on February 21, 1690. Desfarges died on his way back trying to reach Martinique, and the Oriflamme later sank on February 27, 1691, with most of the remaining French troops, off the coast of Britanny.

France was unable to stage any comeback or organize a retaliation due to its involvement in major European conflicts: the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697), and then the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1713/1714). France only resumed official contacts in 1856, when Napoleon III sent an embassy to King Mongkut led by Charles de Montigny.