SET IN STONE

Soldier, harem owner, hot-air balloonist... few adventurers are quite as swashbuckling as Claude Martin, a Frenchman in 18th-century India who would go on to become a potentate of vast wealth. Murky his morals may have been, but as this newly restored palace turned eye.

- COSMO BROCKWAY

Lyon and Lucknow may be several thousand miles apart but they are linked by two things: a weaving heritage and one of history's great adventurers, Major-General Claude Martin. Soldier, harem keeper, indigo farmer, palace builder and hot-air balloonist, Martin's life could only perhaps have taken place in the 18th century. A tropical Barry Lyndon, he was born in 1735 to generations of vinegar brewers but, thirsting for adventure, Martin fled Lyon with the Compagnie des Indes. His mother ordered him not to return until he was "in a carriage", and he fought against the British in the Carnatic Wars prior to defecting to the East India Company (enlisting in the Bengal Army) once the French lost their colony of Pondicherry in 1761.

Distrusted by both colonies as a deserter and not-quite-a-gentleman, Martin nevertheless distinguished himself as a strategist and surveyor, with a Machiavellian turn of mind that thrived in the cut and thrust of colonial derring-do. Managing to get himself appointed to the plum role of superintendent of the arsenal for the Nawab of Awadh, Asafud-Daula, at Lucknow, Martin began to amass his fortune. Shadowy was the provenance of most of his riches-backdoor sion with Enlightenment-era treasures, including ranks of classical statues and a philosophical library with many Oriental manuscripts. In true potentate fashion, he installed seven Indian mistresses and two African eunuchs, Mahboob and Amber, whom he acquired from an Arab trader.