Pierre Cuillier-Perron
French military adventurer in India
Pierre Cuillier-Perron (1753 to 1755–1834) was a French mercenary active in India.
Born Pierre Cuillier (or Cuellier) at Luceau near Château-du-Loir was the son of a cloth merchant. In India, he changed his name to Perron (a diminutive of Pierre). He was generally referred to by his contemporaries and posterity as General Perron.
In 1780 he went out to India as a sailor on a French frigate, deserted on the Malabar coast, and made his way to upper India, where he enlisted in the Rana of Gohad's corps under a Scotsman named Sangster. In 1790 he took service under De Boigne, and was appointed to the command of his second brigade.
In 1795 he aided the Maratha forces in winning the Battle of Kharda against the nizam of Hyderabad, and on De Boigne's retirement became commander-in-chief of Maratha general Mahadji Sindhia's army. At the Battle of Malpura (1800) he defeated the Rajput forces.
After the Battle of Ujjain (1801) he refused to send his troops to the aid of Scindia. His treachery on this occasion shook his position, and on the outbreak of war between Scindia and the British in 1803 Perron was superseded and fled to the British camp.
“Pierre Cuillier-Perron” enters the record as french military adventurer in India. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pierre, Cuillier-Perron and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7192158. VIAF identifies the subject as 279339401. The Library of Congress control number is nb2010007709. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1753, 1755, 1834 and 1780.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pierre Cuillier-Perron” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.