Battle of Colachel The Battle of Colachel ( or Battle of Kulachal ) was fought on between forces of the Indian kingdom of Travancore and the Dutch East India Company , during the Travancore - Dutch War . The Dutch never recovered from the defeat and no longer posed a large colonial threat to India , assisting the British East India Company ' s eventual rise to dominance on the Indian subcontinent . Background and the events leading up to the battle of Colachel . Almost all the peppers that the Dutch imported into their country came from the kingdom of Kayamkulam . When Marthanda Varma was crowned the king of the small kingdom of Venad , he started a policy of assimilating the neighboring kingdoms into the kingdom of Travancore . In a series of battles , Marthanda Varma annexed the kingdoms of Attingal and Quilon . On the pretext that the Rajah of Kayamkulam was involved in certain conspiracies against him , Marthanda Varma started a military campaign against Kayamkulam to incorporate that kingdom too into Travancore . This endangered Dutch East India Company ' s interests since they feared that the British , who had already signed a treaty with Marthanda Varma , would gain the rights to the pepper trade in the Malabar area , thus ending the Dutch monopoly . With this threat to their commercial interests in view , the Dutch Governor Van Imhoff wrote to Marthanda Varma demanding that he should end the aggression against Kayamkulam . Marthanda Varma wrote back to Van Imhoff , ordering him not to interfere in matters that did not concern him . The Governor then met the Maharajah in person and threatened war on Travancore on the basis that the Dutch East India Company was a " superior " power . The interview was closed by a bellicose statement from the Maharajah that should the " superior " power attack them , " there were forests in Travancore into which he and his people could retire in safety " and that , furthermore , he himself had been planning to invade Europe with the help of his fishermen . Thus , the interview ended in tension and subsequently led to the Travancore - Dutch War . In 1741 , the Dutch installed a princess of the Elayadathu Swarupam as the ruler of Kottarakara in defiance of the demands of Marthanda Varma . The Travancore army inflicted a crushing defeat upon the combined Kottarakara - Dutch armies and assimilated Kottarakara into Travancore , forcing the Dutch to retreat to Cochin . Following this , Marthanda Varma captured all of the Dutch forts in the area . The Battle . Following the losses that the Dutch and their allies had suffered in the war , a force of Dutch marines from Ceylon under the leadership of a Flemish commander , Captain Eustachius De Lannoy ( also spelt D ' lennoy ) landed with artillery in Kulachal , then a small but important coastal town , to capture the capital of Travancore , Padmanabhapuram . They captured the territory up to Padmanabhapuram and laid siege to the Kalkulam ( Padmanabhapuram ) fort . Marthanda Varma promptly marched south with his army and his timely arrival prevented the capture of Kalkulam fort by the Dutch , who , in turn , were forced to retreat to defensive positions in Kulachal . On the 10th of August , 1741 both the armies met in battle and Marthanda Varma won a decisive victory over the Dutch , capturing a large number of Dutch soldiers ; apart from the rank and file , 24 officers including Eustachius De Lannoy and his second in command , Donadi were taken prisoner . Impact of the battle . In the words of the noted historian , Prof Sreedhara Menon , " A disaster of the first magnitude for the Dutch , the battle of Colachel shattered for all time their dream of the conquest of Kerala " . Despite participating in favour of the enemies of Travancore in the subsequent battles , right up to the battle of Ambalapuzha ( 1756 ) , the battle of Colachel was a death blow to the power the Dutch East India company in the Malabar coast . Subsequent peace treaties with Travancore saw the transfer of the remaining Dutch forts which were incorporated into the Nedumkotta lines . In addition to the destruction of the Dutch East India Company ' s designs in the Malabar coast , the capture of the leaders of the expedition , Eustachius De Lannoy and his second in command Donadi , were very beneficial to the kingdom of Travancore . When De Lannoy and Donadi were paroled , they took up service with Travancore and modernized the Travancore Army ( which , till then , had been armed mainly with melee weapons ) into an effective fighting force . De Lennoy modernized the existing firearms and introduced better artillery and , more importantly , trained the Travancore army in the European style of military drill and military tactics . He carried out his orders with such sincerity and devotion that he rapidly rose through the ranks , eventually becoming the " Valia Kapitaan " ( Commander in Chief ) of the Tranvancore military and was given the Udayagiri Fort , locally known as the " Dillanai kotta " ( De Lennoy ' s fort ) , near Padmanabhapuram , to reside . He was one of the commanders of the Tranvancore army during the decisive battle of Ambalapuzha where his erstwhile employers were fighting on behalf of Cochin and her allies . Following Travancore ' s victory over Cochin and her allies , the Dutch signed a peace treaty with Travancore and later sold their forts which were incorporated by De Lannoy into the Northern Lines ( the Nedumkotta ) that guarded the northern border of Travancore . The Travancore military that De Lannoy was instrumental in modernizing , went on to conquer more than half of the modern state of Kerala , and the Nedumkotta forts De Lannoy had designed , held up the advance of Tipu Sultan ' s French trained army during the Third Anglo - Mysore War in 1791 AD till the British East India Company joined the war in support of Travancore . A key element of the Raja ' s army during the battle of Colachel was his personal guard , known as the Travancore Nair Brigade or locally known as the Nair Pattalam . This unit was later integrated into the Indian Army as the 9th Battalion Madras Regiment and the 16th Battalion Madras Regiment in 1954 . Another direct outcome of the event at Kulachal was the takeover of the black pepper trade by the state of Travancore . This development was to have serious repercussions on the Dutch and the trading world of Kerala at large . In 1753 the Dutch signed the Treaty of Mavelikkara with the Raja agreeing not to obstruct the Raja ' s expansion , and in turn , to sell to him arms and ammunition . This marked the beginning of the end of Dutch influence in India . The VOC continued to sell Indonesia n spices and sugar in Kerala until 1795 , at which time the English conquest of the Kingdom of Kochi ended their rule in India .