ipu Sultan (20 November 1750 – 4 May 1799), also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore from 1782 to 1799. He was also a scholar, soldier and poet. Tipu was the eldest son of Sultan Hyder Ali of Mysoreand his wife Fatima Fakhr-un-Nisa. Tipu introduced several new laws, including new coinage, a new lunisolar calendar and a new land revenue system. He started the growth of the silk industry in Mysore. Tipu succeeded to a large kingdom bordered by the Krishna River in the north, the Eastern Ghats in the east and the Arabian Sea in the west. At the request of theFrench, he built a church, the first in Mysore. Tipu fought against the British to keep Mysore's independence.
he year 1799 marks a watershed on the Islamic calendar. It was the year that Napoleon landed his troops in Egypt. It was also the year that the British stormed the Fort of Srirangapatam, and the curtain fell on Islamic rule in India. The first event, the landing of French troops in Ottoman Egypt, confirmed the superiority of European arms and organization over the Ottomans. The second, the fall of Mysore, completed the political implosion of India and the consolidation of the British Empire. British arms did not conquer India. It fell apart through its own internal divisions and was handed over to the British by individual traitors.
Tippu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore in South India as a contemporary of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire, Louis XVI, George III and Napoleon Bonaparte. In more ways than one, the paths of these historical figures crossed those of Tippu. It is an irony of history that the triumph of George Washington and the independence of America had an impact on the military fortunes of Tippu Sultan in far-away Mysore. After the British General Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at the Battle of Yorktown (1781), he returned to England and was hired by the East India Company. It was Cornwallis who organized a sustained and determined political and military offensive against Tippu Sultan that finally contained the Sultan’s explosive energies.
Tippu’s life spanned a period when new ideas and new institutions transformed the landscape of Europe and North America, while Asia recoiled from within. It was the age of the Industrial Revolution. Starting with the invention of the steam engine in 1758, Europe forged ahead in consolidating its technological superiority over the rest of the world. It was the age of the American Revolution (1776) and the eloquent assertion of the rights of man by Thomas Jefferson. It was also the age of the French Revolution (1789) and the abolition of oppressive feudalism in continental Europe. Tippu’s existential vision reached out to the ideas in these momentous changes. But he lived in an environment that had lost its social, political and spiritual vitality, and he was done-in by his own people, while America and Europe moved forward to the modern age.
Tippu, son of Hyder Ali, was born in 1750 at Devanahalli and was named after Tippu Mastan Awliya of Arcot, to whose tomb his mother had made a pilgrimage. Tippu’s forefather Shaykh Wali Muhammed, a Sufi Shaykh of the Chishtiya order from the Punjab, was ordered south by his teacher to serve the area of Gulbarga near the modern city of Bangalore, where the tomb of Shaykh Gaysu Daraz (d. 1410) is located. Shaykh Wali’s grandson Fath Muhammed served, for a while, as a commander in the armies of the Nawab of Arcot during the reign of Aurangzeb (d. 1707). Fath Muhammed migrated further inland, and found himself in the service of the Nawab of Sira, where he married the daughter of the Shaykh of Tanjore. While living in the village of Devanahalli, a son was born to the couple, and he was named Muhammed Ali. This lad, growing up in a soldier’s family, showed his mettle early in his career, and soon found himself as a platoon commander in the service of the Raja of Mysore.
The political landscape of India changed while Fath Muhammed was in the service of the Nawab of Sira. Between 1680 and 1690, Moghul armies under Emperor Aurangzeb swept through southern India and extended their sway almost to the tip of the peninsula. Following the death of Aurangzeb (1707), there emerged no successor capable of holding the vast empire together. The provincial governors, while paying lip service to the lordship of the Emperor, asserted their independence. In 1722, Nizam ul Mulk, Asif Jah I, was sent to Golkunda (modern Hyderabad) as the governor of the southern provinces. The Nizam skillfully manipulated his affairs so that the governorship of the area became hereditary, and his descendants came to be known as the Nizams of Hyderabad. His official title was the subedar (provincial governor) of Deccan. This province was rich and vast, comprising an area larger than England, and included all territories contiguous to the modern metropolitan cities of Hyderabad, Bangalore and Madras. It had an income of over 200 million rupees, which was roughly a fifth of the entire income of the Moghul Empire.
For administrative purposes, the suba (province) of Hyderabad was divided into two sub-districts, each one governed by a nawab (the literal meaning of the word in Farsi is a “deputy”. The English corrupted it to nabob.). The first sub-district was Sira, located 60 miles west of modern Bangalore. Sira was the administrative capital of Mysore and the coastal areas of Malabar, including the rich trading centers of Cochin and Mangalore. The other sub-district was Arcot, located 200 miles southeast of Hyderabad, which administered the coastal areas on the east coast included in modern Telangana and Madras.
Meanwhile, a strong power had emerged in western India. The Marathas, arising out of the hills around Poona, were welded into an effective fighting force by Shivaji. By 1720, they were in effective control of west central India and were elbowing their way east into the Nizam’s territories, pushing their way north towards the heartland of the Moghul territories. Like the Nizams of Hyderabad, the Marathas too evolved a hereditary line of succession called the Peshwas.
The political disintegration of the Moghul Empire was an opportunity for the European powers. The British East India Company, set up in 1600 in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, had established its “factories” in three areas: Madras (1640), Bombay (1649) and Calcutta (1670). The French, following on the heels of the English, had their own Compagnie des Indes Orientales, and set up their “factory” at Pondicherry on the Bay of Bengal, about 100 miles south of Madras. The global rivalry between the French and the British, which had intense moments in West Africa and North America, spilled over into the Indian Ocean and India.
The first opportunity for European intervention in Indian affairs came from Hyderabad. Following the death of Asif Jah I, disagreements arose among his descendants, and open warfare erupted. In 1749, it pitted Nasir Jung, second son of the Nizam, against Muzaffar Jung, a grandson. At about the same time, a struggle arose for the Nawabship of Arcot (modern Tamil Nadu) between Muhammed Ali and Chanda Saheb. These fateful struggles dragged in the French, the British and the Mysoreans. The British sided with Nasir Jung and Muhammad Ali, while the French championed Muzaffar Jung and Chanda Saheb. Since Mysore was a part of the suba of Hyderabad, Nasir Jung requisitioned a contingent of 15,000 troops from Mysore. Hyder Ali was a part of this contingent. He distinguished himself in combat, and upon his return, was made a regional commander by the Raja of Mysore.
The contests in Hyderabad and Arcot ended in favor of the British. The French Governor Dupleix was outwitted by the British Governor Robert Clive, and returned to France a disheartened man. A few years later, the British gained a decisive advantage in India as a result of their victory over the Nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey (1757). The Anglo-French wars, fought on and off for twenty years on the global stage, came to an end with the Treaty of Paris (1763) by which the French washed their hands of India and essentially gave up their struggle in North America.
Meanwhile, the wheels of fortune turned. In 1761, the Afghan Emir, Ahmed Shah Abdali, at the Battle of Panipat, crushed the Maratha armies, which had penetrated as far north as Lahore in the Punjab. The Marathas, recoiling from the tremendous loss of manpower in the battle (some historians put this loss at over 150,000 men), recalled their armed forces dispersed over the subcontinent. Mysore, which had suffered periodic invasions from the Marathas, was a beneficiary. In 1762, the Mysore armies under Hyder Ali expelled the Marathas. By 1765, Hyder Ali had become the de-facto power in Mysore, while the Raja and his family receded into the background. The rising power of Mysore roiled the Nizam, the Marathas, and the British alike. In addition, the continuing contest for succession in Arcot provided plenty of opportunity for alliances and counter alliances. The result was a series of wars, with Mysore as the central player in the test of arms.
The first Mysore War was fought between August 1767 and March 1768, with the British championing the cause of the profligate Muhammed Ali, Nawab of Arcot, while Hyder Ali of Mysore championed the cause of Mahfuz Khan, elder brother of Muhammed Ali. The fickle Nizam at first supported Hyder but changed sides when he heard that the Marathas were planning an attack on him, and joined up with the British instead. It was in the First Mysore War that Tippu, at the age of seventeen, first showed his mettle. He was in charge of a regiment assigned to him by his father, Hyder Ali. Within a month of the start of hostilities, Tippu’s forces rode up to the very gates of Madras. On September 28, 1767, the British Governor Bourchier, the Board of Governors of the Company, as well as Muhammed Ali, the Nawab of Arcot, were in the Madras gardens when Tippu’s cavalry came charging up. Tippu would have arrested them all were it not for a small boat that happened to be in the waters off the gardens and provided them a narrow escape. The Mysore armies were victorious on all fronts, in the east near Madras, and in the west along the coast of Malabar. The war ended when Hyder Ali mounted a second assault on Madras in March 1768 and dictated peace terms to the Madras Governor. The Treaty of Madras (1769) called for a return of captured territories by both sides, and each side promised to help the other in the event of an attack from a third party.
The peace treaty was tested when the Marathas invaded Mysore the following year and the British, untrue to their covenant, refused to help Hyder Ali. The breach of faith left an enduring legacy of distrust of the British in the young Tippu. The Maratha armies raided all the way to Srirangapatam, but withdrew when the stout resistance of Tippu frustrated their assault. The next eight years were of intermittent warfare between Mysore with the Marathas and the Nizam. The victorious team of father and son (Hyder Ali and Tippu) extended the frontiers of Mysore to the shores of the Krishna River, pushing back both the Marathas and the Nizam. It was during this period, in 1773, that Tippu married Ruqayya Banu, daughter of an army general. Ruqayya Banu became the future queen of Mysore and was the mother of Tippu’s sons.
Global events overtook the military contests in India. In 1776, the American colonies declared their independence from England. War erupted, George Washington took command of the American troops and British resources were stretched to the limit. In one of these battles, a loyalist force under General Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington at Yorktown located on the Hudson River in modern New York state(1781). Cornwallis retired to England, where the East India Company hired him. It was Cornwallis who orchestrated a determined political and military campaign in the Third Mysore War (1789-1792) to contain Tippu Sultan. The French sided with the Americans in the War of Independence. In retaliation, England declared war on France, and seized the French colonies of Pondicherry (on the Bay of Bengal) and Mahe (on the Arabian Sea) in India. The seizure of Mahe on the Malabar Coast annoyed Hyder Ali since it was a primary conduit for the Mysore spice trade with West Asia and Europe.
At about the same time, the Marathas were upset with the British over their intervention in court affairs at Poona over succession issues. The Nizam, that perennial weathercock in Indian politics at that time, also viewed the British with disfavor because they had captured Guntur and given it to their satrap, Muhammed Ali of Arcot.
The confluence of these events resulted in an unusual alignment of Indian forces against the British. By now, the Indian potentates were alert to the machinations of the East India Company. They had seen how the British had brought the Bengal economy to its knees after the Battle of Plassey (1757), imposing unbearable taxes on local products while flooding the market with cheap British goods. They were alarmed at the British victory at Buxor (1764) over the combined forces of Bengal, Oudh and the Moghul Emperor, Shah Alam. They had also witnessed how the British had starved the Begums of Oudh to surrender their state jewels (1765). A blueprint for British domination over India was apparent. In 1780, an understanding was reached between Hyder Ali of Mysore, the Nizam of Hyderabad, and the Marathas, to “liberate” India from the British. The French, always on the lookout for another opportunity to get into Indian politics, warmly welcomed this treaty. The combined forces of Mysore and Hyderabad were to attack Madras while the Maratha forces would challenge the British in Bombay and Bengal.
The Mysore forces were the first in battle. The causes for war were provided by the refusal of the British to hand over border territories as agreed to in the Treaty of Madras and by their march over Mysore territories in their attack on French Mahe. In July 1780, Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan marched into Madras at the head of a host of 80,000 seasoned troops. Opposing them was General Munroe, who had earned his fame as the Commander of British forces that had defeated the combined armies of Bengal, Oudh and the Moghuls at the Battle of Buxor (1764). To support Munroe, a British brigade was marching up from the south under Colonel Bailey. Tippu caught up with Bailey in September 1780, and at the Battle of Pollipur, utterly demolished it. Colonel Bailey, along with 3,820 British officers and troops, was captured. It was the worst defeat the British suffered on Indian soil. And it was this engagement that made a legend out of Tippu Sultan. Meanwhile, the main Mysore army under Hyder Ali, bested General Munroe, forcing him to abandon his guns and beat a hasty retreat into Fort St. George in Madras.
The Battle of Pollipur demolished the reputation that the British in India were invincible, as was assumed since the Battle of Buxor. It showed that a disciplined Indian army was more than a match for the Europeans. It also demonstrated that the weapons of war of the Mysore Army were in no way inferior to those of the British. The Mysore Army, 88,000 strong, was organized into regular and irregular troops. A well-trained cavalry corps of 10,000 provided the mobile arm. There were 48,000 regular infantry and 30,000 irregular infantry troops. The regular army was organized into cushoons (divisions), risalas (regiments) and jukhs (companies). Each soldier was supplied with a scepter, a dagger, a musket, and rounds of ammunition. The field guns were of Indian design, cast in brass, and had a longer range than those of the British. This was made possible by the large foundries located near Srirangapatam, as well as precision boring of long barrels achieved with water operated boring mills. In addition, the army had a rocket corps. The Mysore rockets had a deadly range of 1,000 yards, and carried a cartridge filled with gunpowder. It is commonly assumed that by 1799, when Napoleon invaded Egypt, European arms were far superior to those of the armies of Asia. While it is true that the momentum was in favor of Europe thanks to the Industrial Revolution, the technological superiority of Europe over Asia in armaments for land forces was not fully established until after the fall of Mysore.
This credible military force was supported by the financial stability and economic prosperity of the kingdom. Control of the western coastline provided Tippu Sultan with access to the commercial centers of the Indian Ocean and to India. Exports included spices, sandalwood, ivory, iron, cloth, silk, brassware, woodwork, and diamonds. Imports included muskets, guns, wool and saltpeter. The balance of trade was almost always in favor of Mysore, so that accounts were current despite the heavy expenditures of war. Food was plentiful. Srirangapatam, Channapatna, Bangalore, and Bidnur were major manufacturing centers while the ports of Mangalore and Cochin were among the busiest in the Indian Ocean.
The Treaty of 1780 between Mysore, Hyderabad and the Marathas, marked a high point in the cooperation between Indian states. It was the closest that the British came to losing their hold on India before the Great Sepoy Uprising of 1857. The Treaty fell apart because India was in an advanced stage of political and social disintegration. None of the princes, except Tippu, had a global vision. And none, except Tippu, could foresee that the British presence was the beginning of a global European thrust that would swallow up India and Asia. The princes were more concerned with petty issues relating to minor adjustments of their borders, or of succession and pensions, than with the fate of India. Self-interest and intrigue, opportunism and ambition, not ethics, had become the guiding principle of politics. Ethical and spiritual decay had penetrated so deep into Indian politics that princes and generals alike were willing to sell their country for a pittance.
The ancient civilization of India, Hindu and Muslim alike, which had witnessed cycles of glory and decay, was at low ebb. Religious faith was no longer a sufficient binding force, and modern values such as nationalism were unknown. India was up against an expansionist Europe, whose social landscape was being transformed by nascent ideas, new technologies and efficient institutions. The British, with their global reach, had access to far greater resources than any Indian prince could muster. With their efficient intelligence apparatus, they were aware of the intrigues in the Indian courts, and took full advantage of it. The first to abandon the Treaty of 1780 was the Nizam. A mere promise from the British Governor General Warren Hastings that he would not swallow up the district of Guntur was sufficient to change the mind of the Nizam, and he switched sides. Not a single soldier left the city of Hyderabad to participate in the war. The Marathas were the next to quit the alliance when the British promised not to interfere in their internal affairs and to provide military assistance in recovering border territories from Mysore.
Undaunted, the Mysore armies fought, holding the British armies to a draw, in the eastern theater near Madras and in the western theater on the coast of Malabar. In the midst of the Second Mysore War, as the conflict of 1778-1782 is known, Hyder Ali died of cancer (December 1782), and Tippu succeeded him at the age of thirty two. Meanwhile, in far-away America, the War of Independence (1776-1783) ended with a triumph for the colonies. The French had joined the Americans (1778) against the British. In 1783, the French, with their support no longer needed by the Americans, concluded the Peace Treaty of Versailles with the British. Under the terms of this treaty, French and British forces were to disengage throughout the world. Accordingly, the French withdrew their support of Tippu Sultan. Tippu was at the time besieging the British at the port of Mangalore. With the Nizam and the Marathas in the British camp, and the fickle-minded French on the sidelines, Tippu saw that it was advantageous to conclude the war, even though the military advantage was with him. The Madras Treaty, negotiated through Tippu’s ambassadors Appaji Ram and Srinivasa Rao, was signed on March 11, 1784. It stipulated a mutual withdrawal of forces, and an understanding not to aid each other’s enemies. The British gained the evacuation of territories on the east coast, which were nominally under their satrap Nawab Muhammed Ali of Arcot, while Mysore gained by frustrating Maratha designs on its northern territories. More importantly, Tippu demonstrated that the British were vulnerable and their position in India was not as secure as had been assumed after the fall of Bengal (1757).
The intrigues of the Indian courts provided the British plenty of opportunity to further their designs on Mysore. Not only were the Indian states quarrelling with one another, the Marathas, the principal power in central India, were divided among themselves. The vast Maratha territories were divided up between competing chiefs, Sindhia in the north, Holkar in the south, Bhosle, Gaekwad and Nana Farnawis in central India. To unseat Tippu, the British started secret correspondence with the Rani of Mysore, who had never given up her claim to her husband’s throne. They also incited the Nayars of Travancore to rebel against Tippu’s authority.
On a broader front, Mysore relations with the Nizam and the Marathas were always tense because neither the Nizam nor the Marathas recognized the independence of Tippu Sultan, and both claimed the territory of Mysore as their tributary. Between 1784 and 1787, Tippu waged a series of defensive operations against both of these Indian powers, which resulted in the addition of all the territories up to the Krishna River to his dominion. To counter Mysore, the Nizam and the Marathas sought a mutual alliance. When that floundered over mutual territorial claims, they turned to the European powers for help.
As early as 1785, the Maratha court in Poona made overtures to the Bombay government for a military alliance, but was rebuffed because the British were not ready to take on Tippu as yet. The Marathas then made overtures to the French and the Portuguese but this was of no consequence. The British, licking their wounds from the loss of the American colonies, were reluctant, at this time, to get involved in hostilities on behalf of the Indian princes. In addition, they were reluctant to break the Treaty of Versailles and provide a pretext for the French to get back into the Indian game.
The situation changed with the arrival of Cornwallis in 1785 as Governor General of the East India Company. The loss of the American colonies had freed British manpower and material resources. These resources were now focused on India and on the Indian Ocean. Cornwallis had made a name for himself in the war against the Americans in their War of Independence, although his surrender to George Washington on October 19, 1781 at Yorktown had tarnished that image. As soon as he arrived in India, Cornwallis started preparations for a final confrontation with Tippu Sultan. Methodically, he proceeded to build a military-political alliance to surround and destroy the Kingdom of Mysore.
It was during this period (1786-1787) that Tippu Sultan sent embassies to the Turkish Sultan in Istanbul, Louis XVI of France, the Shah of Persia, the Sultan of Oman, and Zaman Shah of Afghanistan. With a singular passion for expelling the British from India, he tried diplomacy and sought alliances throughout the Islamic world and the Indian subcontinent. Through his ambassador to France, Tippu sought a military alliance as well as help with artisans and military engineers. The reply of Louis XVI was polite but evasive. A similar overture to the Dutch for a defensive alliance in 1788 was rejected. In his representations to the Turkish Sultan, he pleaded for military help against the British and sought the title of Padashah. Muslims around the globe looked upon the Sultan as the Caliph of Islam and its guardian. Only he could bestow legitimacy on the sultans and emirs of Asia and Africa. Tippu was successful in earning the title of Padashah from Istanbul but there was no military help. The reasons for this lay in the European politics of the time. The French Revolution (1789) was soon to engulf France, challenging the authority of kings and despots and most of the European monarchs were about to lose their thrones. The Turkish Sultan, not unaware of these changes and as insurance for his own survival, was careful to cultivate the British as a bulwark against the French. In addition, the Russians were aggressive on the northern Ottoman borders, and the Porte in Istanbul was in no position to help an Indian Padashah in his struggle against the British in far-away India.
Tippu’s relations with Persia were cordial. In 1781, during the Second Mysore War, his father Hyder Ali had asked for help from the shah and had received a contingent of 1,000 troops. But post-Safavid Persia was a minor player on the world scene and was itself on the defensive against the Russians in Azerbaijan. Tippu scored some success with the Sultan of Oman who controlled the coastline of Arabia and East Africa with a credible navy. But after some initial success, British diplomacy successfully isolated Mysore, and concluded a Treaty of Friendship with the Sultan of Oman (1798).
The Nizam and the Marathas viewed the rising power of Mysore with jealousy and suspicion, and Cornwallis had little difficulty in forging a confederacy with them against Tippu. Hostilities began when the Raja of Travancore bought two small principalities from the Dutch. These principalities, Cranganore and Ayakotteh, had been held by another raja, the Raja of Cochin, before the arrival of the Europeans. The Portuguese occupied them in 1511, and lost them to the Dutch circa 1600. By 1780, the Dutch were a waning power in India and had their hands full at home with an incipient revolution. By the sale of these two towns, they wished to raise cash to defray the cost of fending off the French in India, but they desired to do so in such a manner that it would embroil Tippu and the British in conflict. The Raja of Cochin had become a tributary of Tippu, and Tippu desired to buy these towns for himself. When the Dutch sold them instead to the Raja of Travancore, friction increased between Mysore and Travancore. As a further provocation, the Raja built fortifications through territories nominally under the control of Mysore. Tippu moved against the Raja, who had an alliance with the British. This provided an excuse for Cornwallis to commence hostilities. Tippu Sultan’s overtures to the French and the Turks for military alliances were construed by the British to be directed against them. It is also possible that Cornwallis had a personal stake in the war, to retrieve his reputation after his losses to the Americans at the Battle of Saratoga and his surrender to George Washington at Yorktown. The British feared a repeat of their North American experience in India. In America, French assistance had helped the colonies win their War of Independence (1776-1783) under General Washington. Was it not possible that the Indians would prevail if they followed the example of Tippu Sultan?
Cornwallis went about his task methodically. In March 1790, he entered into a treaty with the Marathas to attack Mysore from three directions: the Bombay army from the sea, the Marathas from the north, and the Madras army from the east. Not all the Maratha chiefs were sanguine about British aims, but the hawks in Poona prevailed. In July of the same year, the Nizam entered into a similar treaty with the Company. His goal was to recover territories he had lost to Mysore in previous wars. To complete the encirclement of Tippu, the British incited the Nayars of Malabar, the Bibi of Cannanore and the Raja of Cochin. Tippu initiated a diplomatic counter offensive of his own to convince the Marathas and the Nizam to support him or remain neutral. In this game of diplomacy, the British carried the day, and a four-pronged attack against Mysore began in 1791.
The British fielded more than 25,000 troops, including 600 British officers. The Nizam provided 20,000 troops, while the Maratha armies numbered about the same. A supply chain of over 42,000 bullocks and several hundred elephants backed these armies. Cornwallis moved to Madras from Calcutta and personally took command of the operations. The initial military advantage lay with Tippu Sultan. The sustained onslaught from the three enemies took its toll, however, and the Mysoreans reluctantly yielded territory.
The war lasted a full two years. The Fort of Bangalore fell in 1792 after a desperate resistance. Throughout the war, Tippu Sultan tried to make a separate peace with the Marathas and the Nizam. To the Marathas he offered gifts. To the Nizam he appealed in the name of God and the Prophet. But the Marathas were embroiled in their own internal politics. Although they were lukewarm in attacking Mysore, they could not extricate themselves from the alliance. Some Maratha chiefs, like Sindhia, considered a prolonged Anglo-Mysore conflict as a means to furthering their own ambitions to conquer Rajasthan and the Punjab. As for the Nizam, nothing mattered except his own immediate self-interest. The overtures did not succeed. Similar overtures to the French bore no fruit because the French had their hands full with their Revolution (1789). They offered plenty of advice but no military help.
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