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Tipu Sultan (Kannada: ಟಿಪ್ಪು ಸುಲ್ತಾನ್, Urdu: سلطان فتح علی خان ٹیپو ) (November 1750, Devanahalli – 4 May 1799, Srirangapattana), also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore. He was the son of a prominent Muslim named Hyder Ali, by his second wife, Fatima or Fakhr-un-nissa. His full name was Sultan Fateh Ali Khan Shahab or Tipu Saheb Tipu Sultan. In addition to his role as ruler, he was a scholar, soldier, and poet. He was a devout Muslim but the majority of his subjects were Hindus. At the request of the French, he built a church, the first in Mysore. In alliance with the French in their struggle with the British both Tipu Sultan and Hyder Ali did not hesitate to use their French trained army against the Marathas, Sira, Malabar, Coorg and Bednur. He was proficient in many languages. He helped his father Hyder Ali defeat the British in the Second Mysore War, and negotiated the Treaty of Mangalore with them. However, he was defeated in the Third Anglo-Mysore War and in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War by the combined forces of the British East India Company, the Nizam of Hyderabad and to a lesser extent, Travancore and the Marathas. Tipu Sultan died defending his capital Srirangapattana, on 4 May 1799. Tipu Sultan was born at Devanahalli, in present day Bangalore District, some 33 km (21 mi) North of Bangalore city.
The exact date of his birth is not known; various sources claim
different dates between 1749 and 1753. According to one widely accepted
dating, he was born on 10 November 1750 (Friday, 10th Dhu al-Hijjah, 1163 AH). His father, Hyder Ali, was a military officer in service to the Kingdom of Mysore;
he rapidly rose in power, and became the de facto ruler of Mysore in
1761. His mother Fatima or Fakhr-un-nissa was the daughter of Shahal
Tariq, governor of the fort of Kadapa.
He went in daily to say his prayer and paid special attention to
mosques in the area. While leading a predominantly Hindu country, Tipu
remained strong in his faith. He built a church, the first in Mysore on French request. During his rule, Tipu Sultan laid the foundation for a dam where the famous Krishna Raja Sagara Dam across the river Cauvery was later built. He also completed the project of Lal Bagh started by his father Hyder Ali,
and built roads, public buildings, and ports along the Kerala
shoreline. His dominion extended throughout North Bangalore including
the Nandi Hills,Kanivenarayanapura, and Chickballapur.
His trade extended to countries which included Sri Lanka, Afghanistan,
France, Turkey, and Iran. Under his leadership, the Mysore army proved
to be a school of military science to Indian princes. The serious blows
that Tipu Sultan inflicted on the British in the First and Second
Mysore Wars affected their reputation as an invincible power. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the former President of India,
in his Tipu Sultan Shaheed Memorial Lecture in Bangalore (30 November
1991), called Tipu Sultan the innovator of the world's first war
rocket. Two of these rockets, captured by the British at Srirangapatna,
are displayed in the Royal Artillery Museum in
London. Most of Tipu Sultan's campaigns resulted in successes. He
managed to subdue all the petty kingdoms in the south. He defeated the
Marathas and the Nizams and was also one of the few Indian rulers to
have defeated British armies. He is said to have started a coinage
system, banking system, a new calendar, and a new system of weights and
measures. He was well versed in Urdu, Kannada, Persian, and Arabic. Tipu was supposed to become a Sufi, but his father Hyder Ali insisted he become a capable soldier and a great leader.
As a Muslim ruler in a largely Hindu domain, Tipu Sultan faced problems in establishing the legitimacy of his rule, and in reconciling his desire to be seen as a devout Islamic ruler with the need to be pragmatic to avoid antagonising the majority of his subjects. His religious legacy has become a source of considerable controversy in the subcontinent. Some groups proclaim him a great warrior for the faith or Ghazi, while others revile him as a bigot who massacred Hindus. Some historians claim that he had an egalitarian attitude towards Hindus and was harsh towards them only when politically expedient. In the first part of his reign in particular he appears to have been notably more aggressive and religiously doctrinaire than his father, Hyder Ali. Some historians claim that Tipu Sultan was a religious persecutor of Hindus. In 1780 CE he declared himself to be the Badshah or Emperor of Mysore, and struck coinage in his own name without reference to the reigning Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II. H.D. Sharma writes that in his correspondence with other Islamic rulers such as Zaman Shah of Afghanistan, Tipu Sultan used this title and declared that he intended to establish an Islamic empire in the entire country, along the lines of the Mughal Empire which was at its nadir during the period in question. He even invited him to invade India to help achieve this mission. His alliance with the French was supposedly aimed at achieving this goal by driving his main rivals, the British, out of the subcontinent. He wrote similar letters to the Caliph of Turkey; where he again expressed his desire to establish an Islamic empire in India. In his Persian language diary, which he said to have tried to keep secret during his lifetime, now translated and published as "The Dreams of Tipu Sultan", he recalls a dream where a bearded man tells him that the Prophet Mohammed said that he will not go to heaven until Tipu does. In this book, he repeatedly refers to Hindus as kafirs, the British as Christians, and repeatedly expresses the desire to convert the world to Islam and ensure that it is ruled by Islamic kingdoms. The Second Mysore War is also remembered for alleged excesses committed by Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan in Tanjore. During the period of occupation which lasted six months, Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan are believed to have impoverished the country. As late as 1784, the Dutch missionary Christian Friedrich Schwarz describes Tippu's alleged abduction of 12,000 children from the region. It is alleged that the invaders plundered the country and took away the cattle and grain. The invasion is believed to have had such an impact on the economy of the country that it did not recover until the start of the nineteenth century. The gross produce of the kingdom fell by over ninety percent between 1780 and 1781 and took over 15 years for it to reach pre-1781 levels. It is believed that Tipu ordered Shamaiya Iyengar to be blinded. However, Tipu himself forgave Shamaiya when Shamaiya's son bravely defended against the British during the last Anglo-Mysore War, dying due to a gunshot in the chest. Noted
Mysore court historian Hayavadana C. Rao, writing for the Raja of
Mysore (whose dynasty was installed as rulers of Mysore by the British
after they killed Tipu Sultan), wrote about Tipu in his encyclopaedic
work The History of Mysore.
He asserted that Tipu's "religious fanaticism and the excesses
committed in the name of religion, both in Mysore and in the provinces,
stand condemned for all time. His bigotry, indeed, was so great that it
precluded all ideas of toleration". He further asserts that the acts of
Tipu that were constructive towards Hindus were largely political and
ostentatious rather than an indication of genuine tolerance. Brittlebank,
Hasan, Chetty, Habib and Saletare, amongst others, argue that stories
of Tipu Sultan's religious persecution of Hindus and Christians are
largely derived from the work of early British authors such as
Kirkpatrick and Wilks, whom they do not consider to be entirely reliable. A.S. Chetty argues that Wilks’ account in particular cannot be trusted. Irfan Habib and
Mohibbul Hasan argue that these early British authors had a strong
vested interest in presenting Tipu Sultan as a tyrant from whom the
British had "liberated" Mysore. This
assessment is echoed by Brittlebank in her recent work where she writes
that Wilks and Kirkpatrick must be used with particular care as both
authors had taken part in the wars against Tipu Sultan and were closely
connected to the administrations of Lord Cornwallis and Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley. Tipu sent a letter on January 19, 1790 to Budruz Zuman Khan. It says: Mohibbul
Hasan, Prof. Sheikh Ali, and other historians cast great doubt on the
scale of the deportations and forced conversions in Coorg in
particular, and Hasan says that the British versions of what happened
were intended to malign Tipu Sultan, and to be used as propaganda
against him. He argues that little reliance can be placed in Muslim accounts such as Kirmani's Nishan-e Haidari;
in their anxiety to represent the Sultan as a champion of Islam, they
had a tendency to exaggerate and distort the facts: Kirmani claims that
70,000 Coorgis were converted, when forty years later the entire
population of Coorg was still less than that number. According to
Ramchandra Rao "Punganuri" the true number of converts was about 500. The
portrayal of Tipu Sultan as a religious bigot is disputed, and some
sources suggest that he in fact often embraced religious pluralism.
Tipu strengthened and instituted education in Persian and
Urdu among Muslims in the Mysore region. To this day, unlike Muslims in
Kerala and Tamil Nadu, Muslims in southern Karnataka use Urdu.
Furthermore, he brought into place the use of Islamic terms, such as
khata, sanad, the use of 'bin' to denote 'sun of' into administration;
and these terms have been in use ever since. Tipu is also known to have
attempted to assign Islamic names to several places - for example,
Yousufabad for Devanahalli, Nasarabad for Mysore, and so on.
Tipu Sultan's treasurer was Krishna Rao, Shamaiya Iyengar was
his Minister of Post and Police, his brother Ranga Iyengar was also an
officer, and Purnaiya held the very important post of "Mir Asaf".
Moolchand and Sujan Rai were his chief agents at the Mughal court, and
his chief "Peshkar", Suba Rao, was also a Hindu. In 1791 some Maratha horsemen under Raghunath Rao Patwardhan raided the temple and monastery of Sringeri Shankaracharya, killing and wounding many, and plundering the monastery of all its valuable possessions. The incumbent Shankaracharya petitioned Tipu Sultan for help. A bunch of about 30 letters written in Kannada, which were exchanged between Tipu Sultan's court and the Sringeri Shankaracharya were discovered in 1916 by the Director of Archaeology in Mysore. Tipu Sultan expressed his indignation and grief at the news of the raid, and wrote: People
who have sinned against such a holy place are sure to suffer the
consequences of their misdeeds at no distant date in this Kali age in
accordance with the verse: "Hasadbhih kriyate karma
ruladbhir-anubhuyate" (People do [evil] deeds smilingly but suffer the
consequences crying). He immediately ordered the Asaf of Bednur to supply the Swami with 200 rahatis (fanams)
in cash and other gifts and articles. Tipu Sultan's interest in the
Sringeri temple continued for many years, and he was still writing to
the Swami in the 1790s CE.
It
should be noted, however, that these letters were written in the
context of his precarious situation after the battles of the Third
Mysore War, during which he suffered many setbacks, including having to
deliver his two sons as captives (Captivity of children was a common
custom even during the days of Akbar and his successors) to the
British. It is possible that his letters to the Shankaracharya were therefore a result of his desire to gain the support of his Hindu subjects. In light of this and other events, B.A. Saletare has described Tipu Sultan as a defender of the Hindu dharma,
who also patronized other temples including one at Melkote, for which
he issued a Kannada decree that the Shrivaishnava invocatory verses
there should be recited in the traditional form. The temple at Melkote
still has gold and silver vessels with inscriptions indicating that
they were presented by the Sultan. Tipu Sultan also presented four
silver cups to the Lakshmikanta Temple at Kalale. Tipu Sultan does seem to have repossessed unauthorised grants of land made to Brahmins and temples, but those which had proper sanads were not. It was a normal practice for any ruler, Muslim or Hindu, on his accession or on the conquest of new territory. There
is such evidence as grant deeds, and correspondence between his court
and temples, and his having donated jewellery and deeded land grants to
several temples, which some claim he was compelled to do in order to
make alliances with Hindu rulers. Between 1782 and 1799 Tipu Sultan
issued 34 sanads
(deeds) of endowment to temples in his domain, while also presenting
many of them with gifts of silver and gold plate. The Srikanteswara
Temple in Nanjangud still possesses a jewelled cup presented by the
Sultan. To another temple, Nanjundeswara, in the same town of Nanjungud, he gave a greenish linga; to Ranganatha temple at Srirangapatana he gifted seven silver cups and a silver camphor burner.
This temple was hardly a stone's throw from his palace from where he
would listen with equal respect to the ringing of temple bells and the muezzin's call from the mosque. Tipu is regarded to be anti-Christian by some historians. The captivity of Mangalorean Catholics at Seringapatam, which began on 24 February 1784 and ended on 4 May 1799, remains the most disconsolate memory in their history. The
Bakur Manuscript reports him as having said: "All Musalmans should
unite together, and considering the annihilation of infidels as a
sacred duty, labor to the utmost of their power, to accomplish that
subject." Soon after the Treaty of Mangalore in 1784, Tipu gained control of Canara. He issued orders to seize the Christians in Canara, confiscate their estates, and deport them to Seringapatam, the capital of his empire, through the Jamalabad fort route. However,
there were no priests among the captives. Together with Father Miranda,
all the 21 arrested priests were issued orders of expulsion to Goa,
fined Rupees 2 lakhs, and threatened death by hanging if they ever
returned. Tipu
ordered the destruction of 27 Catholic churches, all beautifully carved
with statues depicting various saints. Among them included the Church
of Nossa Senhora de Rosario Milagres at Mangalore, Fr Miranda's Seminary at Monte Mariano, Church of Jesu Marie Jose at Omzoor, Chapel at Bolar, Church of Merces at Ullal, Imaculata Conceiciao at Mulki, San Jose at Perar, Nossa Senhora dos Remedios at Kirem, Sao Lawrence at Karkal, Rosario at Barkur, Immaculata Conceciao at Baidnur. All were razed to the ground, with the exception of The Church of Holy Cross at Hospet, owing to the friendly offices of the Chauta Raja of Moodbidri. According to Thomas Munro, a Scottish soldier and the first collector of Canara, around 60,000 people, nearly 92 percent of the entire Mangalorean Catholic community, were captured; only 7,000 escaped. Francis Buchanan gives
the numbers as 70,000 captured, from a population of 80,000, with
10,000 escaping. They were forced to climb nearly 4,000 feet
(1,200 m) through the jungles of the Western Ghat mountain
ranges. It was 210 miles (340 km) from Mangalore to Seringapatam,
and the journey took six weeks. According to British Government
records, 20,000 of them died on the march to Seringapatam.
According to James Scurry,
a British officer, who was held captive along with Mangalorean
Catholics, 30,000 of them were forcibly converted to Islam. The
young women and girls were forcibly made wives of the Muslims living
there. The young men who offered resistance were disfigured by cutting their noses, upper lips, and ears. According to Mr. Silva of Gangolim,
a survivor of the captivity, if a person who had escaped from
Seringapatam was found, the punishment under the orders of Tipu was the
cutting off of the ears, nose, the feet and one hand. The
Archbishop of Goa wrote in 1800, "It is notoriously known in all Asia
and all other parts of the globe of the oppression and sufferings
experienced by the Christians in the Dominion of the King of Kanara,
during the usurpation of that country by Tipu Sultan from an implacable
hatred he had against them who professed Christianity." Tipu Sultan's invasion of the Malabar had an adverse impact on the Syrian Malabar Nasrani community of the Malabar coast. Many churches in the Malabar and Cochin were
damaged. The old Syrian Nasrani seminary at Angamaly which had been the
center of Catholic religious education for several centuries was razed
to the ground by Tipu's soldiers. A lot of centuries old religious
manuscripts were lost forever. The
church was later relocated to Kottayam where it still exists. The Mor
Sabor church at Akaparambu and the Martha Mariam Church attached to the
seminary were destroyed as well. Tipu's army set fire to the church at
Palayoor and attacked the Ollur Church in 1790. Furthernmore, the
Arthat church and the Ambazhakkad seminary was also destroyed. Over the
course of this invasion, many Syrian Malabar Nasrani were killed or
forcibly converted to Islam. Most of the coconut, arecanut, pepper and
cashew plantations held by the Syrian Malabar farmers were also
indiscriminately destroyed by the invading army. As a result, when
Tipu's army invaded Guruvayur and adjacent areas, the Syrian Christian
community fled Calicut and small towns like Arthat to new centres like
Kunnamkulam, Chalakudi, Ennakadu, Cheppadu, Kannankode, Mavelikkara,
etc. where there were already Christians. They were given refuge by
Sakthan Tamburan, the ruler of Cochin and Karthika Thirunal, the ruler
of Travancore, who gave them lands, plantations and encouraged their
businesses. Colonel Macqulay, the British resident of Travancore also
helped them. Tipu's
persecution of Christians even extended to captured British soldiers.
For instance, there were a significant number of forced conversions of
British captives between 1780 and 1784. Following their disastrous
defeat at the 1780 Battle of Pollilur,
7,000 British men along with an unknown number of women were held
captive by Tipu in the fortress of Seringapatnam. Of these, over 300
were circumcised and given Muslim names and clothes and several British
regimental drummer boys were made to wear ghagra cholis and entertain the court as nautch girls
or dancing girls. After the 10 year long captivity ended, James Scurry,
one of those prisoners, recounted that he had forgotten how to sit in a
chair and use a knife and fork. His English was broken and stilted,
having lost all his vernacular idiom. His skin had darkened to the
swarthy complexion of negroes, and moreover, he had developed an aversion to wearing European clothes. During
the surrender of the Mangalore fort which was delivered in an armistice
by the British and their subsequent withdrawal, all the Mestizos and
remaining non-British foreigners were killed, together with 5,600
Mangalorean Catholics. Those condemned by Tipu Sultan for treachery
were hanged instantly, the gibbets being weighed down by the number of
bodies they carried. The Netravati River was so putrid with the stench
of dying bodies, that the local residents were forced to leave their
riverside homes.
Sirdar Yaar Muhammad, the right hand man of Sultan Tipu, also known as Ghazi-e Mysore (Veteran/
holy warrior of Mysore), was born in the 18th century in a Muslim
Rajput family to Shah Muhammad, a Sufi saint. It is said that Tipu had
become a disciple of Shah Muhammad. Yar joined the Army of Mysore and
soon became one of the favorite generals of Tipu Sultan. Seeing his
patriotic and dauntless behavior, Tipu Sultan made him his
commander-in-chief. He fought dauntlessly in the Battle of Seringapatam (1799), but after Tipu's death, and later the fall of Mysore, he ran away to the Kullu hills and then to the central Punjab of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Thus, he managed to evade capture by the English. After the fall of
Mysore, he was declared one of the most wanted Mysorean officers. East India Company tried
its best to capture him, dead or alive, but couldn’t succeed. He
carried bounty on his head. Several of Yar's family members and
relatives were killed by the conquerors, however, he, along with his
wife, his father, and a son Ilahi Bakhsh, escaped. He spent the rest of
his life as a fugitive. General Yar Muhammad died in the first half of
the 19th century. His descendants still live in Punjab, Pakistan, today. Alexander Beatson, who published a volume on the Fourth Mysore War entitled View of the Origin and Conduct of the War with Tippoo Sultaun,
described Tipu Sultan as follows: "His stature was about five feet
eight inches; he had a short neck, square shoulders, and was rather
corpulent: his limbs were small, particularly his feet and hands; he
had large full eyes, small arched eyebrows, and an aquiline nose; his
complexion was fair, and the general expression of his countenance, not
void of dignity". He
was called the Tiger of Mysore. It is said that Tipu Sultan was hunting
in the forest with a French friend. He came face to face with a tiger.
His gun did not work, and his dagger fell on the ground as the tiger
jumped on him. He reached for the dagger, picked it up, and killed the
tiger with it. That earned him the name "the Tiger of Mysore". He
had the image of a tiger on his flag. Tipu Sultan was also very fond of
innovations. Beatson mentioned that Tipu Sultan was "passionately fond
of new inventions. In his palace was found a great variety of curious
swords, daggers, fusils, pistols, and blunderbusses; some were of
exquisite workmanship, mounted with gold, or silver, and beautifully
inlaid and ornamented with tigers' heads and stripes, or with Persian
and Arabic verses". Tipu's Tiger, an automaton representing a tiger attacking a European soldier, made for Tipu Sultan, is on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. During
Tipu Sultan's reign, a new calendar, new coinage, and seven new
government departments, were introduced as well as innovations in the
use of rocket artillery. Tipu Sultan was instructed in military tactics by French officers in the employment of his father, Hyder Ali (also spelled "Haidar Ali"). At age 15, he accompanied his father against the British in the First Mysore War in 1766. He commanded a corps of cavalry in the invasion of Carnatic in 1767 at age 16. He also distinguished himself in the First Anglo-Maratha War of 1775 – 1779. In 1779, the British captured the French controlled port of Mahé,
which Tipu had placed under his protection, providing some troops for
its defence. In response, Hyder launched an invasion of the Carnatic,
with the aim of driving the British out of Madras. During
this campaign in September 1780, Tipu Sultan was dispatched by Hyder
Ali with 10,000 men and 18 guns to intercept Colonel Baillie who was on
his way to join Sir Hector Munro. In the Battle of Pollilur,
Tipu decisively defeated Baillie. Out of 360 Europeans, about 200 were
captured alive, and the sepoys, who were about 3800 men, suffered very
high casualties. Munro was moving south with a separate force to join
Baillie, but on hearing the news of the defeat he was forced to retreat
to Madras, abandoning his artillery in a water tank at Kanchipuram. Tipu
Sultan defeated Colonel Braithwaite at Annagudi near Tanjore on 18
February 1782. Braithwaite's forces, consisting of 100 Europeans, 300
cavalry, 1400 sepoys and
10 field pieces, was the standard size of the colonial armies. Tipu
Sultan seized all the guns and took the entire detachment prisoner. In
December 1781 Tipu Sultan successfully seized Chittur from the British.
Tipu Sultan had thus gained sufficient military experience by the time
Hyder Ali died on Friday, 6 December 1782 - some historians put it at 2
or 3 days later or before, (Hijri date being 1 Muharram,
1197 as per some records in Persian - there may be a difference of 1 to
3 days due to the Lunar Calendar). Tipu Sultan realized that the
British were a new kind of threat in India. Upon becoming the Sultan on Sunday, 22 December 1782 (The inscriptions in some of Tipu Regalia showing it as 20 Muharram, 1197 Hijri -
Sunday), in a simple Coronation Ceremony, after his father's death, he
worked to check the advances of the British by making alliances with the Marathas and the Mughals. The Second Mysore War came to an end with the 1784 Treaty of Mangalore.
It was the last occasion when an Indian king dictated terms to the
British, and the treaty is a prestigious document in the history of
India. The Second Mysore War is also remembered for alleged excesses committed by Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan in Tanjore. During
the period of occupation which lasted six months, Hyder Ali and Tipu
Sultan are believed to have impoverished the country. As late as 1784, the Dutch missionary Christian Friedrich Schwarz describes Tipu's alleged abduction of 12,000 children from the region. It is alleged that the invaders plundered the country and took away the cattle and grain. The
invasion is believed to have had such an impact on the economy of the
country that it did not recover until the start of the nineteenth
century. The gross domestic product of the kingdom fell by over ninety percent between 1780 and 1781 and took over 15 years to again reach pre-1781 levels. However,
this conclusion must be considered in the light of the fact that no
real effort to measure the GDP of India was ever made by the British
government. The first such attempt was made by Dadabhai Nowroji in 1868
and it suffered from serious limitations. Therefore the veracity of the
GDP estimate made in the 18th century is questionable.
In 1789, Tipu Sultan disputed the acquisition by Dharma Raja of Travancore of two Dutch held fortresses in Cochin, which was a Mysorean tributary. In December 1789 he massed troops at Coimbatore, and on 28 December made an attack on the lines of Travancore, knowing that Travancore was (according to the Treaty of Mangalore) an ally of the British East India Company.
On account of the staunch resistance by the Travancore army, Tipu was
unable to break through the Tranvancore lines and the Maharajah of
Travancore appealed to the East India Company for help. In response,
Lord Cornwallis mobilized company and British military forces, and
formed alliances with the Marathas and the Nizam of Hyderabad to
oppose Tipu. In 1790 the company forces advanced, taking control of
much of the Coimbatore district. Tipu counterattacked, regaining much
of the territory, although the British continued to hold Coimbatore
itself. He then descended into the Carnatic, eventually reaching Pondicherry, where he attempted without success to draw the French into the conflict. In 1791 his opponents advanced on all fronts, with the main British force under Cornwallis taking Bangalore and
threatening Srirangapatna. Tipu harassed his enemy's supply and
communication and embarked on a "scorched earth" policy of denying
local resources to the invaders. In this last effort he was successful,
as the lack of provisions forced Cornwallis to withdraw to Bangalore
rather than attempt a siege of Srirangapatna. Following the withdrawal,
Tipu sent forces to Coimbatore, which they retook after a lengthy siege. The
1792 campaign was a failure for Tipu. The allied army was
well-supplied, and Tipu was unable to prevent the junction of forces
from Bangalore and Bombay before Srirangapatna. After about two weeks of siege, Tipu opened negotiations for terms of surrender. In the ensuing treaty, he was forced to cede one half of Mysore's territory to the allies, and deliver two of his sons as hostages of war. One of the motivations of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt was
to establish a junction with India against the British. Bonaparte
wished to establish a French presence in the Middle East, with the
ultimate dream of linking with Tippoo Sahib. Napoleon assured to the Directoire that
"as soon as he had conquered Egypt, he will establish relations with
the Indian princes and, together with them, attack the English in their
possessions." According to a 13 February 1798 report by Talleyrand: "Having occupied and fortified Egypt, we shall send a force of 15,000 men from Suez to India, to join the forces of Tipu-Sahib and drive away the English." Napoleon was finally defeated by the Ottoman Empire helped with England at the Siege of Acre in 1799, and at the Battle of Abukir in 1801, so that by 1802, the French were completely vanquished in the Middle East. Soon however, from 1803, Napoleon went to great lengths to form a Franco - Ottoman alliance against the British and the Russians, sending General Horace Sebastiani as envoy extraordinary. Napoleon also formed a Franco - Persian alliance in 1807, again with the aim of linking with India. After Horatio Nelson had defeated François-Paul Brueys D'Aigalliers at the Battle of the Nile in Egypt in 1798, three armies, one from Bombay, and two British (one of which included Arthur Wellesley, the future first Duke of Wellington), marched into Mysore in 1799 and besieged the capital Srirangapatnam in the Fourth Mysore War. There
were over 26,000 soldiers of the British East India Company comprising
about 4000 Europeans and the rest Indians. A column was supplied by the
Nizam of Hyderabad consisting of ten battalions and over 16,000
cavalry, and many soldiers were sent by the Marathas. Thus the soldiers
in the British force numbered over 50,000 soldiers whereas Tipu Sultan
had only about 30,000 soldiers. The British broke through the
city walls, and Tipu Sultan died defending his capital on May 4. When
the fallen Tipu was identified, Wellesley felt his pulse and confirmed
that he was dead. Next to him, underneath his palankeen, was one of his
most confidential servants, Rajah Cawn. Rajah was able to identify Tipu
for the soldiers. Tipu Sultan was killed at the Hoally (Diddy) Gateway,
which was located 300 yards from the N.E. Angle of the Srirangapattana
Fort. The Fort Gateway had been built only 5 years prior to Tipu's
death. Tipu
was buried the next afternoon, near the remains of his father. In the
midst of his burial, a great storm struck, with massive winds and
rains. As Lieutenant Richard Bayly of the British 12th regiment wrote,
"I have experienced hurricanes, typhoons, and gales of wind at sea, but
never in the whole course of my existence had I seen anything
comparable to this desolating visitation". Tipu Sultan and his father Hyder Ali are regarded as pioneers in the use of solid fuel rocket technology or missiles for military use. A military tactic they developed was the use of mass attacks with rocket brigades on infantry formations. Tipu Sultan wrote a military manual called Fathul Mujahidin in which 200 rocket men were assigned to each Mysorean "cushoon"
(brigade). Mysore had 16 to 24 cushoons of infantry. The areas of town
where rockets and fireworks were manufactured were known as Taramandal Pet ("Galaxy
Market"). It was only after Tipu's death that the technology eventually
reached Europe. The
rocket men were trained to launch their rockets at an angle calculated
from the diameter of the cylinder and the distance to the target. In
addition, wheeled rocket launchers capable of launching five to ten
rockets almost simultaneously were used in war. Rockets could be of
various sizes, but usually consisted of a tube of soft hammered iron
about 8 inches (20 cm) long and 1.5 to 3 in (3.8 to 7.6 cm)
in diameter, closed at one end and strapped to a shaft of bamboo about
4 ft (1 m) long. The iron tube acted as a combustion chamber and
contained well packed black powder propellant. A rocket carrying about
one pound of powder could travel almost 1,000 yards. In contrast,
rockets in Europe, not being iron cased, could not take large chamber
pressures and as a consequence, were not capable of reaching distances
anywhere near as great. Hyder Ali's father, the Naik or chief constable at Budikote, commanded 50 rocketmen for the Nawab of Arcot. There was a regular Rocket Corps in the Mysore Army, beginning with about 1200 men in Hyder Ali's time. At the Battle of Pollilur (1780), during the Second Anglo-Mysore War,
Colonel William Baillie's ammunition stores are thought to have been
detonated by a hit from one of Hyder Ali's rockets, contributing to a
humiliating British defeat. In 1792, during the Third Anglo-Mysore War,
there was mention of two rocket units fielded by Tipu Sultan, 120 men
and 131 men respectively. Lt. Col. Knox was attacked by rockets near
Srirangapatna on the night of 6 February 1792, while advancing towards
the Kaveri River from
the north. The Rocket Corps ultimately reached a strength of about 5000
in Tipu Sultan's army. Mysore rockets were also used for ceremonial
purposes. When the Jacobin Club of Mysore sent a delegation to Tipu Sultan, 500 rockets were launched as part of the gun salute. During the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, rockets were again used on several occasions. One of these involved Colonel Arthur Wellesley, later famous as the First Duke of Wellington. Wellesley was defeated by Tipu's Diwan, Purnaiya, at the Battle of Sultanpet Tope. Quoting Forrest, At this point there was a large tope, or grove, which gave shelter to
Tipu's rocketmen and had obviously to be cleaned out before the siege
could be pressed closer to Srirangapattana island. The commander chosen
for this operation was Col. Wellesley, but advancing towards the tope
after dark on the 5 April 1799, he was set upon with rockets and
musket fires, lost his way and, as Beatson politely puts it, had to
"postpone the attack" until a more favourable opportunity should offer. The
following day, Wellesley launched a fresh attack with a larger force,
and took the whole position without losing a single man. On 22 April 1799, twelve days before the main battle, rocketeers worked
their way around to the rear of the British encampment, then 'threw a
great number of rockets at the same instant' to signal the beginning of
an assault by 6,000 Indian infantry and a corps of Frenchmen, all
directed by Mir Golam Hussain and Mohomed Hulleen Mir Mirans. The
rockets had a range of about 1,000 yards. Some burst in the air like
shells. Others, called ground rockets, would rise again on striking the
ground and bound along in a serpentine motion until their force was
spent. According to one British observer, a young English officer named
Bayly: "So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no
moving without danger from the destructive missiles ...". He continued: The
rockets and musketry from 20,000 of the enemy were incessant. No hail
could be thicker. Every illumination of blue lights was accompanied by
a shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of the column,
passing through to the rear, causing death, wounds, and dreadful
lacerations from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet, which are
invariably attached to them. During the conclusive British attack on Srirangapattana on
May 2, 1799, a British shot struck a magazine of rockets within Tipu
Sultan's fort, causing it to explode and send a towering cloud of black
smoke with cascades of exploding white light rising up from the
battlements. On the afternoon of 4 May when the final attack on the
fort was led by Baird, he was again met by "furious musket and rocket
fire", but this did not help much; in about an hour's time the fort was
taken; perhaps within another hour Tipu had been shot (the precise time
of his death is not known), and the war was effectively over. After
the fall of Srirangapattana, 600 launchers, 700 serviceable rockets and
9,000 empty rockets were found. Some of the rockets had pierced
cylinders, to allow them to act like incendiaries, while some had iron
points or steel blades bound to the bamboo. By attaching these blades
to rockets they became very unstable towards the end of their flight
causing the blades to spin around like flying scythes, cutting down all
in their path. These experiences eventually led the Royal Woolwich Arsenal to
start a military rocket research and development program in 1801, based on the Mysorean technology. Their first demonstration of solid fuel rockets came in 1805 and was followed by publication of A Concise Account of the Origin and Progress of the Rocket System in 1807 by William Congreve, son of the arsenal's commandant. Congreve rockets were soon systematically used by the British during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. These descendants of Mysorean rockets were used in the 1814 Battle of Baltimore, and are mentioned in the Star Spangled Banner.
According
to historian Professor Sheikh Ali, the Tipu "took his stand on the
bedrock of humanity, regarding all his subjects as equal citizen to
live in peace, harmony and concord." However,
during the storming of Srirangapattana by the British in 1799, thirteen
murdered British prisoners were discovered, killed by either having
their necks broken or nails driven into their skulls.
Tipu Sultan had lost his sword in a war with the Nairs of Travancore, in which he was defeated. The Nair army under the leadership of Raja Kesavadas defeated the Mysore army near Aluva. The Maharaja, Dharma Raja, gifted the famous sword to the Nawab of Arcot, from where the sword went to London. The sword was on display at the
Wallace Collection, No. 1 Manchester Square, London. At an auction in London in 2004, the industrialist politician Vijay Mallya purchased
the sword of Tipu Sultan and some other historical artifacts, and
brought them back to India for public display after nearly two
centuries.
Tipu
was commonly known as the Tiger of Mysore and adopted this animal as
the symbol of his rule. He even had French engineers build a mechanical
tiger for his palace. Not
only did he place relics of tigers around his palace and domain, he
also had the emblem of a tiger on his banners and even on some arms and
weapons. Sometimes this tiger was very ornate and had inscriptions within the drawing, alluding to Tipu's faith. |