India: The Future from Iron Duke vs the Tipoo Sultan

Government bailout. How often have we heard that refrain in the past few months? If you think it’s a new concept guess again. Because that’s just the situation the British government found itself in with the East India Company back in the 18^th Century. 

The EIC charter was granted in 1600, and the company spent its first century developing coastal forts, forming alliances, making forays against the resident Dutch and Portuguese and occasionally taking on the local Mughals, who were at their zenith. Although they made progress in trading, claiming new territory and fighting small battles, no one back home really cared. In 1688, in the wake of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, everything changed. The Stock Exchange was born, and most of the shares traded were EIC shares. In 1693 their charter was forfeited and the shares were used to buy parliamentary support to renew it. But insider trading and fortunes made too quickly became the stuff of scandal; with the result that the lord president of the council was impeached, the speaker of the House of Commons was fired and the governor of the EIC was jailed.  

Eventually it got its charter back, featuring a new product that quickly made everybody in charge rich-tea. The English diet had become dependent on tea from China, laced with sugar from the West Indies. The British economy was dependent on spices, silk, cotton and an ever-widening circle of other Asian products. Nabob was the name given Englishmen who returned from the East with massive personal fortunes, often providing them with more lavish lifestyles than real princes had. It was a term formed from the Mughal word for provincial governor ‘nawab’. Naturally jealousy decreed that their riches had to be ill-gotten gains as they were obviously horribly corrupt cads. The one that got the worst treatment from government watchdogs was Warren Hastings, governor of the EIC. But before him came one Robert Lord Clive, who may have been the worst of the lot.  

For the two decades between1750-70 Clive had survived several parliamentary inquiries and a limited attempt to regulate the EIC. What really bothered people was Clive’s ever-increasing store of ‘possessions’. He called them ‘gifts’. The Mir Jafar, nawab of Bengal gave him a land grant, which he insisted on keeping. This cost the EIC a bundle. Clive was able to convince the bosses that the Nawab had given it to him but his enemies were convinced he had gained it from some underhanded negotiation. He nevertheless managed to arrange to draw a huge amount of money from the Bengal revenues for life. He was later named the ‘founder’ of empire and eventually knighted. 

Empire was costing a lot of money though. In 1757 the first stages of imperial rule were established with the Battle of Plassey. Two million pounds worth of presents had been distributed in Bengal between 1757 and 1765. The EIC worker bees were also amassing huge fortunes on the side.  

But the constant wars with France and the increasing battles to force them out of India were costing a bundle. The EIC employees may have been making fortunes but the EIC was losing money wholesale; and since the Exchequer depended on an influx from foreign trade England was going broke. What they needed was a hero. Enter Arthur Wesley. 

The Wesleys were Catholic aristocrats who had done well after the Restoration, and had lived in Ireland for over three centuries with no actual Irish associations at all. Garret Wesley, Earl of  Mornington, had taken the name, lands and title upon the death of his cousin and moved into Dangan Castle, County Meath. He was professor of Music at Trinity College in Dublin, as well as representing the family borough of Trim in the Irish Parliament. Soon he was raised to the House of Lords. In 1759 Garret married Anne Hill, daughter of the future Lord Dungannon. They had five children with the first son Richard born in 1760, then William in 1763, Anne in 1768, Arthur in 1769, finishing with Gerald and Henry. Although there were numerous rumours about his date and place of birth, Arthur always insisted it was May 1, and the family always insisted was in the family home on Merrion Square in Dublin- and not out at sea or in a coach on the road to Dublin, as some biographers have proposed. 

When Garrett’s spending habits forced the family to move to London because they weren’t able to keep up appearances in Ireland anymore, the differences between Richard and sickly Arthur became obvious. Richard’s academic career soared from Harrow to Eton to Oxford, while Arthur was sent to a seminary in London, destined by his family for the church as he didn’t seem to be fit for anything else. When their father died in 1781 the new Lord Mornington left Oxford before getting his degree and pulled Arthur out of Eton as they couldn’t afford to waste money on him when there were two younger but more worthy brothers to educate. His mother withdrew to Brussels and Arthur followed her a little later. Aside from some proficiency on the violin he had no other talents of note. The army was the best place for him decided Richard. 

But the army wasn’t in very good shape either. Its commanders were run by politicians and by patronage with authority split between the Secretary of state for war and the colonies and the Secretary at War. The King also became involved, in uniform design. 

In 1786 Arthur was sent to France to the Royal Academy of Equitation, where he did learn to ride and speak French adequately, and where his loyalty to the concept of absolute monarchy was formed. By the end of the year he was back in England, stronger but still unemployed. Richard was in Westminster and William sat in the Irish Commons for Trim. Richard asked the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland to find Arthur a commission-anything cheap that is. Army officers were expected to pay their own way and if you didn’t have a fortune back home you might as well forget it. However a regiment in India might do. So just before his 18^th birthday Arthur Wesley became an ensign in the 73^rd Highland Regiment of Foot. Then Richard purchased him a position as aide-de-camp to the new L-L Lord Buckingham at a much higher salary. On Christmas Day 1787 Arthur was a Lieutenant in the 76^th. But the 76^th was to head to the East Indies, a very unhealthy spot, so Arthur was transferred to the 41^st Regiment and back to Ireland.  

Still not firmly set on a military career he tried his hand at politics when his brother William also headed for a seat in Westminster, and Arthur took over his Trim seat. But Ireland was in the throes of nationalism and also was a prime target for France and Spain, both at war with Britain. As a consequence there were very few troops left in Ireland to defend the island. Arthur won the election of 1790 and entered a fractious parliament. But Arthur also kept his hand in the military. Patronage bought him a captaincy in the 58^th Regiment a year later, then into the 18^th Light Dragoons. 

When Richard, who had several children with his French mistress, also fathered a son with his Irish ‘friend’, Arthur was entrusted with the care and feeding of both of them. So with a steadily-decreasing salary, more mouths to feed and loans from the family to pay back, there was only one way out-marry up.  

He and Kitty Pakenham, daughter of the old Lord Longford, probably met in Dublin about 1790. When her brother Tom ascended to the title in 1792, Arthur knew he would have to really up the ante to impress snooty Tom. So he borrowed enough from Richard to buy himself a majority in the 33^rd Regiment, finally spoke in Parliament about his outrage at the way King Louis XVI was being treated and other foreign matters. But Lord Longford knew the Wesleys were in straightened circumstances. When Longford turned down his request for Kitty’s hand in marriage a depressed Arthur begged the Prime Minister to find some way to send him abroad. His appeal failed, which was just as well as the flank company he wanted to join went to Martinique and died in droves from yellow fever shortly thereafter. The 33^rd was sent to Flanders in 1794. Although Longford said it wouldn’t matter whether his fortunes ever changed, Arthur wrote Kitty that his heart would remain the same for her regardless. 

That awful winter in Holland taught Arthur plenty about the art of war, in particular what not to do, and he had performed well while saving the Duke of York’s forces. Back in England though he was still broke, Longford still said no, and the 33^rd was sent to India. In 1795 Arthur determined to follow it. He resigned his seat in Ireland, and by doing so managed to be gone for the 1798 Rebellion, which caused the deaths of 30,000 people and led to the imposed union with Britain, and the ‘troubles’ which have persisted even into the 21^st century. 

Arthur had been in Madras, making influential friends, when he heard that his brother Mornington, campaigning very hard to Prime Minister Pitt to make him a Marquess, was being sent out to India as governor-general of British India. In May, 1798, he grandiosely signed himself Wellesley for the first time. He met Richard and their brother Henry, who came along as Richard’s secretary, and the three brothers sailed to Calcutta. In a world where everything depended on who you knew Arthur couldn’t have had better luck. But it also made him some bitter enemies of the less well-connected.  

Richard was out to expand England’s, and the Company’s, influence in India. After he had re-established influence over the Nizam of Hyderabad in November, he set his sights on defeating a bigger obstacle. His target was the Tiger of Mysore-the Tipoo Sultan.

The Tipoo had previously been beaten by Lord Cornwallis, having to cede him much land. In retaliation he tortured British prisoners by chaining them standing up, and then left them up to their necks in flooded cells on a regular basis. He was also Citizen Tipoo to the French, who still had active military agents in the Indian courts; The Governor of French Mauritius even announced there was an alliance between the Tipoo and France. 

To his Muslim subjects the Tipoo was devout, tolerant, intelligent and out to enhance the fortunes of all. He had even figured out and built an early version of a rocket launcher. It didn’t have a lot of accuracy but it did terrify his enemies. Richard wanted war. The newly arrived governor of Madras, Lord Clive (remember him?), did not. Arthur started working on him, while Richard wrote to the Tipoo to watch out for the French alliance-they’d try to convert him from his religion and ruin his happy association with the Company. Plans for the war were in the hands of Colonel Ashton of the 12^th Regiment and Lt.-Col. Barry Close of the EIC. Arthur joined their staff. In December, Close was mortally wounded in a duel, and Arthur got to his bedside fast enough to be given Close’s prize Arab charger Diomed before he died. Harris now had sole command with Arthur a loyal assistant. 

Richard ordered the advance on the Tipoo’s territory, but stayed in Madras on Arthur’s advice. A force of about 43,000 European and Hyderabad troops began to march, despite a lot of dissension in the ranks of the four major generals. One ill-tempered Scot named David Baird, who had spent a most unhappy term in the Tipoo’s jail, was a particular problem. Even his own mother said she was sorry for the man who had been shackled to her Davie. They entered the Tipoo’s territory on March 6 to find that he had demolished his old fort at Bangalore and fallen back, burning all the crops along the way, leaving no feed for the bulls who pulled all the wagons. On March 10 their rearguard was attacked. 

On March 27, Harris learned that there was plenty of water in a village six miles away from where they were camped so he ordered them there. Scouts reported that the Tipoo had set up his main army and two big cannons on a low ridge that blocked the road to the village. Harris reasoned that if they could defeat the Tipoo’s forces here there would be less of them to defend his fortress at Seringapatam. Arthur, on Diomed, lined up his 33^rd on the right near the main road in a two-deep line. A 2500-strong infantry force suddenly charged them. His men well-practiced at the tactic, Arthur ordered them to halt, aim and fire. The Indians broke and ran. But Harris’s army trudged on to Seringapatum, surrounding the Tipoo’s field army. The Tipoo withdrew into Seringapatam, located on an island in the Cauvery River, which at that time of the year was dry. By May it would be in flood, so Harris had less than a month to win this one. They would have to force their way in. 

During the ensuing battles Arthur was hit in the knee by a musketball. On April 26, after taking out the Tipoo’s cannon and clearing out his men from the whole area between the Little and South Cauvery, the British gunners bombarded one section of a wall with the object of blowing a hole in it so that the earth and rubble piled up behind it would slide forward, making a massive slope, and a breach. David Baird volunteered to lead the assault. On May 4, Harris’s men were deep inside the fort, fighting a rapidly collapsing resistance. The 33^rd stayed outside on guard. Arthur walked up the slope over the bodies. He declared that if they surrendered the survivors would be spared. But the Tipoo did not hear this as he had died on the ramparts, firing guns that were being handed to him by retainers, while himself being hit several times. He finally fell to a bullet to the head. The huge jewel he wore on the front of his turban was missing. As no English soldier knew who he was no one ever took credit for it-nor did the jewel ever resurface. While the remnants of his great army mourned The Tiger of Mysore the British troops raped the women and pillaged the fort. A disgusted and weary Arthur went back to camp and went to bed. 

Major General Arthur Wellesley’s career continued in India. It would be many years before he became the Iron Duke of Wellington and end his military career with his greatest victory on the field at Waterloo. But it was launched with his part in the victory over the Tipoo Sultan-now but a tiny blip in India’s history. 

The series ends next time with the end of the Mughal Empire and the rise of the British Raj