The morning of the twenty-sixth of April 1798 was a scene of universal
excitement in the fort of Seringapatam. As the day advanced, crowds of
men collected in the great square before the palace; soldiers in their
gayest costumes, horsemen, and caparisoned elephants, which always
waited upon the Sultaun and his officers. The roofs of the houses
around, those of the palace particularly, the old temples, and the flat
terraces of its courts and dhurrumsalas, even the trees were crowded
with human beings, on the gay colours of whose dresses a brighter sun
had never shone. There arose from the mighty mass of garrulous beings a
vast hubbub of sounds, increased by the Sultaun’s loud kettle-drums, the
martial music of the band of a French regiment, the shrill blasts of the
collery horns, neighings of horses and trumpetings of elephants, as they
were urged hither and thither.
No one in this soberly-dressed land can have an idea of the gorgeous
appearance of these spectacles; for an eastern crowd, from the endless
variety of its bright colours, and the picturesqueness and grace of its
costumes,—its gaily caparisoned horses, elephants, and camels,—is of all
others in the world the most beautiful and impressive.
In the centre of the square was an open space, kept by French soldiers;
in the middle of this stood a small tree, which had been uprooted and
planted there; but already its leaves had faded and drooped. It was
covered with gay ribbons of all colours and of gold and silver tissue,
which fluttered in the fresh breeze and glittered in the sun: this was
surmounted by a spear, on which was the red cap of liberty, the fearful
emblem of the French revolution.
Around it were many French officers, some dressed fantastically and
crowned with wreaths of green leaves, others in brilliant uniforms,
their plumes and feathers waving. Many of them spoke with excited
gestures from time to time, and swore round oaths at the Sultaun’s
delay; for the sun had climbed high into the heaven, and no shade was
there to save them from its now scorching beams.
The amicable issue of the embassy to Paris, sent by Tippoo in 1788, had
been exaggerated by the envoys to enhance their consequence; and the
French officers in his service had by every possible means in their
power kept this feeling alive. When the revolution broke out, the roar
of which faintly reached the Sultaun of Mysore, it was represented to
him by those of the French nation who were there, in such terms of
extravagant eulogium, while its bloody cruelties were concealed, or, if
mentioned, declared to be acts of retributive justice, that the
Sultaun’s mind, itself a restless chaos of crude ideas of perpetual
changes and progression, eagerly caught at the frenzied notions of
liberty which the Frenchmen preached. At the same time it is almost
impossible to conceive how an Asiatic monarch born to despotism could
have endured such an anomaly as his position presents—one who with the
most petty jealousy and suspicion resisted any restriction of, or
interference with, his absolute will and direction of all affairs, even
to the most minute and unimportant of his government, whether civil or
military.
From time to time, allured by the certainty of good pay in his army,
many needy adventurers came to him from the Isle of France, who were
entertained at once, and assumed, if they did not possess it, a
knowledge of military affairs. These kept up a constant correspondence
with their parent country; and willing to humour the Sultaun, while
indulging their own spleen, they poured into his ready ear the most
virulent abuse of the English, and constant false statements of their
losses by sea and land; while the accounts of French superiority and
French victory were related in tones of exaggerated triumph.
Ripaud, an adventurer with more pretension and address than others,
having arrived at Mangalore, and discerning the bent of the court from
Tippoo’s authorities there, represented himself to be an envoy from the
French republic, and was invited at once to the capital. It may well be
supposed that he did not underrate his own assumed influence, nor the
immense advantages of an embassy in return; and one was sent by Tippoo,
which, meeting with various adventures by the way, returned at last, not
with the mighty force he had been led to expect, but with a few needy
officers, the chief of whom was Chapuis, men who determined to raise for
themselves at his court a power equal to that of Perron at the court of
Sindia, and of Raymond at that of the Nizam.
This was a feverish period for India, when those two mighty nations,
England and France, were striving for supremacy. True, the power of the
English was immeasurably more concentrated and effective, and their
resolute and steady valour more highly appreciated than the brilliant
but eccentric character of the French. Still, however, the latter power
had increased extraordinarily since the last war with Tippoo; and 45,000
men at Sindia’s court, over whom Perron held absolute sway, and 14,000
under Raymond at Hyderabad, were pledged by their leaders to aggrandize
the power of their nation, and to disseminate the principles of the
revolution.
Chapuis had laboured hard to effect his object; a man of talent and
quick-witted, he had at once assumed a mental superiority over the
Sultaun, which he maintained. He had flattered, cajoled, and threatened
by turns; he had written to the French Government in his behalf—he had
promised unlimited supplies of men and ammunition—he had bewildered the
Sultaun’s mind with the sophistries of the revolution, with vague
notions of liberty, equality, and the happiness which was to follow upon
the earth from the adoption of these principles by all ranks—he had told
him of the rapid rise of Buonaparte, of his magnificent victories, and
inflamed him with visions of conquest even more vast than those of the
French general.
The French expedition to Egypt became known, their successes and their
subjugation of the country. That seemed but the stepping-stone to
greater achievements. Alexander with a few Greeks had penetrated into
India and had subdued all in his path. Buonaparte, with his victorious
armies, far outnumbering the Greeks, was at a point from whence he could
make an immediate descent upon Bombay; then would Perron lead Sindia
into his alliance—Raymond, the Nizam. The Mahrattas, a wavering power,
would side with the strongest. Zeman Shah and his hardy Afghans had
already promised co-operation, so had the Rajpoots, and the men of Delhi
and those of Nipal; last of all Tippoo himself, who had single-handed
already met and defeated the English in the field. All were to join in
one crusade against the infidel, the detested English, and expel them
for ever from India. It is no wonder that the wild and restless ambition
of the Sultaun was excited, his intrigues more and more frequent, and,
as success seemingly lay within his grasp, that he himself was more open
and unguarded.
‘Join but our society,’ Chapuis would say to him, ‘you league yourself
with us,—you identify yourself with the French republic,—its interests
become yours,—your welfare its most anxious care. You become the friend,
the brother of Buonaparte, and at once attach him to you by a bond which
no vicissitudes can dissever.’
And he yielded, though with dread, for he knew not the meaning of the
wild ceremony they proposed, of destroying the symbols of royalty, and
reducing himself to a level with the meanest of his subjects; it was a
thing abhorrent to his nature, one which he dared not disclose even to
his intimates, but to which he yielded, drawn on by the blindest
ambition that ever urged a human being to destruction.
The Frenchmen had long waited; at length there arose a shout, and the
kettle-drums and loud nagaras from the palace proclaimed that the
Sultaun was advancing. He approached slowly, dressed in the plainest
clothes; no jewel was in his turban, only his rosary around his neck, a
string of pearls without a price, for each bead had been exchanged for
another when one more valuable could be purchased. A lane was formed
through the crowd, and his slaves, headed by Jaffar, his confidential
officer, preceded him, forcing the people back by rude blows of their
sheathed sabres, and shouting his titles in extravagant terms.
All hailed the spectacle as one to exult in, though they could not
understand it; but to the Sultaun it was one of bitter humiliation, his
feelings at which he could hardly repress. He passed on, the crowd
making reverence to him as he moved; he did not return their salutation,
his eyes were downcast, and he bit his lips almost till the blood came.
Before him was the place where he was going to a moral death—to abjure
his power over men—to allow himself to be on equality with the meanest,
to hold authority over them, not of inherent right, but by their
sufferance. Had any one known his intention, and spoken one word to him
in remonstrance, he would have turned; but the men were before him to
whom he had sworn obedience, and he proceeded. Chapuis advanced, he saw
his agitation, and in a few hurried words implored him to be firm,
reminding him of the issue at stake, and this rallied him.
He led him to the tree; there was an altar beneath, as if for sacrifice;
a small fire burned on it, and its thin blue smoke rose among the
branches, and melted away into air; a perfume was thrown from time to
time into the flame, which spread itself abroad as the smoke was
dissipated.
Chapuis and some others officiated as priests of the mysteries, and they
knelt before the altar, while one made a passionate invocation to
liberty, which another tried in vain to explain to the Sultaun. It was
finished: they arose, and Chapuis advanced toward him. ‘Hast thou the
emblems?’ he said.
The Sultaun took them from an attendant, the feather of gold tinsel he
always wore in his turban, and an ornament of trifling value for the
head.
‘These are all,’ he said; ‘be quick.’
‘They will be nothing without your Highness’s own turban,’ replied
Chapuis; ‘placed in that, your people will understand the ceremony;
otherwise it is vain. Your Highness remembers your promise and mine. I
have performed mine; see that thou, O Sultaun, dost not fail!’
The others echoed his words, and urged the Sultaun to obey.
Hesitating and almost trembling, he did so.
‘They will not understand,’ he said to himself, ‘they cannot comprehend
this mummery; they cannot hear what the Frenchmen say, much less
understand their broken language.’
He took the turban from his brows, and gave it into Chapuis’ hand. The
officer placed in it the tinsel feather, and threw it contemptuously
into the fire. An attendant raised and unfurled a scarlet chuttree, or
umbrella, over the monarch’s head: that too was remarked.
‘It must follow,’ said Chapuis to him; ‘that is a regal emblem,—there
must be none left of the abomination.’ He caught it from the attendant
and flung it on the fire.
There arose a deep murmur of indignation from the multitude to see their
monarch’s turban taken from his head and burned; to see his chuttree
forcibly taken and destroyed was more than they could bear without an
expression of excitement, and cries of indignation rent the air.
‘To hell with the Feringhees!—cut them down!—what impiety is this? What
insult to the Sultaun?’ And many drew their swords and raised them on
high to strike. The Frenchmen were in imminent peril, but they were
firm.
It was a grand and striking scene—that excited crowd—those fierce
gestures—gleaming weapons—and those hoarse shouts and threats. In the
centre, the group on which all eyes were fixed, the bare-headed Sultaun,
and those few needy adventurers, reckless and unprincipled, who had
gained a mastery over one whose smallest gesture would have caused their
instant annihilation.
‘Peace!’ he cried, raising his arm; ‘it is our will—it is decreed.’ The
multitude was hushed, but many a muttered threat was spoken, many a
prayer for the dire omen to be averted, many an expression of pity for
the position of one whom all feared and many even venerated.
And truly, to see that degradation done to one who knew not its meaning,
who, bareheaded before his people, and under a fierce sun, stood and
looked on at the destruction of the emblems of his power—might have
caused pity for his condition; but it did not in those who stood around
him; the act sealed their own power—they had no thought of pity.
As the last fragments burned to ashes in the blaze of the fire, Chapuis
lowered the spear on which was the cap, and presented it to the monarch.
‘Wear it!’ he said, ‘consecrated as it is in the smoke of those emblems
which are destroyed for ever; wear it—an earnest of the victories thou
wilt gain.’
The Sultaun put it on. Chapuis seized a tri-coloured flag which an
officer bore near him, and waved it above his head. It was the signal
agreed on: the artillerymen were at their posts on the ramparts, and the
roar of two thousand and three hundred cannon proclaimed that Tippoo,
the Light of the Faith, the Lion of Islam, the Sultaun of Mysore, was
now citizen Tippoo of the French Republic, one and indivisible.
Then followed the coarse salutations of the French soldiery, who,
excited by liquor and by the event, rushed around the Sultaun, and
seized his hand, shaking it in rude familiarity; his cup of humiliation
was full, and he returned to his palace in bitter mortification and
anger. There were many of his officers who, deeply touched by the
mockery of the exhibition, remonstrated with him, and advised him to
revoke the act by a solemn scene in the mosque, attended by all his army
and the high religious functionaries. But it was impossible to arouse
him to the act—to shake off the domination to which he had subjected
himself; and while it was whispered abroad that the Sultaun had become a
Feringhee, those who wished well to his cause saw that he had with his
own hands struck a vital blow at its interests.
It was happy for the British cause in India that a nobleman was
appointed to the responsible station of Governor-General, who, from the
moment he undertook the office, and during his passage out to India,
bent his whole mind to the complete investigation of the politics of the
country he came to govern. He was happy in having those with him who
could afford him an insight into the designs and wishes of the native
princes, and there is no doubt that Lord Mornington resolved to act upon
many suggestions he received even before he arrived. To the intrigues of
the Sultaun his notice had been particularly attracted, and the designs
of the French were too obvious to be unnoticed for a moment. By a chain
of events, which are points of history, the Sultaun’s intrigues with the
French Government of the Mauritius became known; the proclamations of
its governor were received at Calcutta, and though doubted at first,
from the continued expressions of friendship made by the Sultaun, yet
their authenticity was established beyond a doubt by subsequent
inquiries.
After the scene in the fort which we have mentioned, Tippoo abandoned
himself to the councils of his French officers. He was admitted by them,
as a proof of brotherhood, to a participation in the secrets of the
correspondence held between Chapuis, Raymond, and Perron. Buonaparte was
successful in Egypt, and it was debated only when the time should be
fixed for the army of Tippoo to be set in motion and to overwhelm
Madras. The army itself was full of confidence, and great attention had
been paid to its discipline by the French; all branches were more
perfectly efficient than they had ever been. The Sultaun had now no
apprehension about the fort, for he had been surrounding it with another
wall and ditch, and the gates had been strengthened by outworks. There
never was a time when all his prospects were so bright, when the
political condition of India suggested movement—when all the native
princes, by one exertion on his part, might be incited to make common
cause against the English, and when, by the proposed expedition against
Manilla, the British forces would be much reduced, both at Madras and in
Bengal. It was at this hazardous moment that the genius of Lord
Mornington, guided by the sound views of the political agents at the
various courts, decided upon the line of action to be pursued. The
French interest in India was to be annihilated at all hazards;
therefore, after a preparatory treaty with the Nizam, an English force,
by rapid marches, arrived at Hyderabad, and joining the subsidiary force
there, surrounded the French camp, which was found to be in a state of
previous mutiny against its officers. The whole submitted; and a blow,
moral as well as physical, was struck against the French influence, from
which it never recovered.
The effect of this news at Seringaptam may be imagined; and when it was
followed up by that of the glorious victory of Nelson at the mouth of
the Nile, the Sultaun’s spirit fell. It was in vain that he wrote
apparently sincere letters to the Governor-General, and at the same
moment dispatched camel-loads of treasure to Sindia to urge him to move
southwards; the one estimated the true worth of the correspondence, and
the wily Mahratta, though he took the money, yet stirred not a foot; he
had too much at stake to be led into a quarrel of which he could not see
any probable termination. Tippoo’s ambassadors at the courts of Sindia
and Holkar, of the Peshwa, of the Rajah of Berar, all wrote word that
these potentates would join the cause; but their letters were cold and
wary, and the Sultaun discovered too late that he must abide the brunt
of the blow himself.
His dread of the English was vented daily in his Durbar, in compositions
the most abominable that his fertile brain could invent. Besides his
pretended supernatural revelations, letters were read, purporting to be
from Delhi, from Calcutta, from Lucknow, describing the atrocious
conduct of the English, the forced conversion of Mahommedans to
Christianity, the violation of females of rank by the soldiery, the
plunder and sack of towns given up to rapine; and after reading them,
Tippoo would give vent to frantic prayers that judgment might come upon
them. In this, however, as in many other instances, he overreached the
mark he aimed at. A few of the flatterers around him, at every
succeeding story, swore to spread it abroad; and while they applauded,
pretended to feel excitement; but they ridiculed them in secret, and
they were soon listened to, except by the most bigoted, with contempt.
Thus passed the whole of 1798, a year of anxious suspense to the British
in India, when their power rested in a balance which a hair might have
turned. During this period the mind of Tippoo presents a humiliating
spectacle; now raving for conquest, now sunk in despair and dread at the
slow but certain preparations of the English—at times prosecuting, with
all the bigotry and savageness of his nature, conversions of the Hindoos
in various parts of his dominions, and at others bowing down in slavish
obedience to the dictates of the Brahmins, and offering up in the
temples of the fort sacrifices in secret for the discomfiture of his
enemies; while in the retired apartments of the palace magical rites
were held—abominable orgies, at which he himself assisted, to relate
which as we have heard them told, would be to defile our pages with
obscenities too gross to be repeated.
In the midst of this mental darkness there would break out gleams of
kindly feeling towards his sons, his officers, oftentimes to a sick
servant; and upon the lady Fureeda he lavished such love as his heart,
cold by nature, possessed, and whom his secret sufferings, absolute
prostration of intellect at times when fresh disastrous news reached
him, would inspire with a compassion she would fain have expressed in
words, in those consolings which to a fond and wounded spirit are
acceptable and bearable only from a woman.
There was another on whom his memory rested, and whom he besought, now
by threats, now by immense rewards, to join his cause—it was Herbert
Compton. His existence was known only to Jaffar and the Sultaun; the
latter had, during the lapse of years and while the repairs of his fort
proceeded, offered him rank, power, women, all that his imagination
could suggest to dazzle a young man, but in vain; he had threatened him
with death, but this was equally vain. Herbert had looked on death too
long to fear it; and despite of the climate, the weary life he led had
grown almost insupportable, and he saw no relief from it; death would
have been welcome to him, but he was suffered to live on. Even the
visits of Jaffar were events which, however trying to him at the time,
and exciting to one so secluded, were yet looked back upon with pleasure
from the very thought they created. Sometimes the Sultaun would relent
towards him, and seem on the point of releasing him and others; but the
shame of the act, the indignant remonstrance that he dreaded from the
British, and the advice of Jaffar himself, deterred him. Thus the poor
fellow lingered on almost without hope or fear, and in the end, amidst
other more stirring and anxious matters, his existence was almost
forgotten.
How often too would Tippoo’s thoughts revert to Kasim Ali, his conduct
to whom, in spite of the treachery denounced by Jaffar, would sometimes
rise up in judgment against his conscience. To do him justice, however,
it should be mentioned that, when the emissaries of Jaffar returned
foiled and with Kasim’s message, he did make inquiries in the bazaars
relative to the money which Jaffar had told him Kasim Ali had remitted
to Hyderabad; and he found all his statements so completely established,
that they confirmed in his mind at the time the conviction that Kasim
had been false to him, and that his falsehood had been long meditated,
and at last successfully executed. But this wore off at length; and for
one so esteemed, nay loved, there remained a painful impression that
injustice had been done; to say the truth, when all around him were
suspected, the flatterers and courtiers from their habitual
subserviency, and his elder and more trusted officers from their blunt
advice and open condemnation of many of his schemes and proceedings, he
often longed for the presence of the young Patél, who would in his own
person have united the qualities he most needed—sincere affection,
joined to a mild demeanour and an honest heart.
Early in 1799 it was impossible to disguise from himself that the time
had come when he should either make resistance against the English
invasion—for his attack upon Madras had long been abandoned as
impracticable even by the French—or he should march forth at the head of
his army and oppose them. He determined on the latter course; and
leaving his trusty commanders, Syud Sahib and Poornea, in charge of the
Fort, he marched, on a day when his astrologers and his own calculations
of lucky and unlucky days promised an uninterrupted career of prosperity
and victory, to meet the Bombay army, which was approaching through
Coorg, at the head of fifty thousand men, the flower of his troops. Once
in the field, his ancient vigour and courage revived; his army was in
the highest efficiency; the Bombay force he knew could not be a fifth of
his own; and by selecting his own ground, which he should be enabled to
do, he might practise the same manœuvre as he had done at Perambaukum
with Baillie, and, by drawing them into an ambuscade, destroy them. His
low estimation, however, of the English, was fated to be corrected; and
though at Sedaseer, where he met the Bombay army, he led in person
several desperate charges upon the British, and though under his eye his
troops fought well, and were driven back with loss, only to advance
again and again in a series of desperate onsets for five hours, yet he
was defeated. Losing all presence of mind and confidence in his army,
although there was every chance of success had he persevered in his
attacks on Lieut.-General Stuart’s corps, he retreated from the scene of
action upon the capital, to draw from thence fresh troops with which he
might oppose the march of the grand army from the East.
And now began that gloomy thought for the future, that utter despair of
his life which continued to the last, chequered only by fits of the
wildest excitement, by blind reliance at times upon vain rites and
ceremonies, and forced hilarity, which, the effect of despair, was even
more fearful to behold. The great drama of his fate was rapidly drawing
to a close—a gorgeous spectacle, with mighty men and armies for actors,
and the people of India for spectators.
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