A Miss of Grapeshot: Suffren and the Tiger of Mysore
- Thread starter Bad@logic
- Start date
The continued existence of the Austrian East India Company, if it get's it's act together, is definitely gonna cause changes in the rest of the 19th century. Although it could pay off the finacial issues the Austrian Empire had in OTL.
Dunno, but, If I interpreted it correctly, in the final paragraph of the section, there may be hints/possibilities that even if the Austrians won't be able to improve their OTL situation/troubles... That the authorization/concession that Mysore get, could, eventually be used in the future by Mysorean ships for possibly under the AEIC flag, to commerce directly with Europe, trough an Austrian port.
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Oh boy, finally a story focusing Mysore!! So excited to see a timeline focusing on the Indian subcontinent. Hopefully we get more Brit-screws here.
Actually, if British did get expelled from India sooner, would ethno-linguistic nationalism prevail like in Europe, or would multi-ethnic empires survive like Austria-Hungary?
With Mysore surviving, they might able to develop their rocket tech more... First satellites and human in space from Mysore?
Actually, if British did get expelled from India sooner, would ethno-linguistic nationalism prevail like in Europe, or would multi-ethnic empires survive like Austria-Hungary?
With Mysore surviving, they might able to develop their rocket tech more... First satellites and human in space from Mysore?
It's a mixture of both: don't expect anything from the Austrian East India Company in the short term, this is almost a shell company and I was considering a joint Austro-Mysorean company but considered that too out of character for the period, but in the long run I am hoping to rehabilitate the Austrian efforts.
I'm glad you like it! The next chapter is on the British (with a part on Oudh @MagicalPhantom345), so presuming my work supervisor emails it out for me soon, since I write my updates on my non-internet-connected work computer, we'll see just what has been happening with them up north. They're not being expelled, but British Bengal and the Ganges basin is going to be a different place.Oh boy, finally a story focusing Mysore!! So excited to see a timeline focusing on the Indian subcontinent. Hopefully we get more Brit-screws here.
Actually, if British did get expelled from India sooner, would ethno-linguistic nationalism prevail like in Europe, or would multi-ethnic empires survive like Austria-Hungary?
With Mysore surviving, they might able to develop their rocket tech more... First satellites and human in space from Mysore?
To some extent, European linguistic nationalism by this point is inevitable, or at least I consider it a natural development from my reading of Benedict Anderson. But I definitely have hopes to develop alternate state structures and to attenuate some of its effects. Victor Lucien Tapié's Monarchie et peuples du Danube convincingly shows that the Austrian Empire was a natural arrangement that reflected the shared interests of people in the Danube basin, and I'm hoping to develop this theme more broadly for reasons responding to the alternate logic of this world. Some of this will be through Mysorean or more broadly speaking Indian influence, with some future ideologies which have different roles for religion, although with European multi-ethnic empires much more will hinge on some European developments in the 1790s legitimating alternate models. However, I still need to do reading on some of the specific areas where I was hoping to implement some very different state policies to see if the country involved ever considered what I was hoping to do.
Rockets are slated to play a bigger role, although my first updates revolving around them don't start until the 1870s.
I also recommend learning about the Sikhs while you are at it, as they are major players in the Northeastern india.
They're on my list, I have a reading program for things. So far I have solid ideas of how Bengal will evolve, the Marathas and some ideas in particular for Gujarat, most aspects of the Mysoreans, while Hyderabad and the Sikhs are the ones which will need to be fleshed out more.
Chapter 10, The Wounded Lion: British Indian and East India Company Policy in the 1780s
The British Empire in India emerged dearly injured from the Second Anglo-Mysore War, shorn of the Madras Presidency, the original home of British colonialism and influence in east India. What’s more, the reputation of the British for invincibility had been sorely shattered, in battles such as Pollilur and Wadgaon, not to mention the sieges of Pondicherry and Madras. A powerful coalition of states had thrown the English into the sea in South India. At home, there was popular disgust for the failures of British arms, diplomacy, and policies in India.
Even in northern India, all was not well under heaven. In one of Warren Hasting’s less diplomatic moments, he had severely alienated the Raja of Benares, at this time Chait-Sinh, formerly a key English auxiliary in the crucial regions abutting Agra. Increasing burdens imposed upon him for the privilege of an English garrison, and then demands for cavalry, had led to increasingly evasive responses and ultimately Warren Hastings himself arriving on scene in August 1781 to force the recalcitrant Raja to pay up. This Chait-Sinh was not in the slightest mood to do and he resisted with the energy of despair, and Hastings’ actions sparked a major rebellion which had seen him forced to flee the city to avoid being unceremoniously lynched. With the British scrounging up every soldier they could get their hands on at the time to try to send a new army to the Carnatic to relieve Madras, there were simply no British soldiers on hand to put down the rebellion. The British were instead forced to call upon Oudh, the larger state to the west, also an allied/client state, to put down the rebellion. The fighting would drag out to 1783, and although ultimately successful, Oudh both increased its territory at Benares’ expense, effectively reducing the Raja of Benares to a city-state, and got vastly better terms in regards to financial subsidies from the British – extremely useful for Oudh in the context of massive misery and economic collapse in the midst of the devastating 1783 north Indian famine, but destroying Britain’s gain from the war, the increased Benares tribute, at a time when money was desperately lacking for the EIC in the context of the ruinous war against the French, Mysoreans, Marathas, and Hyderabad. Chait-Sinh sought refuge with the Marathas, becoming a sort of Maratha equivalent to Muhammad-Ali, Nawab of the Carnatic who was similarly ensconced with the British in Calcutta. In turn he was replaced by the British by his nephew, Mahipnarayan.
The increased degree of independence on Oudh’s part was demonstrated in 1782 when the Nawab of Oudh, Asaf-ud-Daula, desired to strip the begam or queen mother of Oudh of some of her lands, treatment to which she rejected: Warren Hastings backed the begam strongly but with Oudh troops responsible for putting down the rebellion in Benares, he had no real bargaining power and had to cede the issue to the Nawab. Oudh was still within the British sphere of influence, but was showing worrying signs of centralization and had aggrandized its territory and power, and seemed set on the path that the previous Nawab, Shuja-ud-Daula had followed so successfully: to take advantage of surrounding wars and crises, in the framework of the English alliance, for his own benefit. [1]
But this situation was not so grim as might otherwise be seemed. For one, the financial benefits of trade in south India were increasingly irrelevant to the trading profits of the British East India Company, whose real profits were drawn not from India, but rather from its bourgeoning Canton trade, fueled in large part by Bengal opium and export of Indian raw materials such as Gujarati cotton, and precious little of this was bound up with Madras’ trade. The Carnatic had been a politically unstable and often-devastated region, and it lacked the vast tax revenues and financial resources drawn from Bengal. And the alliance opposing the British rapidly broke down, and British influence was paramount in Hyderabad, and also in Delhi, which had had already proved useful in limiting the damage of Tipu Sultan’s victory.
A key lesson taken away by the British establishment as a whole was that they lacked the necessary information and understanding of India. This had a prosaic side, in that a lack of cultivation of Indian allies and powers that had led to British isolation, but there was also a deeper, more fundamental side. The British were strangers in a strange land and they had little understanding of Indian traditions, mentality, history, and even to an extent local languages, beyond a few Persian speakers who dealt with Indian administrations, and trade languages picked up by merchants. In order to govern, understand, control, and exploit Bengal, the British needed a greater understanding of Indian tradition and history. The British had become rulers, and could no longer skimp on their responsibilities and masquerade as simple merchants.
Thankfully, this was at the time of talented individuals in India who were moving policy in this direction. Although Warren Hastings might have been caught up with the general discrediting of British policy following the review of the British situation in India, and indicted in his trial of corruption and malfeasance[2] – which he was broadly innocent of, having been primarily responsible for the Bengal Presidency’s decisions and with no connection to the disastrous actions of the Madras and Bombay Presidencies, and although his policies during the Benares Revolt were gauche and ill-judged they certainly were hardly a criminal affair – the foundations of his policy of oriental studies continued on. Perhaps even more influential was William Jones, who established the mutual relationship of Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, and English, as belonging to one great common family of languages. Jones theorized that Sanskrit was at the mother tongue of the European languages like Greek and Latin, starting a long belief of India as the root of European civilization and language.
This period saw a great flowering of British study and interest in these languages, exemplified by the establishment of the Asiatic Society in Bengal as well as the expansion of oriental language schools and studies for British administrators in both Bengal and North India. Persian had been initially maintained as the language of administration in Bengal as a protectorate until the 1770s and still had important administrative roles, and British schools would become recognized as great specialties on Persian, translating numerous texts into English and training British diplomats for Persia as well as more broadly speaking the Indo-Persian world in India. There was also the study of Sanskrit and various vernacular languages of north India, which would bring an introduction to the great Indian classics and the roots of Hindu mythology.
But there was also a psychological element to this that went beyond simple pragmatism. British officials in Bengal felt isolated from home. There was a distance in physical terms of course, as there always had been, with a trip home requiring months, even years if the weather didn’t cooperate, alongside the rigors of the foreign climate with its heat, the lack of English women (as much as the French might sneer at that being an advantage), and a strange culture around them. But British agents, officials, merchants, in India traditionally could take pride in that they enjoyed the broad respect of the home country, and believe that they were expanding its power, prosperity, and wealth. Now, after the catastrophic defeats against Mysore and the Marathas, and in the midst of scandals concerning corruption and enrichment and illicit fortunes gained by British individuals in India, the British public’s opinion had soured on all things Indian.
In Bombay, and for those remaining traders in Madras, this was mixed with a feeling of guilt – after all, didn’t such accusations have a feeling of merit behind them? But the Bengal Presidency was mostly innocent of the disasters occasioned elsewhere, and instead of guilt, there was a feeling of outrage that they were lumped in with the other Indian presidencies about the calamity. In this context, feeling isolated from home, even rejected by it, they turned towards the India around them, embracing a study of Indian languages and history, or for the more physically inclined among them, the pleasures of Indian food, alcohol, music, and above all else women. The stereotype of British merchants and EIC officials as Orientalized in mores and customs, Indianized in their pleasures and lost in a foreign trollop’s embrace might have been exaggerated, but there was an element of truth to it. It would what’s more entrench itself, in a division of mutual incomprehension and rivalry between the EIC and other local administrators, one founded principally upon differences of policy and the rivalry of the merchants and government, but with a very real and growing cultural element as well.
This was just one of the cleavages in British India. There were three broad factions influencing policy in the subcontinent.
The first was the British government, which was animated by strategic concerns. It wished to see the French removed from India and to minimize their influence on the subcontinent, and to this effect to detach the Mysoreans , currently the most threatening power, from the French. It genuinely wished to cultivate a policy of friendship with Mysore, believing that with the end of the Carnatic as a zone of contention, it would be possible to remove the French factor from South India. British government acts, such as the India Act of 1784, called for ending British intervention and involvement in the native states, viewing this as having been the cause of disaster with the Anglo-Maratha War and the Anglo-Mysore War. Broadly speaking, it was indifferent towards most other Indian states, provided it could prevent the expansion of French influence among them – such as crucially in Hyderabad, increasingly drawn into the British sphere of influence but with French agents and officers employed by the government, and the Marathas, where French officers played a significant role in building up artillery forces and particularly Shinde’s new style army, as well as even being involved in civil engineering projects on the Ganges plains such as well construction for irrigation.
Even in the more firmly British-protected Oudh such paranoia asserted itself, where after the initial firing of many French officers in 1775 by the new Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula under British pressure, they would start to trickle back in during the Benares rebellion both to provide the army needed direction and because the British were clearly incapable of doing anything about it. Sometimes typical British insularity played its role too, since de Boigne, the Savoyard officer who bore the greatest credit for Shinde’s army, was commonly mistaken as a Frenchman by the British press and authorities, leading to an assumption of significantly more French influence among the Marathas than was actually the case, and it was true that many Frenchmen in India were completely mercenary and only interested in money instead of patriotic ties to la mère patrie, but at the same time there was a genuine French influence over many Indian states that the British found threatening.
Allied to this faction, if for different reasons, was the British East India Company itself. Their motivations were different, since they were not concerned with French strategic penetration of India per se, even if they were not fond of French commercial competition (this was mostly confined to the Carnatic however so the generalized damage was limited) but rather with minimizing expenses. Although the loss of their trading posts in the Carnatic and their revenue there was painful, at the same time it was clear that the roots of the company’s profits lay towards the east – in China. In actual profit terms, India had become an afterthought, and it was Canton where real profits lay. The BEIC desired to cultivate this direction, to expand trade with China, particularly the booming opium trade, and to mostly use the feuding between the Marathas, Hyderabad, and Mysore as a way to gain additional commercial concessions, all at minimal Company expense.
The third faction was radically, diametrically, opposed – the revenge faction, principally consisting of British government officials, military men, and a scattering of bureaucrats and émigrés from the Madras presidency. Led by the British general Lord Cornwallis, of Yorktown fame (if not for himself), Cornwallis himself wished to personally avenge his defeats and win a path to glory. But there was more than simply personal animus behind this. The revenge faction did not believe that British policy in the Anglo-Maratha War and the Second Anglo-Mysore War was mistaken – simply ill-timed and ill-judged. British diplomacy had served them poorly by bringing together the Marathas, the Mysoreans, and Hyderabad against the British at one time, and at a moment when Britain was bound up in a global war against France, Spain, and America, which had spread British seapower far too thin. With a judicious cultivation of Hyderabad and the Marathas, it would be possible to reverse the table on the Mysoreans, and if France was otherwise indisposed, to win much-needed naval superiority. Their objectives were to retake the Carnatic, and to resume the march of British power in south India, restoring British prestige and British honor.
What’s more, the British had other assets to play against Mysore. The most effective of these was played early, even before the ink on the Treaty of Mangalore was signed: British influence in Delhi prevented Tipu Sultan from having his Carnatic claims as being formally recognized by the Mughal emperor. These were an immensely complicated arrangement, under which the Nawab of the Carnatic was under the suzerainty of the Nizab, but then became independent of him in 1765, while still maintaining links to the Mughal Emperor – the same situation as Mysore, which too formally was under Mogul suzerainty – and Mysore was de jure ruled by the Wodeyars, specfically Chamaraja Wodeyar IX. The Mysorean conquest of the Carnatic led to de facto authority being exerted by the Mysoreans there, but the British successfully prevented the Mughal Emperor from recognizing this. Tipu was also wildly pleased with his conquests and was eager to assert himself, but would probably have preferred to continue under theoretical Mughal suzerainty: this option was blocked to him if he wished to control the Carnatic legitimately. Thus he declared himself independent of the Mughal Empire. While Mughal power had long since been purely theoretical, especially for Indian Muslims, it was still a crucial legitimizing factor: they hoped that this would undermine Tipu’s legitimacy, especially in his army.
Normally, the power of the British government and of the EIC combined would have been more than sufficient to fight off the third, but in 1785 the Mysoreans and the Marathas went to war, and this was eagerly seized upon by Cornwallis’ faction to kill two birds with one stone: they proposed to loan five British infantry regiments to the Marathas, paid for by the Marathas, and to use it to wring commercial concessions from the Marathas too. This was against both the letter and the spirit of the Treaty of Mangalore which called upon the British and the French to refrain from interfering in the Indian states. But the British found a legal loophole: the regiments were officially transferred to the service of the Nawab of the Carnatic, who had sought refuge in British Bengal but was officially still an independent sovereign, who then transferred them to the Marathas. This legal fiction managed to provide enough of a smokescreen to get it approved, and tightened up British relations with the Marathas, and decreased expenses – leading to the British policy of Cornwallization – British-trained soldiers loaned out to friendly powers, paid for by them, both to increase friendly relations and more importantly to cut down on expenses.[3]
It was not however, well-received by the Mysoreans, and Tipu was extremely angered that the British had intervened in Indian affairs contrary to their treaties. It would be merely the beginning of a buildup of grievances that would threaten to lead to another conflagration. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and the path to war is paved with government budget cuts.
[1]Much of the background from A l’Assaut de l’Asie, a 1901 French book that I’ve been working on translating for my own account into English, and which I never imagined would actually be useful beyond providing a look at European mentalities at the beginning of the 20th century. I’m still amazed that it actually turned out to be useful here.
[2]Historically he was found innocent. Here general dissatisfaction with India, his own mishandling of Benares, and the opprobrium heaped upon it in the context of the Carnatic disasters leads to him being found guilty.
[3]Similar to the original British policy of having client states pay subsidies to support British troops, but with the distinction of being less constrained, due to serious financial problems.
Even in northern India, all was not well under heaven. In one of Warren Hasting’s less diplomatic moments, he had severely alienated the Raja of Benares, at this time Chait-Sinh, formerly a key English auxiliary in the crucial regions abutting Agra. Increasing burdens imposed upon him for the privilege of an English garrison, and then demands for cavalry, had led to increasingly evasive responses and ultimately Warren Hastings himself arriving on scene in August 1781 to force the recalcitrant Raja to pay up. This Chait-Sinh was not in the slightest mood to do and he resisted with the energy of despair, and Hastings’ actions sparked a major rebellion which had seen him forced to flee the city to avoid being unceremoniously lynched. With the British scrounging up every soldier they could get their hands on at the time to try to send a new army to the Carnatic to relieve Madras, there were simply no British soldiers on hand to put down the rebellion. The British were instead forced to call upon Oudh, the larger state to the west, also an allied/client state, to put down the rebellion. The fighting would drag out to 1783, and although ultimately successful, Oudh both increased its territory at Benares’ expense, effectively reducing the Raja of Benares to a city-state, and got vastly better terms in regards to financial subsidies from the British – extremely useful for Oudh in the context of massive misery and economic collapse in the midst of the devastating 1783 north Indian famine, but destroying Britain’s gain from the war, the increased Benares tribute, at a time when money was desperately lacking for the EIC in the context of the ruinous war against the French, Mysoreans, Marathas, and Hyderabad. Chait-Sinh sought refuge with the Marathas, becoming a sort of Maratha equivalent to Muhammad-Ali, Nawab of the Carnatic who was similarly ensconced with the British in Calcutta. In turn he was replaced by the British by his nephew, Mahipnarayan.
The increased degree of independence on Oudh’s part was demonstrated in 1782 when the Nawab of Oudh, Asaf-ud-Daula, desired to strip the begam or queen mother of Oudh of some of her lands, treatment to which she rejected: Warren Hastings backed the begam strongly but with Oudh troops responsible for putting down the rebellion in Benares, he had no real bargaining power and had to cede the issue to the Nawab. Oudh was still within the British sphere of influence, but was showing worrying signs of centralization and had aggrandized its territory and power, and seemed set on the path that the previous Nawab, Shuja-ud-Daula had followed so successfully: to take advantage of surrounding wars and crises, in the framework of the English alliance, for his own benefit. [1]
But this situation was not so grim as might otherwise be seemed. For one, the financial benefits of trade in south India were increasingly irrelevant to the trading profits of the British East India Company, whose real profits were drawn not from India, but rather from its bourgeoning Canton trade, fueled in large part by Bengal opium and export of Indian raw materials such as Gujarati cotton, and precious little of this was bound up with Madras’ trade. The Carnatic had been a politically unstable and often-devastated region, and it lacked the vast tax revenues and financial resources drawn from Bengal. And the alliance opposing the British rapidly broke down, and British influence was paramount in Hyderabad, and also in Delhi, which had had already proved useful in limiting the damage of Tipu Sultan’s victory.
A key lesson taken away by the British establishment as a whole was that they lacked the necessary information and understanding of India. This had a prosaic side, in that a lack of cultivation of Indian allies and powers that had led to British isolation, but there was also a deeper, more fundamental side. The British were strangers in a strange land and they had little understanding of Indian traditions, mentality, history, and even to an extent local languages, beyond a few Persian speakers who dealt with Indian administrations, and trade languages picked up by merchants. In order to govern, understand, control, and exploit Bengal, the British needed a greater understanding of Indian tradition and history. The British had become rulers, and could no longer skimp on their responsibilities and masquerade as simple merchants.
Thankfully, this was at the time of talented individuals in India who were moving policy in this direction. Although Warren Hastings might have been caught up with the general discrediting of British policy following the review of the British situation in India, and indicted in his trial of corruption and malfeasance[2] – which he was broadly innocent of, having been primarily responsible for the Bengal Presidency’s decisions and with no connection to the disastrous actions of the Madras and Bombay Presidencies, and although his policies during the Benares Revolt were gauche and ill-judged they certainly were hardly a criminal affair – the foundations of his policy of oriental studies continued on. Perhaps even more influential was William Jones, who established the mutual relationship of Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, and English, as belonging to one great common family of languages. Jones theorized that Sanskrit was at the mother tongue of the European languages like Greek and Latin, starting a long belief of India as the root of European civilization and language.
This period saw a great flowering of British study and interest in these languages, exemplified by the establishment of the Asiatic Society in Bengal as well as the expansion of oriental language schools and studies for British administrators in both Bengal and North India. Persian had been initially maintained as the language of administration in Bengal as a protectorate until the 1770s and still had important administrative roles, and British schools would become recognized as great specialties on Persian, translating numerous texts into English and training British diplomats for Persia as well as more broadly speaking the Indo-Persian world in India. There was also the study of Sanskrit and various vernacular languages of north India, which would bring an introduction to the great Indian classics and the roots of Hindu mythology.
But there was also a psychological element to this that went beyond simple pragmatism. British officials in Bengal felt isolated from home. There was a distance in physical terms of course, as there always had been, with a trip home requiring months, even years if the weather didn’t cooperate, alongside the rigors of the foreign climate with its heat, the lack of English women (as much as the French might sneer at that being an advantage), and a strange culture around them. But British agents, officials, merchants, in India traditionally could take pride in that they enjoyed the broad respect of the home country, and believe that they were expanding its power, prosperity, and wealth. Now, after the catastrophic defeats against Mysore and the Marathas, and in the midst of scandals concerning corruption and enrichment and illicit fortunes gained by British individuals in India, the British public’s opinion had soured on all things Indian.
In Bombay, and for those remaining traders in Madras, this was mixed with a feeling of guilt – after all, didn’t such accusations have a feeling of merit behind them? But the Bengal Presidency was mostly innocent of the disasters occasioned elsewhere, and instead of guilt, there was a feeling of outrage that they were lumped in with the other Indian presidencies about the calamity. In this context, feeling isolated from home, even rejected by it, they turned towards the India around them, embracing a study of Indian languages and history, or for the more physically inclined among them, the pleasures of Indian food, alcohol, music, and above all else women. The stereotype of British merchants and EIC officials as Orientalized in mores and customs, Indianized in their pleasures and lost in a foreign trollop’s embrace might have been exaggerated, but there was an element of truth to it. It would what’s more entrench itself, in a division of mutual incomprehension and rivalry between the EIC and other local administrators, one founded principally upon differences of policy and the rivalry of the merchants and government, but with a very real and growing cultural element as well.
This was just one of the cleavages in British India. There were three broad factions influencing policy in the subcontinent.
The first was the British government, which was animated by strategic concerns. It wished to see the French removed from India and to minimize their influence on the subcontinent, and to this effect to detach the Mysoreans , currently the most threatening power, from the French. It genuinely wished to cultivate a policy of friendship with Mysore, believing that with the end of the Carnatic as a zone of contention, it would be possible to remove the French factor from South India. British government acts, such as the India Act of 1784, called for ending British intervention and involvement in the native states, viewing this as having been the cause of disaster with the Anglo-Maratha War and the Anglo-Mysore War. Broadly speaking, it was indifferent towards most other Indian states, provided it could prevent the expansion of French influence among them – such as crucially in Hyderabad, increasingly drawn into the British sphere of influence but with French agents and officers employed by the government, and the Marathas, where French officers played a significant role in building up artillery forces and particularly Shinde’s new style army, as well as even being involved in civil engineering projects on the Ganges plains such as well construction for irrigation.
Even in the more firmly British-protected Oudh such paranoia asserted itself, where after the initial firing of many French officers in 1775 by the new Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula under British pressure, they would start to trickle back in during the Benares rebellion both to provide the army needed direction and because the British were clearly incapable of doing anything about it. Sometimes typical British insularity played its role too, since de Boigne, the Savoyard officer who bore the greatest credit for Shinde’s army, was commonly mistaken as a Frenchman by the British press and authorities, leading to an assumption of significantly more French influence among the Marathas than was actually the case, and it was true that many Frenchmen in India were completely mercenary and only interested in money instead of patriotic ties to la mère patrie, but at the same time there was a genuine French influence over many Indian states that the British found threatening.
Allied to this faction, if for different reasons, was the British East India Company itself. Their motivations were different, since they were not concerned with French strategic penetration of India per se, even if they were not fond of French commercial competition (this was mostly confined to the Carnatic however so the generalized damage was limited) but rather with minimizing expenses. Although the loss of their trading posts in the Carnatic and their revenue there was painful, at the same time it was clear that the roots of the company’s profits lay towards the east – in China. In actual profit terms, India had become an afterthought, and it was Canton where real profits lay. The BEIC desired to cultivate this direction, to expand trade with China, particularly the booming opium trade, and to mostly use the feuding between the Marathas, Hyderabad, and Mysore as a way to gain additional commercial concessions, all at minimal Company expense.
The third faction was radically, diametrically, opposed – the revenge faction, principally consisting of British government officials, military men, and a scattering of bureaucrats and émigrés from the Madras presidency. Led by the British general Lord Cornwallis, of Yorktown fame (if not for himself), Cornwallis himself wished to personally avenge his defeats and win a path to glory. But there was more than simply personal animus behind this. The revenge faction did not believe that British policy in the Anglo-Maratha War and the Second Anglo-Mysore War was mistaken – simply ill-timed and ill-judged. British diplomacy had served them poorly by bringing together the Marathas, the Mysoreans, and Hyderabad against the British at one time, and at a moment when Britain was bound up in a global war against France, Spain, and America, which had spread British seapower far too thin. With a judicious cultivation of Hyderabad and the Marathas, it would be possible to reverse the table on the Mysoreans, and if France was otherwise indisposed, to win much-needed naval superiority. Their objectives were to retake the Carnatic, and to resume the march of British power in south India, restoring British prestige and British honor.
What’s more, the British had other assets to play against Mysore. The most effective of these was played early, even before the ink on the Treaty of Mangalore was signed: British influence in Delhi prevented Tipu Sultan from having his Carnatic claims as being formally recognized by the Mughal emperor. These were an immensely complicated arrangement, under which the Nawab of the Carnatic was under the suzerainty of the Nizab, but then became independent of him in 1765, while still maintaining links to the Mughal Emperor – the same situation as Mysore, which too formally was under Mogul suzerainty – and Mysore was de jure ruled by the Wodeyars, specfically Chamaraja Wodeyar IX. The Mysorean conquest of the Carnatic led to de facto authority being exerted by the Mysoreans there, but the British successfully prevented the Mughal Emperor from recognizing this. Tipu was also wildly pleased with his conquests and was eager to assert himself, but would probably have preferred to continue under theoretical Mughal suzerainty: this option was blocked to him if he wished to control the Carnatic legitimately. Thus he declared himself independent of the Mughal Empire. While Mughal power had long since been purely theoretical, especially for Indian Muslims, it was still a crucial legitimizing factor: they hoped that this would undermine Tipu’s legitimacy, especially in his army.
Normally, the power of the British government and of the EIC combined would have been more than sufficient to fight off the third, but in 1785 the Mysoreans and the Marathas went to war, and this was eagerly seized upon by Cornwallis’ faction to kill two birds with one stone: they proposed to loan five British infantry regiments to the Marathas, paid for by the Marathas, and to use it to wring commercial concessions from the Marathas too. This was against both the letter and the spirit of the Treaty of Mangalore which called upon the British and the French to refrain from interfering in the Indian states. But the British found a legal loophole: the regiments were officially transferred to the service of the Nawab of the Carnatic, who had sought refuge in British Bengal but was officially still an independent sovereign, who then transferred them to the Marathas. This legal fiction managed to provide enough of a smokescreen to get it approved, and tightened up British relations with the Marathas, and decreased expenses – leading to the British policy of Cornwallization – British-trained soldiers loaned out to friendly powers, paid for by them, both to increase friendly relations and more importantly to cut down on expenses.[3]
It was not however, well-received by the Mysoreans, and Tipu was extremely angered that the British had intervened in Indian affairs contrary to their treaties. It would be merely the beginning of a buildup of grievances that would threaten to lead to another conflagration. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and the path to war is paved with government budget cuts.
[1]Much of the background from A l’Assaut de l’Asie, a 1901 French book that I’ve been working on translating for my own account into English, and which I never imagined would actually be useful beyond providing a look at European mentalities at the beginning of the 20th century. I’m still amazed that it actually turned out to be useful here.
[2]Historically he was found innocent. Here general dissatisfaction with India, his own mishandling of Benares, and the opprobrium heaped upon it in the context of the Carnatic disasters leads to him being found guilty.
[3]Similar to the original British policy of having client states pay subsidies to support British troops, but with the distinction of being less constrained, due to serious financial problems.
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I am actually expecting the East India Company to be dissolved by the early 1800s as the government won't be in the mood for colonial wars when The French Revolutionary wars kick off.
Chapter 11, A Short, Not-So Victorious War: The Maratha (and Hyderabad)-Mysore War
Crucial behind Mysorean victory in the Second Anglo-Mysore war was catastrophically poor British diplomacy, which managed to see them in war against essentially the whole subcontinent, fighting against the Marathas, Hyderabad, and the Mysoreans at the same time, while simultaneously in war against the French and their allies across the world. It’s less surprising that the British collapsed against such an alliance, and more surprising that they lasted so long and at times came so close to success.
But the British have rarely been accused of lacking in flexibility and ability to learn when it comes to the question of altering the diplomatic balance, and the Treaty of Salbai in 1782 between the Marathas and the British marked an abrupt volt-face in Maratha-British relations, as not only were the British allowed to retain some of their territories, but even more importantly relations between the Marathas and the Mysoreans chilled ominously, threatening war over disputed northern border districts.
This was no idle threat. While the Marathas had seemingly had much of their power broken at Panipat two decades before, by the 1780s it had recovered to the extent of being able to inflict crippling defeats on the British at Wadgaon in 1779 when an entire British army had been forced to surrender. Not only this, but Mahadaji Shinde had formed, with the Savoyard officer Benoit de Boigne’s help, a corps of modern, European-style force of infantry which had more than proved its capabilities in pitched battles such as at the citadel of Kalinjar in 1783. At the same time, things were always more complicated in terms of Indian politics than a simple statement of troop strengths: the Marathas were a heavily decentralized state, and Shinde was not interested in fighting against the Mysoreans, and was rather enhancing his own power throughout the north.
Previous Mysorean-Maratha Wars had seen the traditional Maratha way of war: the campaign of light cavalry who marauded their way through Mysore’s western districts, largely without a Mysorean capability to stop them. At its most egregious, in the 1760s a Maratha campaign had shattered Tipu Sultan’s father, Haidar Ali’s, army, forcing them into a retreat which had turned into a rout by an opportunistic Maratha cavalry attack, and Haidar Ali had been barely able to extract himself - although quick thinking and improvisation had quickly enabled him to prepare Seringapatam for siege and with a campaign of scorched earth to force the Marathas to retire. This campaign would have the same Maratha light cavalry facing off against their Mysorean counterparts, but Mysorean resources had also been expanded with their territorial gains in the Carnatic, while on the Maratha side, they had rented five British infantry regiments. While things were not entirely rosy for this, neither side being able to agree on unity of command, they still gave a solid punching power to the Marathas that they largely lacked otherwise.
After years of gathering tensions, things came to a head in 1785. Hyder had bought off the Marathas previously by promising them Mysorean territories south of the Krishna, but in time-honored diplomatic fashion, once the time came to pay up, his son, Tipu Sultan, was far less willing to actually cede them. In turn, he charged that the Maratha chief of Nargund, Kala Pandit, owed Mysore dues, which led to the outbreak of open conflict. A complicated series of diplomatic disputes, mutual accusations, and negotiations eventually led to the outbreak of open war between the Marathas and Hyderabad on one side, and Mysore on the other. The Marathas and Hyderabad wanted to expand their territories in the disputed region, while the Mysoreans were the defensive party, Tipu being concerned with putting down a series of internal rebellions such as among the Coorgs and digesting the conquests in the Carnatic.
Unlike in the Second Anglo-Mysore War however, the 1785 Mysore-Maratha War (in a very long succession of conflicts between the two parties…) was far from being a cohesive conflict between two sides. In fact, the Marthas had their own internal divisions, and Shinde, with his new-style army, was committed to regaining control over North India, and not squabbling with the Mysoreans over a few frontier districts. Despite both side’s major advances, the Mysore-Maratha war was going to be a traditional one - based heavily upon raids, cavalry forces, guerrilla war, and looting and pillaging, with the battles that attracted attention of writers being heavily constrained by the ever-present supply problems caused by this.
While this duly proceeded with the swarms of light cavalry on both sides swarming over enemy lines and wreaking devastation upon enemy civilians and raiding enemy supply lines, the Marathas and Nizam’s army moved to capture the fort of Badami, amassing tens of thousands of infantry and cavalry for the endeavor. Badami was a strong hill fort, much of it carved out of solid stone, and defended by a garrison of several thousand Mysorean troops. The allied army launched multiple attacks on it, as well as keeping up a constant barrage of artillery, but it took weeks to be able to capture the fort, with the besiegers taking thousands of casualties. However, it was well worth it since at this point the allied army was able to disperse throughout the region, capturing most of the territory and putting the forts under siege. However, Badami’s stand had gained the Mysoreans time.
This would be vital, since Mysore was distracted as Tipu was away fighting in Coorg, a rebellious Mysorean vassal state, and where Tipu’s harsh methods to enforce compliance and obedience would lead to some of the greatest crimes and controversies concerning his reign. When Tipu returned, he threw himself into the war with his normal energy, winning the Battle of Gajendragad through an audacious night attack which captured a substantial amount of treasure, guns, and flags from the enemy, and managing to re-stabilize the situation, forcing the Marathas and Hyderabi to withdraw and recapturing much of the captured terrain.
At sea, the nascent Mysorean navy was sent by Tipu to raid the Maratha coastline and to capture Maratha shipping. Most coastal shipping by the Marathas was done in the form of small ships, making up in numbers for what they lacked in volume, and so although technically hundreds of them were captured, the effect was relatively small. The only serious military engagement between the Marathas and the Mysoreans of the war was when the Mysorean frigate Seringapatam-Bakhsh (literally gift of Seringapatam) was assailed by a crowd of small Maratha ships which almost succeeded in capturing it, until the intervention of Bangalore-Bakhsh managed to save it. A more serious event was when a group of Mysorean light ships fell upon the British east indiaman Commerce of Bombay and managed to capture it, claiming that they thought that it was a Maratha ship under a British flag. Although it was returned to the British, it contributed to a further souring of tensions as well as setting alarm bells ringing in Royal Navy and EIC circles about the Mysorean naval build-up.
At this point additional reinforcements were thrown into the campaign by the allies, and Tipu attempted to defeat the Hyderabi-Maratha army before they joined up, launching an offensive to the west against the main concentration of allied troops at Bankapur. Meanwhile, he sent a good chunk of his cavalry north, who were supposed to hedge the allied armies in and prevent them from fleeing. This worked, and helped to deprive the enemy armies of supplies, although it also meant that the Mysoreans were lacking in cavalry at the actual battlefield itself. Both sides were faced with supply problems, with the huge swarms of irregular cavalry that were operating throughout, making a mockery of any attempt at establishing a firm front line, with constant raids upon supply convoys, baggage train, and any straggler being cut down.
The Battle of Bankapur saw the Mysoreans and the British coming face to face again. Mysorean, Maratha, and British units had all gathered at the battle, bringing the total troop size up to tens of thousands of troops, and scores of guns on each side. The Allies opened the battle with their artillery batteries arranged in the center, which pounded the Mysorean army. Tipu Sultan ordered his troops to attack, and the Mysorean guns kept up fire against the enemy lines as the Mysoreans attacked, Mysorean rocket batteries moving ahead of the troops, and unleashing a storm of rockets once they reached closer range. Fighting was fierce and the central battery of Maratha-Hyderabi guns blew grew holes in the advancing Mysorean lines, but they were too large and heavy to be moved away, and positioned out in front of their troops they lacked support. When they fell, the rest of the army started to lose heart, with a pounding match between the allied and Mysorean infantry that favored the latter. Mysorean camel guns, with their long muskets, had moved up on the flanks and were pouring fire at long range into the enemy’s flank infantry and cavalry, and the Nizam’s army started to melt away.
At this point the battle looked like it would be a Mysorean victory, but then the British infantry, who due to command disputes had been in the rear, were finally thrown into the battle, at the center, where the sudden presence of the new infantry shocked the central Mysorean infantry. Perhaps even more importantly, on the flanks the long-range fusillade of the Mysorean camel gunners led to the Maratha cavalry counter-charging, breaking the Mysorean camel gunners and sending them back. Discombobulated by the sudden attack on their center and flanks, the Mysorean infantry was thrown back, retreating in a rout.
The Mysoreans were forced to retreat after this, restabilizing their lines on the Tungabhadra River, resting and refitting. The allied army, reinforced, managed to get over the river and besiege Adoni fort, but the Mysoreans at this point launched a counter-attack, with Tipu leading a daring cavalry raid that managed to get over the river and get behind the allied army, destroying their supplies and forcing a retreat over the river. The most dramatic stage of this was the retreat under rocket fire, with Mysorean rockets attached to the cavalry force having been pushed forward to the hills over the river crossing, and barraging the pontoon bridges with their missiles. Of course, rockets were notoriously innaccurate, but at this moment a supply column was making their way over the river, who panicked and threw a collection of the Nizam's wagons and supplies into the river, as the horses went haywire and started running everywhere about as the rockets described crazy loops above and a freakishly accurate rocket landed amidst them and exploded. Once again ironically, the fact that the British were in the rear, due to command problems and mutual distrust, actually proved to be to their advantage, since they were well positioned to counter-charge and drive the Mysoreans off. Although precious few died from actual fighting, it showed once again the problems facing Indian armies from keeping their supply lines secure, from both conventional and more unconventional raiding groups.
This was the final battle of the war. With the Maratha-Hyderabi army out of position, the Mysoreans crossed over Tungabhadra river and started to retake much of the territory in the west, with elephants helping to move their guns at a surprisingly fast rate over the terrain to help speed up siege operations. Meanwhile the allies were eager to make peace before their position was completely lost, while the Mysoreans were eager to move onto more important objectives and to hopefully patch up relations with the Marathas and the Nizam. An exchange of ambassadors managed to work out the Treaty of Kalaburagi, putting an end to the war.
When peace came, the Marathas and Hyderabad consecrated a minor victor with the cession of Nargund to the Marathas, as well as some modest territorial gains for Hyderabad, and some Mysorean war indemnities. On the other hand, the Mysoreans were able to formalize some of their previous zones of influence into formal control. It was rather little given the sheer amount of devastation that had been wreaked upon the region by the cavalry formations of both sides pillaging and raiding.
Despite the limited scale of the Mysore-Maratha War compared to the monumental Second Anglo-Mysorean War, it had consequences. It helped somewhat to revive British military prestige in India, which had been plunged so low during the Second Anglo-Mysore War and in the war against the French. Once again it was shown that Indian infantry was substantially less effective than their European counterparts, and the union of British and Maratha arms, despite the normal squabbles and command difficulties, demonstrated that British infantry supported by a powerful cavalry component and large numbers of auxiliaries were an extraordinary opponent to grapple with, as shown by the several Mysorean defeats. The Mysoreans themselves were in a strenuous effort to provide for a new, European-style infantry force, but this was a gradual and slow process.
However, the war also failed to settle any of the issues involved. The Marathas and the Mysoreans showed no proclivities to making up and rebuilding their war-time coalition against the British, and diplomacy was similarly faltering with Hyderabad - occasioned by squabbles over the Carnatic territories. For the various factions within British administration, the potential to both cut down on costs with loans of British troops to native princes, paid fully by them, and for the more aggressive activists to rebuild lost influence, would prove entirely too tempting. But as this strategy was applied in Travancore, the last independent southern Indian kingdom, it threatened to lead to events spiraling entirely out of control…
But the British have rarely been accused of lacking in flexibility and ability to learn when it comes to the question of altering the diplomatic balance, and the Treaty of Salbai in 1782 between the Marathas and the British marked an abrupt volt-face in Maratha-British relations, as not only were the British allowed to retain some of their territories, but even more importantly relations between the Marathas and the Mysoreans chilled ominously, threatening war over disputed northern border districts.
This was no idle threat. While the Marathas had seemingly had much of their power broken at Panipat two decades before, by the 1780s it had recovered to the extent of being able to inflict crippling defeats on the British at Wadgaon in 1779 when an entire British army had been forced to surrender. Not only this, but Mahadaji Shinde had formed, with the Savoyard officer Benoit de Boigne’s help, a corps of modern, European-style force of infantry which had more than proved its capabilities in pitched battles such as at the citadel of Kalinjar in 1783. At the same time, things were always more complicated in terms of Indian politics than a simple statement of troop strengths: the Marathas were a heavily decentralized state, and Shinde was not interested in fighting against the Mysoreans, and was rather enhancing his own power throughout the north.
Previous Mysorean-Maratha Wars had seen the traditional Maratha way of war: the campaign of light cavalry who marauded their way through Mysore’s western districts, largely without a Mysorean capability to stop them. At its most egregious, in the 1760s a Maratha campaign had shattered Tipu Sultan’s father, Haidar Ali’s, army, forcing them into a retreat which had turned into a rout by an opportunistic Maratha cavalry attack, and Haidar Ali had been barely able to extract himself - although quick thinking and improvisation had quickly enabled him to prepare Seringapatam for siege and with a campaign of scorched earth to force the Marathas to retire. This campaign would have the same Maratha light cavalry facing off against their Mysorean counterparts, but Mysorean resources had also been expanded with their territorial gains in the Carnatic, while on the Maratha side, they had rented five British infantry regiments. While things were not entirely rosy for this, neither side being able to agree on unity of command, they still gave a solid punching power to the Marathas that they largely lacked otherwise.
After years of gathering tensions, things came to a head in 1785. Hyder had bought off the Marathas previously by promising them Mysorean territories south of the Krishna, but in time-honored diplomatic fashion, once the time came to pay up, his son, Tipu Sultan, was far less willing to actually cede them. In turn, he charged that the Maratha chief of Nargund, Kala Pandit, owed Mysore dues, which led to the outbreak of open conflict. A complicated series of diplomatic disputes, mutual accusations, and negotiations eventually led to the outbreak of open war between the Marathas and Hyderabad on one side, and Mysore on the other. The Marathas and Hyderabad wanted to expand their territories in the disputed region, while the Mysoreans were the defensive party, Tipu being concerned with putting down a series of internal rebellions such as among the Coorgs and digesting the conquests in the Carnatic.
Unlike in the Second Anglo-Mysore War however, the 1785 Mysore-Maratha War (in a very long succession of conflicts between the two parties…) was far from being a cohesive conflict between two sides. In fact, the Marthas had their own internal divisions, and Shinde, with his new-style army, was committed to regaining control over North India, and not squabbling with the Mysoreans over a few frontier districts. Despite both side’s major advances, the Mysore-Maratha war was going to be a traditional one - based heavily upon raids, cavalry forces, guerrilla war, and looting and pillaging, with the battles that attracted attention of writers being heavily constrained by the ever-present supply problems caused by this.
While this duly proceeded with the swarms of light cavalry on both sides swarming over enemy lines and wreaking devastation upon enemy civilians and raiding enemy supply lines, the Marathas and Nizam’s army moved to capture the fort of Badami, amassing tens of thousands of infantry and cavalry for the endeavor. Badami was a strong hill fort, much of it carved out of solid stone, and defended by a garrison of several thousand Mysorean troops. The allied army launched multiple attacks on it, as well as keeping up a constant barrage of artillery, but it took weeks to be able to capture the fort, with the besiegers taking thousands of casualties. However, it was well worth it since at this point the allied army was able to disperse throughout the region, capturing most of the territory and putting the forts under siege. However, Badami’s stand had gained the Mysoreans time.
This would be vital, since Mysore was distracted as Tipu was away fighting in Coorg, a rebellious Mysorean vassal state, and where Tipu’s harsh methods to enforce compliance and obedience would lead to some of the greatest crimes and controversies concerning his reign. When Tipu returned, he threw himself into the war with his normal energy, winning the Battle of Gajendragad through an audacious night attack which captured a substantial amount of treasure, guns, and flags from the enemy, and managing to re-stabilize the situation, forcing the Marathas and Hyderabi to withdraw and recapturing much of the captured terrain.
At sea, the nascent Mysorean navy was sent by Tipu to raid the Maratha coastline and to capture Maratha shipping. Most coastal shipping by the Marathas was done in the form of small ships, making up in numbers for what they lacked in volume, and so although technically hundreds of them were captured, the effect was relatively small. The only serious military engagement between the Marathas and the Mysoreans of the war was when the Mysorean frigate Seringapatam-Bakhsh (literally gift of Seringapatam) was assailed by a crowd of small Maratha ships which almost succeeded in capturing it, until the intervention of Bangalore-Bakhsh managed to save it. A more serious event was when a group of Mysorean light ships fell upon the British east indiaman Commerce of Bombay and managed to capture it, claiming that they thought that it was a Maratha ship under a British flag. Although it was returned to the British, it contributed to a further souring of tensions as well as setting alarm bells ringing in Royal Navy and EIC circles about the Mysorean naval build-up.
At this point additional reinforcements were thrown into the campaign by the allies, and Tipu attempted to defeat the Hyderabi-Maratha army before they joined up, launching an offensive to the west against the main concentration of allied troops at Bankapur. Meanwhile, he sent a good chunk of his cavalry north, who were supposed to hedge the allied armies in and prevent them from fleeing. This worked, and helped to deprive the enemy armies of supplies, although it also meant that the Mysoreans were lacking in cavalry at the actual battlefield itself. Both sides were faced with supply problems, with the huge swarms of irregular cavalry that were operating throughout, making a mockery of any attempt at establishing a firm front line, with constant raids upon supply convoys, baggage train, and any straggler being cut down.
The Battle of Bankapur saw the Mysoreans and the British coming face to face again. Mysorean, Maratha, and British units had all gathered at the battle, bringing the total troop size up to tens of thousands of troops, and scores of guns on each side. The Allies opened the battle with their artillery batteries arranged in the center, which pounded the Mysorean army. Tipu Sultan ordered his troops to attack, and the Mysorean guns kept up fire against the enemy lines as the Mysoreans attacked, Mysorean rocket batteries moving ahead of the troops, and unleashing a storm of rockets once they reached closer range. Fighting was fierce and the central battery of Maratha-Hyderabi guns blew grew holes in the advancing Mysorean lines, but they were too large and heavy to be moved away, and positioned out in front of their troops they lacked support. When they fell, the rest of the army started to lose heart, with a pounding match between the allied and Mysorean infantry that favored the latter. Mysorean camel guns, with their long muskets, had moved up on the flanks and were pouring fire at long range into the enemy’s flank infantry and cavalry, and the Nizam’s army started to melt away.
At this point the battle looked like it would be a Mysorean victory, but then the British infantry, who due to command disputes had been in the rear, were finally thrown into the battle, at the center, where the sudden presence of the new infantry shocked the central Mysorean infantry. Perhaps even more importantly, on the flanks the long-range fusillade of the Mysorean camel gunners led to the Maratha cavalry counter-charging, breaking the Mysorean camel gunners and sending them back. Discombobulated by the sudden attack on their center and flanks, the Mysorean infantry was thrown back, retreating in a rout.
The Mysoreans were forced to retreat after this, restabilizing their lines on the Tungabhadra River, resting and refitting. The allied army, reinforced, managed to get over the river and besiege Adoni fort, but the Mysoreans at this point launched a counter-attack, with Tipu leading a daring cavalry raid that managed to get over the river and get behind the allied army, destroying their supplies and forcing a retreat over the river. The most dramatic stage of this was the retreat under rocket fire, with Mysorean rockets attached to the cavalry force having been pushed forward to the hills over the river crossing, and barraging the pontoon bridges with their missiles. Of course, rockets were notoriously innaccurate, but at this moment a supply column was making their way over the river, who panicked and threw a collection of the Nizam's wagons and supplies into the river, as the horses went haywire and started running everywhere about as the rockets described crazy loops above and a freakishly accurate rocket landed amidst them and exploded. Once again ironically, the fact that the British were in the rear, due to command problems and mutual distrust, actually proved to be to their advantage, since they were well positioned to counter-charge and drive the Mysoreans off. Although precious few died from actual fighting, it showed once again the problems facing Indian armies from keeping their supply lines secure, from both conventional and more unconventional raiding groups.
This was the final battle of the war. With the Maratha-Hyderabi army out of position, the Mysoreans crossed over Tungabhadra river and started to retake much of the territory in the west, with elephants helping to move their guns at a surprisingly fast rate over the terrain to help speed up siege operations. Meanwhile the allies were eager to make peace before their position was completely lost, while the Mysoreans were eager to move onto more important objectives and to hopefully patch up relations with the Marathas and the Nizam. An exchange of ambassadors managed to work out the Treaty of Kalaburagi, putting an end to the war.
When peace came, the Marathas and Hyderabad consecrated a minor victor with the cession of Nargund to the Marathas, as well as some modest territorial gains for Hyderabad, and some Mysorean war indemnities. On the other hand, the Mysoreans were able to formalize some of their previous zones of influence into formal control. It was rather little given the sheer amount of devastation that had been wreaked upon the region by the cavalry formations of both sides pillaging and raiding.
Despite the limited scale of the Mysore-Maratha War compared to the monumental Second Anglo-Mysorean War, it had consequences. It helped somewhat to revive British military prestige in India, which had been plunged so low during the Second Anglo-Mysore War and in the war against the French. Once again it was shown that Indian infantry was substantially less effective than their European counterparts, and the union of British and Maratha arms, despite the normal squabbles and command difficulties, demonstrated that British infantry supported by a powerful cavalry component and large numbers of auxiliaries were an extraordinary opponent to grapple with, as shown by the several Mysorean defeats. The Mysoreans themselves were in a strenuous effort to provide for a new, European-style infantry force, but this was a gradual and slow process.
However, the war also failed to settle any of the issues involved. The Marathas and the Mysoreans showed no proclivities to making up and rebuilding their war-time coalition against the British, and diplomacy was similarly faltering with Hyderabad - occasioned by squabbles over the Carnatic territories. For the various factions within British administration, the potential to both cut down on costs with loans of British troops to native princes, paid fully by them, and for the more aggressive activists to rebuild lost influence, would prove entirely too tempting. But as this strategy was applied in Travancore, the last independent southern Indian kingdom, it threatened to lead to events spiraling entirely out of control…
As expected another inconclusive war
BTW how do you decide where the battles take place?
BTW how do you decide where the battles take place?
Oh Tipu, i can only hope you're ready for what you're gonna do.
In a way yes, although I'm hoping to figure out a way to save the EIC by spinning them off onto different subjects.
I generally read a couple books about the subject and try to get a feel for the historical events, and then within the zone rely upon google maps to find appropriate sites, where the battles aren't historical - Badami above for example, happened the same OTL.As expected another inconclusive war
BTW how do you decide where the battles take place?
Please don't go and get banned 😭 Every single Indian TL I read, and the author either: (a) gets banned or (b) vanishes
Fight the curse!
Fight the curse!
I lol'd hard at that, not everyday you see a "PLEASE DON'T GET BANNED" on the chat
Well well well. Glad to have found this story when I did. Quite an entertaining read so far; you have managed a pretty good encapsulation of the Indian political scene of the time, and the changes it undergoes with a wider British defeat in the American Revolutionary War.
The site has high ban rates (many deserved it must be said), and Indian history is a tense topic, and if you happen to be from India cultural differences and miscommunication is going to be a problem. But I almost never post in chat which is where most bans happen anyway, so hopefully I should be ok. 🙃
The other problem I can see is that it is generally hard to research and state structures are different so that is hard to write for, so I can it being abandoned. I wrote the first ten chapters two years ago which has given me a useful buffer zone to research but the period in between the end of the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars in India is difficult to write.
Thanks, I appreciate it!
Did he have a timeline? Would be interesting to read for comparative purposes.
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Bisringkhal-An Assam Timeline
Historical Note 1671 is a year that is enshrined in the memory of Assam, for it is the year in which Lachit Borphukan and his army defeated the might Mughal war machine at Saraighat. The battle and Lachit’s leadership proved a turning point in the war between the Mughals and Ahoms as it...
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