Tipu Sultan #5 - Robert Clive, Dupleix, Chanda Sahib and Haidar Ali

More Chaos In The Carnatic

It’s Wednesday! Every Wednesday, I read a little bit of a demanding book, and break it down for you - facts, insights, surprises, and the bits that stick. Currently I’m reading Vikram Sampath’s Tipu Sultan - The Saga Of Mysore’s Interregnum. Whether you're reading along or just curious, these posts keep you in the loop without the homework.

Painting depicting Robert Clive in the Siege of Arcot

Previously…

We haven’t yet met Tipu Sultan. But we know of his father Haidar Ali’s background, and as far as we’ve met him, he’s a rising star in Mysore’s army.

We spent some time talking about the internal drama of Mysore’s royal court - the King has been reduced to a figurehead, and the real powers are the trio of the Dalavoy (Army commander) Devarajayya, Sarvadhikari (Chief Executive Officer) Karachuri Nanjarajayya, and the Chief Minister Devarajayya. They are Corrupt AF and pilfering the hell out of the public funds, and they also don’t hesitate to commit regicide if the king gets too uppity and tries to clamp down on their corruption.

We also have talked of the chaos in South India. Carnatic - present-day Tamil Nadu - is ruled form Arcot by the Nawab, who is currently Anwaruddin, a loyalist of the Nizam of Hyderabad (who is a level above him). His son, Mohammed Ali, is holding the rock fort of Tiruchirapalli.

But, Chanda Sahib, the son of a previous Nawab of Arcot, still wants the throne. He was, until now, imprisoned by the Marathas, but the French paid his ransom, and he is now in Pondicherry raring to go.

Mysore really wants Tiruchi as part of its territories. Vikram Sampath says this is due to the fertile Kaveri delta. But the more I read about it the more it seems like a King who reveres Sriranganathaswamy and rules from Srirangapatna will definitely want the largest temple of Sriranganathaswamy in his territory and away from the hands of Islamists.

The British and French are in play too. They used to be friendly, but thanks to the Austrian war of succession, they warred against each other in India, with the French taking Madras. The French were allied with the Nizam of Hyderabad, so in the First Carnatic War, it was the French and the Nizam against the British.

But then the French reneged on the agreement to give Madras to Arcot, which pissed off the Nizam and the Nawab of Arcot. They both allied with the British to rout the French when they tried to take Cuddalore. France had to give Madras back to the British at the end of the Austrian war of succession anyway, but this drama set the stage for bigger developments.

Second Carnatic War - War Of Succession in Hyderabad

An important person on the French side is Dupleix. He started off as the head of the French East India Company factory in Chandernagore. Very quickly, he managed to make Chandernagore a thriving port. Doing that in a foreign land is no small feat, so props to Dupleix. He was appointed the Governor of Pondicherry, and it was thanks to his hawkish reneging on the agreement did the First Carnatic War happen.

Robert Clive is a vital person to keep track of on the British side. He was a lowly clerk in Madras when the French attacked. He kept his head in this stressful situation, and escaped in disguise to Cuddalore which was another British outpost. He was angered at the insult his country had faced and decided to enlist the army to avenge his country agains the French.

1748 is an important year here:

• The British sieged Pondicherry, but Dupleix had fortified and it withstood the siege for two months. Robert Clive defended his troops in trench warfare against the French here, and though the British failed the siege and had to leave, he earned his stripes here.

• In October 1748, the Austrian war ended and the French had to give Madras back to the Britsh

• In June 1748, the Nizam of Hyderabad passed away and two rivals - Nasir Jung and Muzaffar Jung started a war of succession.

• In July 1748, Chanda Sahib was released from prison and decided he wanted Arcot back.

So right here, we have this war of succession for the throne of Hyderabad between Nasir Jung and Muzaffar Jung.

Chanda Sahib sided with Muzaffar Jung, and Dupleix sent 2000 French troops to help them. But before claiming the Nizamship, Chanda Sahib had some unfinished business.

He led these troops towards Arcot. The Nawab Anwaruddin freaked out and tried to negotiate some kind of peace, and sent word to his son Mohammed Ali to secure Tiruchi. But the Arcot troops were defeated at Ambur (again, this is one of those random towns on the way from Bangalore to Madras, and you stop here for the jasmines if that), Anwaruddin was killed, and Chanda Sahib became the Nawab of Arcot in 1749. Mohammed Ali was ordered to give Tiruchi to Chanda Sahib. Keep this slippery man in mind, we’ll see him a lot later.

Now Nasir Jung was in Delhi fighting Ahmed Shah Abdali’s invasion, and was scared that Muzaffar Jung was already garnering so much support. He rushed back, and allied with the Marathas and the British. And Mysore also sent some soldiers, including Haidar Ali. And then Mohammed Ali too came with his troops from Tiruchi.

So now this alliance with its massive number of troops are marching menacingly towards Hyderabad. Muzaffar Jung and Chanda Sahib freak out and escape to Pondicherry.

Dupleix, who was their ally, was noticeably pissed, since his troops no match for this massive army . He writes:

How can such men think of ruling countries! They should not attempt more than they are fit for … if a man trusts these dogs and acts with them, he will lose all sense of shame and bring dishonour upon himself.

In 1750, Nasir Jung won, and kept Muzaffar Jung in prison at Arcot. He wouldn’t put Muzaffar Jung to death because he had saved his life before.

It’s not over yet

But soon, the French started to win some battles against the British. Mohammed Ali ran to the impregnable Gingee fort and hid. The French commander Charles de Bussy brought out the artillery, and within a day, Gingee fell to the French.

This war is not that clear to me TBH. Why did the French continue fighting when their proxies had fled and lost power? The next part is even less clear to me.

The Marathas and the Nawabs of Kurnool, Kadapa and Savanur were increasingly annoyed with Nasir Jung. Not sure why. But he knew his days were numbered. On his last day, he didn’t wear his armor, wore a simple muslin robe, and mounted his elephant. He found the three Nawabs all on their elephants but not joining the battle. He moved closer to them and implored them to join, but what he got in return was gunfire.

They decapitated him and sent it as a gift to Muzaffar Jung.

Mohammed Ali freaked out at seeing his ally’s fate, and ran away to Tiruchi.

Now that Nasir Jung was out of the picture, Muzaffar Jung became Nizam in 1751. The French were happy because their man got the bag. Charles de Bussy got to stay in Hyderabad with his troops as a Resident (later this post would mean something different) for the Nizam’s protection. Everything had come up roses for the French.

But - there was another big twist - Right on the way back from the war to Hyderabad, the Nawabs of Kurnool, Kadapa and Savanur started arguing about how they deserved better and they’d got a raw deal for all the work they’d put in to the war.

Muzaffar Jung decided he was done with their whining, and decided to kill and decapitate the three Nawabs. When he got to decapitating the third one, the fates developed a sense of humor. A stray arrow pierced Muzaffar Jung in the eye and he soon died!

So the task of picking a new successor fell to Charles de Bussy, and he picked Salabat Jung as the new Nizam.

What Haidar Ali was doing

Haidar Ali was part of the Mysore army in the Second Carnatic War. He used irregular forces, mostly members of the Bedar tribe who were mercenaries in exchange for the community’s protection, and they helped Haidar Ali loot in the war.

The Hyderabad army was very rich, and Haidar Ali took away “many camels laden with gold coins, 500 muskets and 300 horses”.

There was so much wealth available to loot, that the French account says:

everyone from the councillor to the writer, from the captain to the private, had his share and officers who only joined the service later looked back with regret to the happy days when a mere ensign received 60,000 rupees. Never had so much gold been seen at Pondicherry.

He used this loot money to build his own private militia. He was quite impressed with the French army and their ways, and he used French deserters to train and build his private militia.

But like how you make sure your boss knows about your great Golang skills on the side without telling him you’re making more from moonlighting on Upwork, Haidar Ali brought the camels carrying gold to Mysore and presented them to the King. The Maharaja as well as the treacherous trio that controlled him were impressed enough to give him one of the camel-loads of gold for himself, and Haidar Ali’s star was on the rise.

Chanda Sahib Dies In The End

Now that Hyderabad was back to normal, all the forces in the Carnatic turned their attention to Tiruchi. Mohammed Ali of Arcot was in the fort of Tiruchi, as he tried to figure out how to get back Arcot from Chanda Sahib.

He pretended to be negotiating Tiruchi with Dupleix, but he was secretly rallying Murar Rao Ghorpade of Gutti under whom the Marathas had originally left Tiruchi, the English, and also the Maharaja of Mysore. All of these parties were interested in Tiruchi.

When Chanda Sahib tried to siege Mohammed Ali in Tiruchi, Robert Clive was sent to help him, with only 200 European troops, 300 Indian soldiers and 3 small cannons. Here he does something very smart. Instead of going to Tiruchi where he’d be stopped and outnumbered, he decided to attack the fort at Arcot.

Chanda Sahib sent his son Raza Sahib to save the Arcot fort and diverted some of the troops conducting the siege. By the time the troops got to Arcot, the Maratha and Mysore troops had reached Arcot as well, and Raza Sahib’s siege was forced to end.

Clive then went on to win battles in Kanchipuram and Thanjavur as well, taking them for the British. The French were shocked at this turn of events, and tried to take Madras. But Clive anticipated this, and stopped them at Kaveripakkam 100km away.

Emboldened by all these successes, in 1752, he turned towards Tiruchi, where Chanda Sahib’s siege of the Tiruchi Rock Fort was ongoing for a whole year. He exhausted Chanda Sahib and his forces.

Chanda Sahib by now was old and tired. As we’ve seen for the past two weeks, all he did was try to gain power, and get imprisoned, and both of those things age you. Plus, he seems like an Islamist bigot, which means everyone hated him as well and wanted him dead. I’m really not sure why the Marathas kept him alive for as long as they did.

In any case, he lifted the siege, and decided he would eke out his last days in Srirangam. The French held Srirangam then, and Chanda Sahib and his troops decided to recoup in the Srirangam Temple complex, as only bigots and Abrahamics would.

But Clive surrounded the temple and cut off supplies, and the French surrendered in May 1752, and handed over Chanda Sahib to the British, and the Thanjavur general Manaji held him. Now the Mysore Maharaja too wanted Chanda Sahib, so he could take great care of one who had respected Sriranganathaswamy so well /s.

Chanda Sahib, as always, decided to bribe and sweet-talk his way out. He promised Manaji a fat bribe if he let him go free at Karaikal. Manaji agreed, and probably took the money happily.

But on their way to Karaikal, Chanda Sahib stopped to offer prayers. Two soldiers, a Pathan and a Rajput, attacked and beheaded him.

Of course, having been such a bloodthirsty man, his enemies didn’t just take Manaji’s word that he was dead, and they had to really feel him dead.

So… they took his head and paraded it around the fort of Tiruchi, tied to the neck of a camel. Murar Rao Ghorpade, Mohammed Ali and Karachuri Nanjarajayya were all overjoyed. People of Tiruchi gathered to see the spectacle and hurled the choicest abuses at it.

And that, was the end of Chanda Sahib, he who had started off his career taking fake oaths on a fake Quran and betraying the Queen of Madurai, imprisoning and abusing her enough to have her take poison.

Of course, there still is the matter of Tiruchi fort.

Who takes possession of it? What happens to Mysore’s dream of all the islands of Sriranganathaswamy to be within their domain?

All that we will see next week. But first, let’s just reflect on what happened here.

What On Earth Is With All These Conflicts?

With the benefit of hindsight, I gotta ask, why didn’t all these people just get together and kick out the British and French?

There are so many questions I have about just WHY there were all these conflicts, and my biggest pain point with this book so far is, Vikram Sampath doesn’t take his time to explain the motivations of each power. (One of the other pain points is he sometimes uses British names for places - Coleroon river instead of the Kollidam, or Cape Comorin instead of Kanyakumari. I half expected him to say Canarese instead of Kannada lol).

To be fair, this book is supposed to be about Tipu Sultan, who we haven’t met yet, and won’t be meeting as an adult for a couple of more chapters, so this is just background for the conflicts that allowed Haidar Ali to rise. So Vikram Sampath really doesn’t have to go into this stuff.

But here he seems to take the words of the European sources for granted in terms of describing the Indian armies. And somehow, he doesn’t go into detail about exactly what made Europeans superior in terms of army organization and firepower.

Observations:

• Seems like all of this was a scramble for who gets Tiruchirapalli, with a side of war of succession. I had no idea my ancestral land was so in demand.

• I’ve been to the Srirangam temple a gazillion times, and had NO IDEA the highly fortified stone complex was used by the French and Chanda Sahib’s troops, and then was sieged by Robert Clive. Maybe it was mentioned to me, but I had no context to hang it on.

• The Marathas released Chanda Sahib with the understanding that Hindu rule was to be uninterrupted in Madurai and Srirangam, and then he brings in Mlechcha troops right into this holiest temple. Yeah, no wonder his decapitated head got that reception.

• So many constant wars. What, did money grow on trees?

• Hyderabad was rich enough to have camel-loads of gold looted in a War of Succession! The British seem to have looted us inside and out. And even then, the Nizam, at the time of Queen Elizabeth’s wedding, gave her a blank cheque to have whatever piece she wanted, and she chose a 300-diamond Cartier necklace. So wealthy. SO Wealthy!

The questions that linger for me:

• What were the motivations of the Marathas? If Swaraj was their ambition, why weren’t they more accommodating of Mysore instead of conflicting with them for over a hundred years?

• What were the motivations of Mysore in these 50 years beyond survival and expansion? Why were they so in conflict with the Marathas?

• How did the Marathas, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Arcot view the Europeans? Useful idiots? Convenient allies?

• What’s with Haidar Ali using irregulars? Was this common to do so?

I’m not sure where to go for answers to these.

Next week…

Next week we’ll see how Mysore struggles to get control of Tiruchi. That leads to the collapse of the control of the Treacherous Trio, and the rise of Haidar Ali.