Tipu Sultan #6 - The Game Of Thrones style Treachery at Trichy

I believe this is Mysore's version of a Holy War.

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.

This post has an invisible paywall - you can read all of the content for free, but do consider supporting me with a subscription, so I may write more in-depth pieces like this.

I wanted to cover more ground here, but it felt like 9 short pages of the book had enough to keep us pulling our hair out. The constantly changing alliances, the sudden battles, and the financial motivations need space to be understood, felt, and enjoyed.

I’m rather annoyed this stuff isn’t in our textbooks, and even more annoyed there isn’t a Game Of Thrones-type series based on the Carnatic Wars, because this is SO RIVETING. And confusing. Hold on to your hats, we’re in for a ride.

The Story So Far…

The Maharaja of Mysore is in the grip of a corrupt but effective triumvirate, including the Dalavoy Devarajayya and his brother Karachuri Nanjarajayya. Haidar Ali is a rising Naick (commander) in the Mysore army, with great instincts and skill.

In the war of succession for the Nizamship of Hyderabad, Mysore, the Marathas, the Nawab of Arcot, the French and the English take sides, each to attain their own aims. Chanda Sahib, a claimant to the Nawabship of Arcot, is defeated in Srirangam and killed. This leaves Mohammed Ali as the undisputed Nawab of Arcot.

Mysore’s aims have been to get Tiruchi. Vikram Sampath asserts it is due to the fertile Kaveri delta. Still, I’m increasingly convinced it is to protect Srirangam from non-Hindu control - seeing as two of the holy sites to Ranganathaswamy are part of the Mysore kingdom. But the Marathas, Arcot and the Nizam haven’t been happy with this idea before.

But in exchange for their help in the Carnatic wars, Mysore expects Nawab Mohammed Ali to hand over Tiruchi fort to them.

Treachery At The Outset

Nawab Mohammed Ali was all smiles, telling Nanjarajayya of Mysore to come to the Tiruchi fort, inspect it and start garrisoning it. Nanjarajayya was happy his and his troops’ long years of effort were finally coming to fruition.

But as they entered the fort’s outer gates, Haider Ali suspected something amiss and said they should get out. Mohammed Ali locked the gates on them and began firing cannons from above!

He intended to finish off the Mysore contingent, because this was what he thought of them. But his mother stopped him from enacting this treachery against his allies. Nevertheless, now everyone knew Mohammed Ali’s intent.

Nanjarajayya was livid. He along with Murar Rao Ghorpade of Gutti (who had been holding the fort after Chanda Sahib’s first ouster) laid siege to the fort. I can only imagine the Mysore soldiers all prepared to take over the fort and relax a little, and now they are laying siege to one of the most impregnable forts in India. They were also supposed to march to Gingee with the British and Arcot troops and Nanjarajayya refused to do that as well until the fort handover happened.

Even more treachery, and missteps

So now it’s Murar Rao Ghorpade and Nanjarajayya against Mohammed Ali. Mohammed Ali knows Nanjarajayya is relentless, so he does the smart thing - he secretly bribes Murar Rao with Rs. 2 Lakh, and tells him to mediate.

Murar Rao then prevails on Nanjarajayya and gets him to agree to the fort being handed over in 2 months. Since Nanjarajayya trusts Murar Rao, he agrees.

Everyone in Mysore tells Nanjarajayya to arrest Mohammed Ali because once he’s out free, he won’t make good on his promise. But Nanjarajayya trusted Murar Rao to such an extent that he rejected these suggestions.

Nanjarajayya got Srirangam handed over, and he got to station 200 of his men in the fort under Katti Gopalraje Urs (who is apparently an ancestor of the current Mysore Maharaja), along with British and Arcot detachments.

Two months came and went. Mohammed Ali escaped to Fort St. David in Cuddalore, and kept evading the Mysorean requests to keep to the agreement, despite Nanjarajayya sending emissaries to Cuddalore and Madras to get the British to make good on the promises.

Rebellions, more treachery, and a blockade!

While all this is on, Pratapsinh of Thanjavur, who was a puppet of Arcot, was worried Mysore would be knocking on his door next. He prodded the palayakkarars (chieftains) of Madurai and Dindigul to revolt against Mysore’s incursion into their neck of the woods.

Devarajayya in Mysore thought this had gone on long enough, and wrote to his brother Nanjarajayya to cut his losses and come home.

But Nanjarajayya responded saying he would prefer to “die than return with dishonor”. He wanted to go back with either the Tiruchi fort or equivalent restitution in money. But he knew things were hostile and he moved some of his troops to Srirangam.

He tried bribing John Dalton of the British army to let him take over the fort, but that didn’t work out. The Mysore forces in the fort tried killing John Dalton and Khairuddin, the representative of Mohammed Ali, but they failed, and so Katti Gopalraje Urs was disarmed and detained in the fort.

Nanjarajayya threatened to renew the siege, but his opponents held steady.

At this time, the French stirred the pot a little more. Dupleix bribed Murar Rao Ghorpade with Rs. 6 Lakhs, and he switched sides. Now Nanjarajayya’s ally deserted him, and he was quite vulnerable.

Seizing the opportunity, the British and Arcot troops attacked the Mysore camp in Srirangam in the dead of the night. The Mysore troops under Haidar Ali and Hari Singh fought back and repelled the attackers.

Nanjarajayya decided to use his 6000 horses and 15,000 men to blockade the Tiruchi fort. The blockade went on for a long time, with both sides winning some battles, and neither consistently having an upper hand.

Siege Vs Blockade

So I wanted to know how is a siege different from a blockade.

A blockade is to cut off supply chains to an area, including, food, medicines and reinforcements. Siege is when you also are in direct combat with the area. With blockades, your goal is to starve the opponent and contain them. With sieges, your goal is to capture territory.

Though, here Vikram Sampath seems to use the two words interchangeably. I suppose a blockade makes more sense when the fort is impregnable.

This was the cover of a schoolbook in 1900, depicting the French sieging the Tiruchi fort in 1752

More switching sides

Nanjarajayya appeals to the British to prevail on Mohammed Ali to hand over the fort. But the British were worried about upsetting the Mughal emperor and didn’t want to be seen as too involved in Indian affairs.

In a report to the Court of Directors in London, this is what the English said:

The dispute between the Nabob and the King of Mysore continues. The latter has sent a Vakil to Madras with offers to support the Nabob if the English will guarantee the cession of Trichinopoly, but the Nabob declares that he has no power to execute his promise, which was made only out of dire necessity. Received a letter purporting to come from Salabat Jang, desiring the English to support Muhammad Ali and denying the latter’s right to cede Trichinopoly. As the matter is intricate, have answered the King of Mysore that we are “merchants, allies of the circar and not the principals,” that we cannot interfere in matters of this nature, but are willing to act as mediators. There is no doubt of the Nabob’s having made the promise but both he and the King must have known that he could not fulfil it. The king is immensely rich and the acquisition of Trichinopoly would lead to his conquering Tanjore [where the English, and no less the French, had commercial settlements] and becoming overpowerful … in the South, Dupleix is negotiating with the Mysoreans and the Marathas.

So the British didn’t really want Mysore in southern Tamil Nadu, because that would make them “overpowerful” and might cause issues as their small territories were under Thanjavur. And the Nizam of Hyderabad, who was a representative of the Mughals, didn’t want to cede Tiruchi to Mysore, so if the British were seen as helping that happen, they were worried they would invite Mughal wrath.

This drove Nanjarajayya to negotiate with the French. He offered them Rs. 3 Lakh and they sent soldiers and guns to help Nanjarajayya. Plus, now that Mysore was allied with the French, that brought them again in alliance with Murar Rao Ghorpade.

But this didn’t help them, as they were getting badly routed in the battles.

Finally Nanjarajayya and the French decided to storm the fort and take it in the wee hours. But the British got alerted, and the plan failed.

AND YET, Nanjarajayya thought he was just one victory away from getting the fort of Tiruchi, and he asked for more forces from Srirangam, who then proceeded to continue the blockade.

At this point, this had gone on long enough that everyone had had enough.

It’s all about money, honey

Mohammed Ali was okay with mortgaging districts around the fort as payment for the money owed to Mysore, but was stubborn about keeping the fort. He didn’t want to give or take any more territory, he just wanted to have pleasant enough relations with the French and make sure Murar Rao Ghorpade was separated from Mysore.

Mysore wanted Rs. 130 Lakh. But Pratapsinh of Thanjavur didn’t want Mysorean interference around his land, and he said 60 Lakh is a better amount, sabotaging the negotiations.

The British at this point wondered if Nanjarajayya was just sabotaging every negotiation under influence from the French, and sent diplomats directly to Srirangapatna to negotiate with the king. They said they’d help Mysore figure the issue out later, but please drop it now.

In 1754, Nanjarajayya had another setback - Dupleix was recalled to France. The French government wasn’t happy with the constant wars Dupleix indulged in, especially since he was losing a lot. Dupleix was hopping mad and tried to sue the French East India Company because he claimed they owed him money, but he seems to have lost, given he died poor and obscure. It’s

In place of Dupleix, the French sent Charles Godeheu, and his mandate was to stop the wasteful wars. He pulled away the troops from all the battles they were in, and decided there was to be peace with the British for at least another 18 months.

So, Nanjarajayya was left high and dry and vulnerable, with no leverage at the negotiating table. To rub salt on his wounds, Mohammed Ali prodded the Mysore troops to ask to be paid - their pay was in arrears.

While he asked Haidar Ali to manage the troop crisis, which he expertly did, the French and Murar Rao also asked for what was owed to them. Nanjarajayya ended up mortgaging Srirangam, Jambukeshwarar, and other places to pay them. So instead of gaining new territory, he ended up ceding already held territories!

Like how the customers of a bank in crisis rush to get their money back, teh Peshwa and Nizam started attacking Mysore demanding payments, which ran into the crores.

The Mysore treasury was already emptied by the wars, which cost a few crores already. With the help of the French, they negotiated the money owed to the Nizam down to Rs. 56 Lakh, but only had a third of the money available to pay. Shamefully, this money came from pawning valuables belonging to the royal family, as well as the jewels of the Ranganatha temple at Srirangapatnam. The rest of the two-thirds of the money was settled by local merchants (sowcars), whose clerks (gumasthas) were held hostage (I don’t quite understand this, but it sounds really tragic). The French also persuaded the Peshwa to keep away.

Nanjarajayya was disgraced, and the Maharaja was even more determined to be rid of him and his corrupt brother.

This sets the stage for the rise of Haider Ali.

What on earth was all that?

So as in the book, I’ve put the negotiations and money part separate from the battle on the ground part. But in reality, they were happening together. Negotiations happened as the siege/blockade went on, with the upper hand in one leading to gains in the other.

Murar Rao Ghorpade seems like a very interesting character. Doesn’t come off too well here. But apparently, he built the Ghati Subramanya temple, one which I’ve been to quite a few times. And his bastion of Gutti is actually in Anantapur district - I’d previously thought he was from the Maharashtra-Karnataka border area, because there is a town called Gutti there, and it would also make sense for him to be a Maratha commander from there. I spent several summers in Anantapur in my childhood and had no clue there was a fort there. [Aside: I spent the summer holidays in the hottest places ever - Chennai, Trichy/Srirangam, Anantapur, Kolar. I think we went to Coimbatore once and begged and begged to be taken to Black Thunder water park. The adults obliged for once, and we all ended up with a mild skin issue. Best summer ever.]

Was he a greedy person, or were those 8 lakhs he took for changing sides from the Nawab and the French meaningful in ways other than enriching his personal wealth? What did he actually feel about Mysore’s campaign?

Really, I want to get into the heads of all these people playing intrigues. The most I know about intrigue is from watching Gossip Girl. How do their motivations change from time to time, and how do they bide their time to get what they want? More importantly, what’s their exit strategy?

Most notable here is the losers never have a good exit strategy. You can have a decent exit strategy and still lose, but if you have a bad one, or none, you are done for.

I also question my considering this a religious issue, because if Nanjarajayya already got Srirangam, why wouldn’t he bide his time and get Tiruchi fort at a later date? I guess if the Nawab of Arcot still held the fort, it meant his position in Srirangam was precarious, and getting the fort would strengthen his position.

I don’t quite get a grip here on the British and French East India Companies. They were here to do trade, getting cotton for cheap to sell to Indonesia for spices, which they sold in Europe at 500% markup. I get that. But what’s the deal with the troops and the allying with different powers? Why were they worried about angering the Mughals, but were totally okay taking sides in wars of succession?

How did the powers in the South view the East India Companies? How did the powers in the South view each other? Was it a friendly rivalry with tough episodes or a generational hatred? I don’t quite get the answers from this book just yet.

I now want to understand the vibe of 18th-century India.

Next Week:

We’ll go into what Haider Ali was doing this whole time. He was there at Tiruchi, he was there at Srirangam. How was he amassing wealth and consolidating power?

Plus, our title hero, Tipu Sultan is soon born, and we’ll talk about that.

And we’ll see how Haidar Ali ousts Nanjarajayya and wrests power for himself, and the circumstances that leads to that.

Stay tuned! Next week, Same time, Same Substack.

I’ll help you write a novel

This Game Of Thrones type of intrigues and power struggles in 18th century India seem interesting AF. I have my hands too full to write something based on this. But I’d love for it to happen. Especially if we can also throw in Vetalas, Kuttichathans, and Varmakkalai.

If you’re interested, I’ll help you with research, stories, characters, and anything else you need!

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