Читать книгу Wellington: The Iron Duke - Richard Holmes - Страница 6

THE INDIA for which Colonel Wesley set sail from Portsmouth in June 1796 was not yet a British possession, though his efforts were to help make it one. In 1600, Elizabeth I had given a royal charter to ‘The Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies’, and eight years later some of its merchants established a trading post at Surat, 150 miles north of modern Bombay. Over the next century the Company’s fortunes ebbed and flowed, with occasional conflict with the Dutch, Portuguese and French, who had their own mercantile interests in the subcontinent. It continued to jockey for favour with the Moghul emperor in his capital, first in Agra and then in Delhi, as well as with local rulers whose dependence on the emperor was often little more than nominal.

Madras was settled by the Company in 1639; in 1687 Bombay superseded Surat as the Company’s headquarters in western India; and in 1690 one of its agents founded the future city of Calcutta. These three great trading bases, termed presidencies, were run by a governor and council answerable to the Company’s court of directors in London, backed by locally recruited soldiers stiffened with British redcoats. It was a short step from defending trading bases to extending British power into the hinterland, and in 1757 Robert Clive defeated the ruler of Bengal at Plassey, a battle in which the deft bribery of opponents was at least as important as firepower. After Plassey the East India Company was a major political power in India, and in 1773 the Regulating Act acknowledged the fact by instituting a governing council in Calcutta, with three of its five members nominated by the British government. The council was presided over by a governor-general, who enjoyed ill-defined authority in both Madras and Bombay. It was indicative of the vast riches to be gained in India that the first governor-general, Warren Hastings, amassed a personal fortune of perhaps £200,000 at a time when a prosperous merchant in England might house and feed his family and servants for £350 a year.¹

Not all young men who took the passage to India hoped to do quite as well as Hastings, but it was easy for a junior clerk to turn a small investment into a huge fortune without much effort and to return home as a nabob, a figure pilloried by playwrights and novelists as vulgar, corrupt and obscenely wealthy. Sir Philip Francis won £20,000 at cards at a single sitting, and a Mr Barwell lost a staggering £40,000. In 1777 William Hickey, an engaging young rake sent to India to make his fortune, complained that no man worked harder than he did, staying at his desk from eight in the morning till one in the afternoon with only half an hour off for breakfast. Although he was not a rich man by Calcutta standards, he maintained sixty-three servants, as well as ‘a handsome phaeton and a beautiful pair of horses, and also two Arabian saddle horses, my whole establishment being of the best and most expensive kind’.² Charles Danvers died in 1720 after only three years in India at a salary of £5 a year, but left enough money to have a lavish funeral. He modestly asked the governor ‘that I may have as many great guns fired as I am years old, which is now almost twenty-one’ and the rest of his estate was to be spent on rice, distributed daily to the poor at his burial place.³

Although there were financial risks, for a cargo might go to the bottom or be snapped up by pirates, privateers or enemy warships, the climate and disease were infinitely more dangerous. Europeans who survived the sea voyage – followed, at Madras, by a scarcely less hazardous passage through the surf – risked death from cholera, typhoid, dysentery and sunstroke, snakes, tigers, enraged ‘fanaticks’, resentful servants and merciless duellists, and undermined their constitutions by eating and drinking to excess. The walls of Indian churches are heavy with marble plaques and Latin tags lamenting death in its many forms, and cantonment cemeteries, so many of them sinking silently back into jungle, are a chilling reminder of human frailty. William Hickey could not resist making a joke of one tombstone:

Mynheer Gludenstack lies interred here

Who intended to have gone home last year.

The British cemetery at Seringapatam was established in 1805, not long after the British took the place, and now lies forgotten behind the Fort View Hotel. The tombs inside range from enormous obelisks, one commemorating the garrison commander and another the colonel of the Swiss Regiment de Meuron (a long way from his valleys), to more modest slabs. A sergeant’s wife, dead at twenty-two, lies there with her child, and the wife of a private in HM’s 9^th Lancers evidently had enough money to bestow on her husband in death a status that had eluded him in life. Some died shortly after their arrival in India or, more poignantly still, in the world itself. Others – a retired park-sergeant here and colonel’s widow there – had lived on to a ripe old age. There were indeed fortunes to be made in India, but more than half of the Europeans who went there in the eighteenth century died prematurely.

Colonel Wesley, travelling in a fast frigate, caught up with his regiment at the Cape, and he sailed on in the Indiaman Princess Charlotte, whiling away his time with his extensive library. It was weighted heavily towards Indian themes, and included Orme’s Indostan, Sketches of the Hindoos, Raynal’s Histoire des Indes and Statutes Relative to the East India Company, as well as Persian and Arabic grammars. There was a good deal of military history, including a book on the Flanders campaign, fifteen volumes on Frederick the Great and Major General Lloyd’s formalistic Reflections on the General Principles of War. Chapman’s Venereal Disease might have been a sensible precaution, while nine volumes of Woman of Pleasure and ten of the Aventures du Chevalier du Faublas catered for lighter moments. He landed in Calcutta in February 1797 and called on the governor-general, Sir John Shore, who found in him ‘a union of strong sense and boyish playfulness’, and predicted that he would distinguish himself if the opportunity arose.

Wesley lost no chance to chase the opportunity. Both Holland and Spain had now joined the war against Britain, and in August 1797 he was sent on an expedition to the Philippines. He drew up a list of hygiene precautions to be observed by the men. Hammocks were to be scrubbed at least once a fortnight, men were to wash their legs and feet every morning and if possible to have water thrown over them every day. He had agreed to take the Rev. Mr Blunt as chaplain to the 33^rd, but during the voyage that gentleman got ‘abominably drunk, and in that disgraceful condition exposed himself to both soldiers and sailors … talking all sorts of bawdy and ribaldry …’ When Wesley, on another vessel, heard what had happened he tried to console Blunt, explaining that ‘what had passed was not of the least consequence as no one would think the worse of him for little irregularities committed in a moment of forgetfulness’, but Blunt’s depression could not be lifted and ‘he actually fretted himself to death’.⁴

The expedition was recalled when it reached Penang, and Wesley had returned to Calcutta by November. After his return William Hickey dined with him and John Cope Sherbrooke, the 33^rd‘s second lieutenant colonel, at a party consisting of ‘eight as strong-headed fellows as could be found in Hindustan’. After twenty-two bumper toasts, they drank steadily till two in the morning: Hickey never experienced ‘a more severe debauch’.⁵ However, Wesley had by now heard news likely to ease even the worst hangover: his brother Mornington was being sent out to Calcutta as governor-general of British India. Richard was climbing as hard as he could, pressing Pitt for a marquessate, improving his coat of arms by judicious quarterings, and changing the spelling of the family name back to a form used until the seventeenth century. On 19 May 1798 Arthur, now down at Madras, signed himself Wellesley for the first time in a letter to Lieutenant General George Harris, commander-in-chief there, announcing that the new governor-general had just arrived. The three brothers, for Henry had also come to serve as Mornington’s private secretary, sailed on to Calcutta. Arthur first acted as unofficial chief of staff to Richard, and was then sent to Madras with the 33^rd to press ahead with preparations for war.

The impact of Richard’s arrival as governor-general on Arthur’s career can scarcely be overstated. India contained many more senior officers, but as the governor-general’s brother, he enjoyed great advantages in a world where patronage counted for so much. Mere influence could never cause the dull to shine, but it could give a bright man the opportunity to make his way. That is precisely what it did for Arthur Wellesley, and we should not be astonished that it caused great resentment amongst the less well-connected.

We might be more surprised by the level of Arthur’s own confidence. Andrew Roberts is right to observe that while it was possible to write a long book on Napoleon’s early career, not much could be said of Arthur Wesley until he took the 33^rd to Flanders. By 1798, however, he was not only confident in his profession, but was capable of helping his brother hustle the governor of Madras along the road to war. His correspondence reveals the importance of the family nexus, in which Henry played an important role as go-between, but also shows not the least glimmer of self-doubt. Experience was soon to teach Arthur Wellesley that he might be let down by others – Richard amongst them – but he had utter confidence in himself and he never lost it.

Mornington had arrived already convinced that British India should be expanded. This was not simply a matter of personal ambition, although it could only accelerate his rise, but it would also contribute to the public good, enhancing the Company’s trading position, damaging French interests and, in a paternalistic sense, bringing good and settled government to more of the native population. He acted quickly to re-establish Britain’s influence over the Nizam of Hyderabad, nominally a liegeman of the Moghul emperor, who ruled a huge tract of central southern India. This was accomplished by the end of October 1798, leaving Mornington free to concentrate on a more dangerous target – Tipoo Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore.

Tipoo was the son of Hyder Ali, a Muslim who had seized the largely Hindu and vast southern state of Mysore. He had fought the British before and in 1790–92 he had been defeated by a previous governor-general, Lord Cornwallis, and was compelled to cede part of his territory. Unabashed, Tipoo had a mechanical model depicting a British officer being mauled by a tiger, which made the appropriate growls when set in motion. His habit of keeping his captives chained upright in a dungeon that flooded regularly, leaving them up to their necks in water, did not endear him to the British. Neither did his warm relations with the French, to whom he was Citizen Tipoo. Although French power in India had been broken during the Seven Years War, French agents and military advisers were active in several Indian courts and the prospect of a French revival was disconcerting. Less than a month after his arrival, Mornington read a proclamation by the governor of French Mauritius announcing an alliance between Tipoo and France.

In contrast to the views of his adversaries, Tipoo is affectionately remembered in Madras as a devout Muslim who practised religious toleration; a ruler anxious to enhance the economic strength of his state; an intellectual with a lively scientific interest; and a brave man who did not flinch from a death he might easily have avoided. His interest in technology had led him to develop rockets that resembled large versions of the familiar firework. Some of them were small enough to be carried in a quiver on a man’s back, and others were carried in carts fitted with adjustable frames from which they could be fired. The larger ones probably had a range of a thousand yards, and although they were inaccurate, they were terrifying to troops who were not used to them.

Arthur Wellesley and the 33^rd sailed from Calcutta to Madras in August 1798. It was a dreadful voyage: their ship, the Indiaman Fitzwilliam, ran into a shoal and only the exertions of the soldiers got her out. The water aboard was so bad that although Wellesley himself was only afflicted with the flux, fifteen of his soldiers died. While still in Calcutta he had been trying to persuade Lord Clive, the newly arrived governor of Madras, that Mornington was not set on an immediate and unwarranted war, but after he reached Madras he worked hard to draw Clive into the war party. The governor was nicknamed ‘Puzzlestick’ by the Wellesleys, although Arthur wrote that ‘I doubt whether he is as dull as he appears, or as people think he is.’ Arthur found this sort of work uncongenial, and told Henry that he would consider becoming governor of Ceylon if there was no war. Then, gradually, Clive yielded to the pressure. Wellesley wrote to Henry that:

Now that he has begun to find out that he has no difficulty in transacting the business of the government, he improves daily, takes more upon himself, and will very shortly have less need for the opinions and abilities of those who have long done the business of the country.⁶

Clive’s senior civil servant, Josiah Webb, continued to oppose war, arguing that the British were less prepared for what would necessarily be a more extensive campaign than the one in which Lord Cornwallis had beaten Tipoo in 1790–92, but Wellesley argued that proper preparation would overcome many of the difficulties. Meanwhile, relations between Mornington and Tipoo worsened, with the governor-general writing sharply to the sultan that:

You cannot imagine me to be indifferent to the transactions which have passed between you and the enemies of my country; nor does it appear necessary, or proper, that I should any longer conceal from you the surprise and concern with which I perceived you disposed to involve yourself in all the ruinous consequences of a connexion, which threatens not only to subvert the foundations of friendship between you and the Company, but to introduce into the heart of your kingdom the principles of anarchy and confusion, to shake your own authority, to weaken the obedience of your subjects and to destroy the religion which you revere.⁷

Arthur’s own role in the war that now seemed almost inevitable was at first unclear. Detailed military preparations were in the hands of Colonel Henry Harvey Ashton of HM’s 12^th Regiment and Lieutenant Colonel Barry Close of the Company’s service. The former was a few days senior to Wellesley, and was described by a subaltern as:

a great fox-hunter, a patron of the fancy, and a leading member of sporting circles. He had many good points about him; he was generous and brave, but he had a most inveterate disposition to quizzing, which involved him in many personal encounters, whereby he obtained the reputation of a professed duellist.⁸

Wellesley turned the 33^rd over to his second-in-command, Major John Shee – not a wholly satisfactory arrangement, for in March the following year he wrote sharply to Shee that he had seen some of the regiment’s soldiers away from their battalion as it formed up, some of them without their muskets. Shee’s response was intemperate and offensive, and Wellesley warned him that he would show any similar letter to the commander-in-chief. However, he concluded that:

I have no intention whatever of doing anything which can have any effect unpleasant to your feelings, and that the best method of coming to such an understanding as we ought to live upon is, to inquire before you act in consequence of anything that passes. Of this you may be certain, that however my attention may be engaged by other objects, whenever I find it necessary I shall interfere in everything that concerns the 33^rd.⁹

When Wellesley joined General Harris’s staff he was overshadowed by Ashton and Close. Then, in December 1798 Ashton was seriously wounded in a duel with his senior major. Wellesley rode from Madras to Arnee, in the army’s forward concentration area, to take command. Ashton lived long enough to give him his grey Arab charger Diomed: then, on 23 December 1798, he died. Wellesley, now in charge of the troops in the Arnee-Vellore-Arcot area set about the careful logistic preparation that was to become his hallmark. It is 250 hot and jungly miles from Madras to Mysore as the crow flies, and more on the primitive roads along which the army would have to travel. The force had both British and Indian units, and both relied heavily on purchasing food in local bazaars, which were soon exhausted by the unprecedented demand. Wellesley encouraged merchants to bring in goods from a wide area, and arranged for them to accompany the army when it moved, because it would be impossible for such a large force to live off the land. Contracts were agreed with ‘brinjarries’, described by Wellesley as ‘a class of carriers who gain a livelihood by transporting grain and other commodities from one part of the country to another. They attend armies, and trade nearly in the same manner as they do in common times of peace.’ They maintained their own bullock-trains, so that the army could be supplied with grain without the need to buy its own bullocks.

Lastly, when the army reached Seringapatam, the modern fortress close to Mysore, it would need heavy siege guns to batter the walls, and by early 1799, Wellesley had assembled two 24-pdrs, thirty 18-pdrs and eight long 9-pdrs, complete with 1,200 rounds per gun. Daily battalion drill was instituted, and Wellesley ensured that battalions were combined into brigades and gained experience of drilling together. There was even target practice with live ammunition.

Mornington arrived in Madras on 31 December 1798. He had originally hoped that General Sir Alured Clarke, commander-in-chief of all British troops in India, would command the expedition, but the situation in the north was unstable and so Clarke had been left in Calcutta. The honest and hardworking George Harris, commander-in-chief of the Madras army, was offered the command, but did not immediately take it. Modesty and lack of self-interest, combined with a recognition of the very real difficulties confronting the force, caused him to delay, but eventually he accepted because he considered it his duty to do so. Arthur Wellesley was no less aware of the difficulties, and on 2 January 1799, he told his brother Henry that the proposals made to Tipoo ought to be moderate, because he doubted if the war could be won in a single campaign, primarily because of the shortage of grain. He was somewhat more optimistic a week later, although he complained bitterly that he had been sent two Company’s officers to help, ‘one of them … so stupid that I can make no use of him, and the other such a rascal that half my occupation consists of watching him’.¹⁰

Although the governor-general was no soldier, he seriously considered accompanying the army, and got Henry to consult Arthur on the matter. Arthur firmly advised him against it:

It appears to me that your presence in the camp, instead of giving confidence to the General, would in fact deprive him of the command of the army … if I were in General Harris’s situation and you were to join the army, I should quit it.

In my opinion, he is at present awkwardly situated, and he will require all the powers which can be given him to keep in order the officers who will be in this army. Your presence will diminish his powers, at the same time that, as it is impossible you can know anything of military matters, your powers will not answer this purpose …¹¹

Arthur’s loyalty to Harris was rewarded by particular praise for his ‘masterly arrangements in respect to supplies’. However, Harris told Arthur that he was reluctant to commend him publicly because ‘others would be displeased and jealous’, and Arthur himself admitted that, because of his relationship with the governor-general, others in the army thought him ‘very little better than a spy’.¹²

The governor-general took his brother’s wise advice, and remained in Madras whence, on 3 February 1799 he ordered an advance into Tipoo’s territory, with Harris moving up from the east with more than 20,000 troops, 4,300 of them European, while a smaller force from the Bombay army under Lieutenant General James Stuart advanced eastwards from the Malabar coast. Harris reached Amboor on 18 February, and was joined there by a contingent of the Nizam of Hyderabad’s army. There were four Hyderabad infantry battalions under Captain John Malcolm, with a mixture of British and Indian officers, a large force of Moghul cavalry – ‘some good, some bad’, wrote Wellesley – under Captain Patrick Walker, and thirty-six guns. The Company provided six infantry battalions, four from Madras and two from Bengal. The force was commanded by the Nizam’s chief minister (and perhaps son), Mir Allum. It was proposed to provide him with a senior adviser, and to stiffen his force with a British battalion. Wellesley and the 33^rd were the logical choices, not least because Mir Allum, aware that Wellesley was the governor-general’s brother, actually asked for him.

The arrangement did not please everybody. Three of the four major generals in Harris’s army enjoyed substantial commands, but the fourth, David Baird, commanded a brigade far smaller than the Hyderabad force. Baird was a brave but tetchy Scot, one of whose officers called him ‘a bloody old bad-tempered Scotchman’. He got on badly with Indians, and his temper had not been improved by his long imprisonment by Tipoo in the previous war. Hearing that he was kept shackled to another prisoner, Baird’s mother observed that she was sorry for the man who was chained to her Davie. Baird complained to Harris that he should have been given the Hyderabad appointment, but Harris stuck to his decision.

The advance resumed on 21 February. The army was still in British-controlled territory, and the road had been carefully prepared. Nevertheless, progress was slow, perhaps ten miles a day, with a day’s halt every three, and it was not until 6 March that the main force at last entered Tipoo’s territory. When Cornwallis had invaded along the same route eight years earlier, Tipoo had defended Bangalore, but this time he demolished its defences and his troops fell back westwards, burning the crops as they went. This was a sound strategy, if a harsh one, for if there was no fodder for the bullocks in Harris’s army, the expedition could not succeed: it was the failure of supply that had forced Cornwallis to abandon his advance on Seringapatam in 1791. Tipoo’s irregular cavalry – Wellesley thought them ‘the best kind in the world’ – hung about Harris’s columns as they advanced, ready to exploit any gaps in the line of march, and making it impossible for all but the strongest of foraging parties to leave the main body.

On 10 March, enemy cavalry attacked Wellesley’s rearguard near Kellamungellum and overran a half-company of Madras infantry. Wellesley personally led the decisive counter-attack and was never pressed as hard afterwards. It was now clear that the main route to Bangalore was so badly ravaged that even the brinjarries were finding it hard to feed their bullocks, and Harris wisely swung south-west towards Cankanelli, heading directly for Seringapatam, and moving across country that Tipoo’s men had not had time to burn. Progress was still painfully slow, largely because of pay disputes amongst the Company’s bullock-drivers. There was good news from the west, however. On 15 March, Harris heard that Stuart’s column had beaten off a full-scale attack at Sedaseer, and that Tipoo’s army had recoiled eastwards. Harris’s force continued to trudge forwards across flat, fertile land laced with groves of trees known as topes.

Early on 27 March 1799, Harris set out for Malavelly, a straggling village six miles away from his previous camp; it contained abundant water and so was to be that evening’s campsite. It is unusually difficult to be sure of what happened, for contemporary accounts are unclear, and Malavelly itself has since straggled more widely. But what seems certain is that a large part of Tipoo’s main army, with two heavy guns, had taken up a position on a low ridge west of the village, blocking the main road. Although the quartermaster-general’s men were already laying out the camp in Malavelly, Harris decided to give battle as soon as he could, for if he defeated this section of Tipoo’s army, there would be less of it to defend Seringapatam. His force moved with its British contingent to the north of the road, and the Hyderabad army to the south; both columns preceded by cavalry and infantry outposts, the latter, ‘the pickets of the day’, drawn from all the infantry regiments.

The British force swung north-west of Malavelly, shaking out from column of march into line as it did so, though with natural obstacles ensuring that instead of all three leading brigades being side by side, they advanced with one up and two back. The Hyderabad army, perhaps five miles further south, also swung into line, each battalion moving in column, with its individual companies in column, one behind the other, with enough space between them to deploy into battalion line when the time came. HM’s 33^rd was to the right front, near the main road, and the Company’s battalions were echeloned back to its left, each about 200 yards behind the one on its right. The Hyderabad battalions probably formed a reserve. Wellesley, mounted on Diomed, galloped along his line, checking that the spacings were correct and noting that the 33^rd was now just ahead of the leading British brigade, across the road to its right. As he ascended the gentle ridge held by Tipoo’s men, he ordered his battalions to form line of battle, and quickly the advancing force completed its deployment into a long two-deep line.

Thus far Tipoo’s position had been marked by occasional puffs of white smoke as the cannon fired, but now a large force of infantry, 2–3,000 strong, came down the hill, making straight for the 33^rd. What followed was a repeat of what had happened at Boxtel in 1794, and was the precursor of what was to occur in dozens of future encounters. Wellesley ordered the 33^rd to halt, and then gave the order to fire. Although the Mysore troops ‘behaved better than they have ever been known to behave’, the measured volleys were too much for them, and although they ‘almost stood the charge of bayonets of the 33^rd’, they took to their heels. On the other side of the road, Tipoo’s cavalry charged Baird’s brigade, but this was only to gain time so that the rest of his army could retreat, and it slipped away before Harris’s jaws could close around it.

Harris continued his advance on 28 March, swinging south to cross the broad River Cauvery not far from Sirsoli and then turning north to approach Seringapatam, neatly outflanking Tipoo’s field army as he did so. Tipoo, his confidence already shaken by defeats at Sedaseer and Malavelly, withdrew into the fortress. Seringapatam lies on an island in the Cauvery. At that time of year the river was almost dry, and both of its branches, the North and South Cauvery, could be crossed on foot with little difficulty. But things were very different in the rainy season, when the water was too deep for fording but too fast-flowing for boats to be used easily. With the change of seasons approaching, Harris needed to take the place by the end of May.

I first saw Seringapatam from across the South Cauvery just east of the main river’s fork, and it looks hugely impressive despite the passage of two centuries. White granite walls, their tops pierced with splayed brick-lined embrasures, rise thirty feet from a broad, wet ditch, invisible until an attacker is right on top of it. An inner belt of fortifications would have given the garrison some respite against an attacker who had penetrated the outer defences, and the main gates – the Bangalore gate to the east, the Mysore gate to the south, and the Water gate fronting the North Cauvery-are still entered through wide tunnels between layered defences. The tower of the Hindu temple and the twin towers of the mosque rise above the defences, and a scattering of palm trees lends an exotic air to the place.

Although the design of Seringapatam shows some Western influence, we cannot expect Tipoo’s French military advisers to have been hugely enthusiastic about it. Whereas European engineers, following the precepts of the great Vauban, strove to conceal most of their masonry behind a gently sloping earth glacis so that the attacker’s guns would have little to shoot at, the long, high walls of Seringapatam offered a vulnerable target. And though some of the fortress guns were mounted on high works jutting out from the front of the main line of the wall, these were not well developed enough to be bastions – the great arrowhead-shaped defences that were the essence of European artillery fortification. The former offered only a poor prospect of bringing flanking fire to bear on an attacker assaulting the main line of the wall.

On 5 April 1799, the British completed their march, having taken thirty-one days in all to cover what they had measured as 153.5 miles from the Madras frontier. Harris proceeded to encamp south of the Cauvery, two miles west of Seringapatam. His army was too small to surround the place and mount a formal siege, and, with time of the essence, he planned to breach the fortress’s south-west face rather than attempt to secure a footing on the island further east. That day Wellesley wrote optimistically to the governor-general that ‘we are now here with a strong, a healthy and a brave army, with plenty of stores, guns, &c, &c, and we shall be masters of this place before much more time passes over our heads’. He added that the fatigue, heat and bad water had given him a bowel complaint, ‘which did not confine me, but teased me much’.¹³

He was teased a good deal more that night. On the afternoon of the 5^th, Harris ordered him to carry out a night attack on the village of Sultanpettah and a nearby grove known as Sultanpettah Tope, using his own 33^rd and two Madras battalions, while Lieutenant Colonel Shawe of HM’s 12^th and two other Madras battalions launched a similar attack further north. The two features stood astride an aqueduct, slightly south of the army’s route to Seringapatam, and would have to be cleared before the main attack could begin. The ground as it stands today gives little real clue to the operation. The village and the grove have gone, and the aqueduct (Wellesley called it a nullah) is now a full-blown drainage canal, steeply banked, with lush paddy-fields below it. Even then the ground was confusing, and Wellesley, on horseback amongst the outposts when the message to attack arrived, asked Harris to meet him in front of the lines to clarify the order, suggesting that ‘when you have the nullah you have the tope’. Harris did not come forward – in fairness, he had much else to do – and at sundown Wellesley attacked a position he had not been able to reconnoitre with troops who had also not seen the ground.

He led the 33^rd forward in column, with the Madras battalions behind. As they approached the nullah, almost dry at that time of year, they were engaged by Tipoo’s rocket men and by musket fire, but carried the nullah with little difficulty. There Wellesley dismounted, and led the grenadier and light companies of the 33^rd forward, while Major Shee brought the rest of the battalion on. The patchwork of paddy-fields, dykes and bamboo clumps at the bottom of the slope, previously screened by the banks of the nullah, would have made no sense to the attackers, while they themselves would have been silhouetted against the sky as they climbed over the bank to begin their descent. If Tipoo’s infantry could not cope with the 33^rd in open field, things were different here, and there was fierce hand-to-hand fighting: Lieutenant Fitzgerald, already hit in the arm by a rocket, was bayonetted and mortally wounded, and eight men of the grenadier company were captured. While the two forward companies fought for their lives, Shee took the remaining companies back across the nullah. Such was the confusion that five of Wellesley’s companies eventually joined Shawe to the north, where they helped secure the few gains of another largely unsuccessful attack, while Captain Francis West of the grenadiers emerged further south, where the Hyderabad outposts held the front line.

Wellesley himself got back to the watercourse, where he seems to have remounted and cantered along it, trying to restore order. He was hit on the knee by a spent musket-ball at some stage in the proceedings and, finding that there was little he could do, rode to Harris’s headquarters to report his failure. Harris wrote that he ‘came to my tent in a good deal of agitation to say that he had not carried the tope. It must be particularly unpleasant to him.’ Wellesley, exhausted as much from the expenditure of nervous energy as from the physical effort, lay down on a nearby mess table and went to sleep. The news was far from unpleasant to Wellesley’s critics, who resented his closeness to the governor-general and authority over the Hyderabad contingent. Captain George Elers of the 12^th, who had fallen out with Wellesley by the time he wrote his memoirs, declared that: ‘Had Colonel Wellesley been an obscure officer of fortune, he would have been brought to a court-martial and perhaps received such a reprimand for bad management as might have induced him to have resigned His Majesty’s service.’¹⁴

Yet even Wellesley’s bitterest opponents could hardly claim that it was a major setback. There were less than twenty-five British casualties, and the following day Wellesley launched a fresh attack with a larger force, and took the whole position without losing a man. However, the whole scrambling affair left its mark. Wellesley resolved ‘never to attack an enemy who is prepared and strongly posted, and whose posts have not been reconnoitred by daylight’.¹⁵ He was also well aware of having lost control of his force, and his almost pathological need to remain in control was reinforced by the incident.

Lieutenant General Stuart’s detachment of the Bombay army, which had marched on Seringapatam from the west, arrived on the 14 April, escorted by a force sent out by Harris to meet it. Stuart’s force made camp north of the Cauvery, north-west of Seringapatam. After dark on the 17^th, both the Madras and Bombay forces launched preliminary attacks, the former securing the Little Cauvery and the latter taking the ruined village of Agrarum and throwing up a battery which, in the event, was just too far west for effective bombardment of Seringapatam. On the morning of the 21^st, the Madras force established a battery on newly captured ground between the Little Cauvery and the South Cauvery. Stuart’s men were also busy, and threw up batteries to engage the western walls. On the morning of the 26^th, British guns took on Tipoo’s cannon, and by midday had silenced those facing them. That evening and the next morning, Wellesley, the duty brigade commander, cleared Tipoo’s men from the whole area between the Little Cauvery and the South Cauvery, enabling batteries to be established only 400 yards from the walls. They were ordered to concentrate their fire on an area between the westernmost ‘bastion’ and a pair of towers further south. The gunners’ objective was to cut a cannelure – a long groove – towards the base of the masonry, so that the wall and rampart behind it would slide forward, leaving a rough slope of earth and rubble. A breach was deemed practicable when a man could ascend it with his musket and accoutrements without needing to use his hands.

When a practicable breach was established, Major General Baird, who had volunteered for the task, was to lead an assault delivered by two columns, one from Stuart’s force and the other from the Mysore army. A third column, under Wellesley, would remain in reserve, to be committed only if there was a significant check. The assault was delivered on the afternoon of 4 May 1799, and although the unexpected strength of the inner defences caused a delay, the attackers fanned out once they were through the breach and were soon fighting deep inside Seringapatam against resistance that was fast collapsing. When it seemed clear that the attack had succeeded, Wellesley posted a guard from the reliable Swiss Regiment de Meuron to secure the breach. Other soldiers helped recover wounded from the river-bed and the breach itself, and the remainder were stood down. Wellesley walked up the breach, with its carpet of dead, and from the top he could see chaos as some soldiers dealt with embers of resistance while others set about looting and drinking. Most of the 33^rd was drawn up outside Tipoo’s palace, where surrender negotiations were going on. Although it had now been discovered that thirteen British prisoners, including the men of the 33^rd captured at Sultanpettah, had been murdered – either by having their necks broken or by having nails driven into their skulls – the occupants of the palace were to be spared, provided that resistance ceased.

Tipoo, however, was not amongst them. Then Wellesley heard that he had been killed in the fighting at the Water gate, and walked the short distance to the northern wall, where he found a long tunnel beneath the ramparts choked with dead. A well-dressed body was dragged out, and Wellesley himself checked the man’s pulse: it was Tipoo, and he was indeed dead. Witnesses had seen a short, fat officer play a conspicuous part in the defence, standing to fire at the attackers while retainers passed him loaded weapons. He had been hit several times, and seemed to have been killed by a close-range musket shot through the temple: some said that a British soldier had fancied the jewel in his turban. The Tiger of Mysore had snarled defiantly to the last.

Leaving the grenadiers of the 33^rd to protect the palace, Wellesley went out to his brigade, marched it back to camp, washed – he had been in the same clothes for sixty hours in hot weather, and was always a fastidious man – and went to bed. He must, however, have been able to hear shots, yells, and drunken singing from Seringapatam, and the episode reinforced something he already knew. The British soldier had many virtues, not least cold, almost canine, courage and determination, but if discipline wavered and drink was at hand, brave soldiers could turn into drunken animals. The attackers lost 389 killed or wounded in the assault, and though reports of the number of Mysore dead vary, 8–9,000 were buried. The disparity suggests that the attackers, their mood hardened by the scenes at the breach and the discovery of the murdered prisoners, were not inclined to give quarter. When we later consider Wellesley’s inflexible view of discipline, we must remember the sounds that drifted through that sultry night as the victors remorselessly looted and raped in Seringapatam.

Early the next day, Wellesley was ordered to take command of Seringapatam. Baird had already asked to be relieved because he was physically exhausted – although he later claimed to have cancelled this request – and Wellesley, although not, strictly speaking the next brigade commander for duty, was appointed, probably because Barry Close, Harris’s adjutant-general, had a high opinion of him. Wellesley went straight to Baird’s headquarters in Tipoo’s summer palace, outside the fort, and told Baird that he had been superseded. Baird, breakfasting with his staff, snapped ‘Come, Gentlemen, we have no longer any business here.’ ‘Oh,’ replied Wellesley, ‘pray finish your breakfast.’¹⁶ Wellesley later told John Wilson Croker that:

I never inquired the reason for my appointment, or for Baird being laid aside. There were many other candidates besides Baird and myself, all senior to me, some to Baird. But I must say that I was the fit person to be selected. I had commanded the Nizam’s army during the campaign, and had given universal satisfaction. I was liked by the natives.

He added that:

Baird was a gallant, hard-headed, lion-hearted officer, but he had no talent, no tact, had strong prejudices against the natives; and he was peculiarly disqualified from his manners, habits &c., and it was supposed his temper, for the management of them.

Although Baird fiercely resented his supersession, in 1813 he told Sir John Malcolm that he had long since forgiven Wellesley, and: ‘His fame is now to me joy, and I may also say glory, and his kindness to me and mine has all along been most distinguished.’¹⁷

As soon as Wellesley was in command, he went into Seringapatam to restore order: four soldiers were hanged and others flogged. He was soon writing to Harris that ‘plunder is stopped, the fires are all extinguished, and the inhabitants are returning to their houses fast’. He asked Harris ‘to order an extra dram and biscuit for the 12^th, 33^rd and 73^rd regiments, who got nothing to eat yesterday, and were wet last night’ and emphasised that the place needed a permanent garrison with its own commander. Harris decided that Wellesley was the man for the job. The governor-general had already declared that when Tipoo was beaten, his policy would be one of conciliation, and Wellesley had made a very good start. A commission with military and civilian members had been appointed at the start of the campaign to run affairs in captured territory, and after the fall of Seringapatam a new commission was set up, its members including Arthur and Henry Wellesley.

Although Arthur’s direct responsibilities were at first confined to Seringapatam island, he was soon not only head of the commission, but, as the main armies withdrew, the senior military officer in the region. When the commission was dissolved he retained power, warning the governor-general that he would not accept ‘any person with civil authority who is not under my orders’. Lieutenant Colonel Barry Close, who he regarded as ‘the ablest man in the Company’s army’ was sent down as Resident, an arrangement which worked well. A five-year-old boy, the closest surviving descendent of the line of Hindu rajahs which had been overthrown by Hyder Ali, was appointed ruler of Mysore, with Purneah, an able man who had served Hyder Ali with distinction, as his chief minister.

Arthur Wellesley had played a principal part in winning a significant victory and had gone on to wield exceptional power for a thirty-year-old colonel. He had also been paid £4,000 of the prize money distributed when the proceeds of the victory were divided up, the shares varying with rank: Harris received £150,000, a British soldier £7, and a sepoy £5. Although Arthur had still not received the allowances to cover his campaign expenses, he immediately offered to repay Mornington ‘the money which you advanced to pay my lieutenant-colonelcy, and that which was borrowed from Captain Stapleton on our joint bond’.¹⁸ Richard generously replied that: ‘I am not in want of money and probably never shall be: when I am, it will be time enough to call upon you.’¹⁹ But the governor-general was not at his best. Although his hoped-for marquessate had arrived at last, he was Marquess Wellesley of Norragh – in the peerage of Ireland. It was, as he called it, a ‘double-gilt potato’. ‘As I felt confident there had been nothing Irish or pinchbeck in my conduct or its results,’ he wrote, ‘I felt an equal confidence that there should be nothing Irish or pinchbeck in its rewards.’²⁰

Arthur dealt with the myriad of military and political issues that crossed his writing-desk in Tipoo’s cool and spacious summer palace, whose wonderful murals – some of which depicted the British being roundly beaten by Hyder Ali and his French allies – were restored on his orders. He denied a request from a French priest to have 200 Christian women who had been carried off by Tipoo ‘in the most indecent and tyrannical manner’ returned to their homes. This refusal was, he admitted, unjust, but they were currently living with Tipoo’s family, and as the Company had undertaken to protect the family, sending the women home would have been a breach of faith. He pondered the composition of courts, civil and military, though the demonstrative nature of justice was never far from his mind: ‘the criminals shall be executed after the facts have been clearly ascertained by an examination of witnesses …’²¹ He dealt sternly with officers who stole or accepted bribes, and although they sometimes had reason to complain of the slowness of the rajah’s government, ‘they had none to ill-use any man’. One senior officer whose conduct towards the Indians had caused complaint was warned that ‘he must either act as he ought, or he shall be removed from his command’.²² Yet Wellesley was moved to pity by the case of one of the Company’s lieutenant colonels, convicted of ‘very serious crimes’ before a general court-martial and stripped of his commission. Wellesley observed that when he had repaid the Company the money he owed it, he would be entirely destitute. Wellesley begged the governor of Madras ‘to give him some small pension to enable him to support himself, or … recommend him for some small provision … on account of his long services and his present reduced situation’.²³

His chief concern, though, was with the assortment of freebooters – ‘polygars, nairs, and moplahs’ – in arms around the state. His most obdurate opponent was Dhoondiah Waugh, a tough mercenary who had escaped from Tipoo’s custody just before Seringapatam fell, recruited a substantial following from amongst Tipoo’s former soldiers and other malcontents, and proclaimed himself ‘King of the Two Worlds’. He was beaten in 1799 and escaped northwards into Maratha territory, but was back again the following year. In May 1800, Wellesley himself mounted a full-scale campaign against Dhoondiah, his well-organised transport system enabling him to move across a desolate area. Even so there were difficult moments. On 30 June, he told Barry Close that he was a day later than planned in crossing the River Toombnuddra, and its sudden rise delayed him on the south bank for ten days. As no supplies could be brought in, the army ate much of the corn it had with it, and was now held up. ‘How true it is,’ he mused, ‘that in military operations, time is everything.’²⁴ He systematically took Dhoondiah’s fortresses and finally caught up with him at Conaghull, right up on the borders of Hyderabad, on 10 September.

Although Wellesley, pursuing with two regiments of British cavalry and two of Indian, was badly outnumbered, he formed up his little army in a single line and led a charge that routed Dhoondiah’s army. Wellesley reported to the adjutant-general in Madras that: ‘Many, amongst others, Dhoondiah, were killed; and the whole body dispersed, and were scattered in small parties over the face of the country.’²⁵ He could be magnanimous in victory. Dhoondiah’s young son, Salabut Khan, was found amongst the baggage. Wellesley looked after him, and when he departed from India, he left money for the boy’s upkeep with the collector of Seringapatam. Salabut, ‘a fine, handsome, intelligent youth’, eventually entered the rajah’s service and died of cholera in 1822.

In May 1800, Arthur had been offered command of a force to be sent to capture Batavia in the East Indies from the Dutch, but he told his brother that although he would welcome the appointment, it would not be in the public interest for him to leave Mysore until ‘its tranquillity is assured’. With Dhoondiah beaten, however, he was able to accept the command and, after assembling a staff, he departed for Ceylon, where he arrived on 28 December. Arthur soon heard that the expedition was to go to Egypt instead, and he duly ordered it to concentrate in Bombay. He was on the way there himself when he heard that his brother, who had anticipated ‘great jealousy from the general officers in consequence of my employing you’, had been pressed to supersede him with Major General Baird. This was not as unreasonable a decision as Arthur maintained. He was still only a colonel, albeit a senior one, and the governor-general told him privately that ‘you must know that I could not employ you in the chief command of so large a force as is now to proceed in Egypt without violating every rule in the service …’ There were limits to how far Richard could go on his behalf. Baird had been infuriated by his supercession by the governor-general’s brother at Seringapatam, and made this very clear in three interviews with Richard Wellesley. In her sympathetic anecdotal biography of Arthur, Muriel Wellesley suggests that Richard had no alternative but to act as he did: ‘He must either sacrifice his brother, or lose the confidence of those he governed, which he inevitably would do once the stigma of favouritism and partiality were to become attached to him.’ There were times when Arthur, like Achilles, was capable of sulking in his tent, and this was one of them.

Right or wrong, he was deeply hurt, and now began his letters to the governor-general not as ‘My dear Mornington’, but as the coldly official ‘My Lord’. He was franker in a letter to their brother Henry:

I have not been guilty of robbery or murder, and he has certainly changed his mind … I did not look, and did not wish, for the appointment which was given me; and I say that it would probably have been more proper to give it to somebody else; but when it was given to me, and a circular written to the governments upon the subject, it would have been fair to allow me to hold it till I did something to deserve to lose it.²⁶

Although he was appointed Baird’s second-in-command, Wellesley remained in Bombay when the expedition set sail. Although he assured Henry that Baird’s conduct towards him was ‘perfectly satisfactory’, he first suffered from fever, followed by an attack of ‘Malabar itch’, which obliged him to undergo a regimen of nitrous baths. He knew that the episode would not redound to his credit, and when he felt well enough, he returned to Mysore. Captain George Elers observed that he had begun to grey at the temples and did not laugh as explosively as before. Responsibility followed by disappointment had marked him: ‘He may already have forgotten how to play.’²⁷

But even now, in the depths of his disappointment, he recovered something of his sparkle. Elers wrote that he kept a ‘plain but good’ table, and had an excellent appetite, with roast saddle of mutton served with salad as his favourite dish. He was abstemious, drinking only four or five glasses of wine with dinner and ‘about a pint of claret’ afterwards. ‘He was very even in his temper,’ wrote Elers, ‘laughing and joking with those he liked …’ He could even smile in the face of adversity. Riding hard for Seringapatam with Elers and a tiny escort through dangerous country, he joked that if they were captured: ‘I shall be hanged as being brother to the Governor-General, and you will be hanged for being found in bad company.’ Hearing that there had been a promotion of colonels to be major generals, he called for a copy of the Army List, but found that he was not included. He admitted ruefully that his only ambition was ‘to be a major general in His Majesty’s service’.

When Wellesley returned to Mysore, India was on the verge of another major conflict, this time between the British and the Maratha Confederacy, now the East India Company’s principal rival on the subcontinent. The Hindu Marathas controlled the great mass of central India, bordered by the Ganges in the north and Hyderabad in the south, running from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal, and eventually including Delhi. In 1761 they had been beaten with great loss at Panipat, just outside Delhi, by the Afghan, Ahmad Shah Durrani, Muslim ruler of Kabul. However, they enjoyed a revival after Panipat and in 1778–82, the East India Company fought an inclusive war against them. Thereafter the Company was preoccupied with Mysore, but by 1800 the Maratha state had fragmented into what were, in effect, independent principalities, themselves uniting the fiefs of smaller semi-independent chiefs. The Peshwa Baji Rao, nominally the most senior, ruled at Poona, although his writ ran only around the frontiers of Hyderabad and Mysore. The most powerful of the maharajas was Daulat Rao Scindia, who controlled the northern Maratha lands from his capital at Ujjein, while at Indore, Jeswant Rao Holkar ruled a central slab of land between the Narmada and Godavari Rivers. The Bhonsla Rajah of Berar, with his capital at Nagpur, dominated the south-east Maratha lands. The Gaikwar of Baroda, fifth of the great princes, ruled territory in the west, around the Gulf of Cambay, but was to throw himself onto the Company’s protection and play no part in the coming conflict.

The fragmentation of Maratha power was both risk and opportunity for the Company. On the one hand growing instability meant there was a chance of war breaking out while the Company was busy elsewhere – it was for this reason that Sir Alured Clarke had been left in Calcutta when Mornington began his campaign against Tipoo. But, on the other, the Company might be able, as it had elsewhere, to exploit friction between local rulers. Their chance came in 1800, when Holkar defeated the Peshwa and Scindia at Poona. Scindia fell back into his own territory, but the Peshwa fled to Bassein, in British territory, and signed a treaty agreeing to give the Company control over his foreign affairs and to accept (and pay for) a garrison of six of the Company’s battalions in return for the Company’s help in restoring him to his throne.

The task of restoring the Peshwa was given to Arthur Wellesley in November 1802. He had just heard that he had been gazetted major general on 29 April that year, (news had only reached him in September), and given an appointment on the Madras establishment, where Lieutenant General Stuart, who had led the Bombay army column that fought at Seringapatam, was now commander-in-chief. As he had told Barry Close, soon to be political Resident with the Peshwa, in September 1801, ‘before long we may look to war with the Mahrattas’. He had already made a lengthy analysis of the terrain he might have to cover, highlighting the problems of providing food and water and crossing the many rivers that would lie across his path. As usual he delved into detail. He would need 10,000 gallons of arrack (native spirit) for his European troops, and this should be carried in 6 gallon kegs, ‘well fortified with iron hoops’. There would also have to be 90,000 lbs of salt meat, ‘packed in kegs well fortified, 54lbs in each keg, besides pickle, &c.; and the same quantity of biscuits in round baskets, containing 6olbs each; these baskets to be covered with waxed cloth’.²⁸

Major General Wellesley moved off in March 1803, his own army numbering just under 15,000 men, with a Hyderabad force of nearly 9,000 also under his command. He was well aware that his task was to restore the Peshwa but not to bring about a wider war with the Marathas as he did so. In fact, there was no resistance. The careful preparations ensured that the march of some 600 miles was swift, and rigid discipline ensured that local inhabitants were not alienated by plundering. His leading cavalry reached Poona on 20 April, but the Peshwa would not re-enter his capital till 13 May, when the stars were propitious. Wellesley observed that he was ‘a prince, the only principle of whose character is insincerity’. He made heavy weather of re-establishing himself, but at the same time was already negotiating with the other Maratha princes. In May, Holkar raided into Hyderabad territory, replying civilly to Wellesley’s letter of remonstrance, stating that the Nizam of Hyderabad owed him money. The Nizam was in fact mortally ill, which induced Stuart in Madras to send troops to Hyderabad to help maintain order. This added to the political tension between the Marathas and the Company. Although open war was still not inevitable, Scindia was striving to draw the other Maratha chiefs into a coalition against the British.

Wellesley, as usual, was preoccupied with his logistics. His line of communication ran back down to Mysore, and although he did his best to ensure against its collapse when the monsoon came – locally-made coracles, ‘basket boats’, were stockpiled at all likely river-crossings – it would be much easier if he could open a shorter line to Bombay. However, the authorities there lacked his own attention to detail, and sent him pontoons for river-crossing at the moment when the weather broke, and the wagons carrying them foundered on the very first day. Stuart generously told the governor-general that he had no wish to take command, for Wellesley’s ‘extensive knowledge and influence … and his eminent military talents’ made him ideally suited for the appointment in which, Stuart was sure, his army would render ‘very distinguished services’. Accordingly, in June 1803, an order from Mornington gave Wellesley full military and political authority in central India, and he immediately ordered Colonel John Collins, British Resident at Scindia’s camp still on Maratha territory, now close to the Nizam of Hyderabad’s fortress of Ajanta, to ask Scindia precisely what he objected to in the treaty of Bassein. Wellesley was prepared to make minor concessions and was anxious not to fire the first shot in a new war. On 25 June, he told Colonel James Stevenson, his principal subordinate, that: ‘It will be our duty to carry out the war, with activity, when it shall begin, but it is equally so to avoid hostilities, if we possibly can …’²⁹ On 3 August, Collins reported that Scindia and the Rajah of Berar would give no direct answer to his demands, and had left for the Nizam’s nearby fortress of Aurungabad. Wellesley at once announced that he was obliged to go to war ‘in order to secure the interests of the British government and its allies’.³⁰

The Maratha armies looked formidable on paper. The core of Scindia’s invading force was his regular infantry, about 15,000 strong, which was trained and led by European officers and organised in brigades called ‘compoos’, including some cavalry and a few guns. Colonel Pohlmann, once a sergeant in a Hanoverian regiment in British service, commanded the largest, with about 7,500 men; the Begum Somroo, widow of a German mercenary who had become one of Scindia’s vassals, had recruited a slightly smaller force, commanded on her behalf by Colonel Saleur, and Colonel Baptiste Filoze, of Neapolitan-Indian ancestry, commanded a third. Scindia’s army had about eighty field pieces and a few heavier guns. His irregular troops included 10–20,000 infantry, and there were something between 30–60,000 light cavalry.

The governor-general had tried to persuade British subjects serving the Marathas to relinquish their posts, promising them employment if they did so and prosecution for treason if they refused. Some were certainly reluctant to fight. ‘John Roach Englishman and George Blake Scotsman lately commanding each a gun in the service of the Begum’ informed Wellesley that they ‘left camp by permission upon remonstrance against being employed to fight’ and told their countrymen all they knew.³¹ Stewart, an officer of Pohlmann’s compoo, also joined the British as soon as he could, as did Grant, brigade major (chief of staff) to one of the compoos. But some certainly stayed to fight, for Wellesley told Colonel Collins that some of his wounded had been killed by the cavalry attached to the compoos, and a British officer in enemy service had been heard to say to another: ‘You understand the language better than I do. Desire the jemadar [native junior officer] of that body of horse to go and cut up those wounded European soldiers.’³²

Wellesley had already decided that he must act boldly. He told Colonel Stevenson that ‘the best thing you can do is to move forward yourself with the Company’s cavalry and all the Nizam’s and dash at the first party that comes into your neighbourhood … A long defensive war would ruin us and will answer no purpose whatever.’³³ On 8 August 1803, he broke camp and marched to Ahmednuggur, the nearest Maratha-held fort. It was held by one of Scindia’s regular battalions under French officers and about 1,000 reliable Arab mercenaries, but Wellesley believed that this was too small a force to hold the fort and the surrounding town (the pettah), although both were walled. He determined to carry the town by assault, using ladders to scale the walls, without preliminary bombardment. The 78^th Highlanders led the assault, and when they were beaten back, a lieutenant of the grenadier company, Colin Campbell – who was to die a general in 1847-hung his claymore from his wrist with a scarf to climb the better, and laid about him when he topped the wall. Other units entered elsewhere, and in twenty minutes the town was taken. One of the Peshwa’s officers summed it all up:

The English are a strange people, and their General a wonderful man. They came here in the morning, looked at the pettah wall, walked over it, killed the garrison, and returned to breakfast! What can withstand them?³⁴

The fort capitulated on the 12^th once Wellesley’s guns had breached the wall and the assaulting columns were formed and ready.

With Ahmednuggur in his hands, Wellesley snapped up all Scindia’s possessions south of the Godavari, and then crossed the river with an army of 2,200 Europeans and 5,000 sepoys, with 2,200 light cavalry from Mysore and 4,000 of the Peshwa’s cavalry. He reached Aurungabad, on the edge of the Nizam’s territory, on 29 August, and rode on to meet Colonel Collins, encamped just to the north. Collins told him that he need not worry about the Maratha horse – ‘You may ride over them, General, whenever you meet them’ – but his regulars were a different matter altogether. Collins had seen Scindia’s army at close quarters for five months, and declared that: ‘Their infantry and the guns attached to it will surprise you.’³⁵

Wellesley was at Aurungabad, and Stevenson, with more than 10,000 men, was at Kolsah, a hundred miles away to the east. At first Wellesley feared that the Maratha cavalry, up on the frontier between these two forces, would use its superior mobility to raid deep into the Nizam’s territory. After nearly a month of shadow-boxing Wellesley and Stevenson met at Budnapoor on 21^st September, and agreed a plan by which the two armies, moving separately, would manoeuvre in order to catch Scindia’s main army in or around Borkardan. The first phase went well enough, and Wellesley reached Paugy and Stevenson Khamagaon on the 22^nd September. On the following day, Wellesley’s force, which as usual had left camp well before dawn so as to complete most of its marching before the heat of the day, reached Naulniah just before midday. Borkardan was another ten miles on, and camp was already being laid out when a cavalry troop brought in some brinjarries who reported that the Maratha army, with three compoos and abundant cavalry, was not at Borkardan at all. It was much closer, on the far bank of the River Kaitna, under the command of Colonel Pohlmann.

Wellesley went forward with a strong cavalry escort and reached a spot from which he could see the Marathas, in all perhaps 200,000 strong, in the process of breaking camp. As he later told the governor-general, ‘it was obvious that the attack was to be no longer delayed’.³⁶ If he waited for Stevenson, the Marathas would slip away, but if he attacked at once they must either fight, or flee and abandon their guns. He quickly discarded the option of a frontal assault, and instead led his army parallel with the river as far as the village of Peepulgaon. Just across the river lay the village of Waroor, and he decided that the villages would not have been built so close together without ‘some habitual means of communication’ between them: there simply had to be a ford.

I visited the battlefield in September 2001. The monsoon was late, but the heavens had finally opened when I flew in to Aurungabad the day before. Although two four-wheel drive vehicles took us out to the battlefield through the smoky early morning bustle of village India, the rivers had all risen alarmingly and the tracks were pure mud. North of Peepulgaon we borrowed a tractor and trailer, and slithered our way to the River Kaitna, looking, like Wellesley two hundred years earlier, for a ford. We found it just where Wellesley had expected it to be, between the two villages. I have long felt that there is a particular merit to viewing a battlefield from horseback: that extra few feet of height improves the view, and horses can go where most vehicles cannot. Rani, a tricolour Kathiawari horse with the breed’s signature ears – furry equine radars that curve round to cross above the horse’s head and seem capable of 360-degree movement – was not at her best after three hours in the back of a truck. As I nudged her down the muddy slope into the fast-flowing Kaitna, my spirits, cast down by the weather and worries about more floods, lifted.