Sergeant Richard Sharpe slung the musket and walked around the base of the inner wall, seeking a passage into the city. He had only a few moments of freedom left before the army took him back into its iron grip, but he had won his victory and he had pockets full of stones to prove it. He went to find a drink.
Next day it rained. It was not the monsoon, though it could have been, for the rain fell with a ferocity that matched the fury of the previous day’s assault. The pelting warm rain washed the blood off the city’s walls and scoured the hot season’s filth out of its streets. The Cauvery swelled to fill its banks, rising so high that no man could have crossed the river in front of the breach. If the Tippoo’s prayers had been answered and the British had waited one more day, then the floods would have defeated them.
But there was no Tippoo in Seringapatam, only the Rajah, who had been restored to his palace where he was surrounded by red-coated guards. The palace, which had been protected from the ravages of the assaulting troops, was now being stripped bare by the victorious officers. Rain drummed on the green-tiled roof and ran into the gutters and puddled in the courtyards as the red-coated officers sawed up the great tiger throne on which the Tippoo had never sat. They turned the handles of the tiger organ and laughed as the mechanical claw savaged the redcoat’s face. They tugged down silk hangings, they pried gems out of furniture and marveled at the simple, bare, white-painted room which had been the Tippoo’s bedchamber. The six tigers, roaring because they had not been fed and because the rain fell so hard, were shot.
The Tippoo’s father, the great Hyder Ali, lay in a mausoleum east of the city and, when the rainstorm had stopped, and while the garden around the mausoleum was still steaming in the sudden sultry sunlight, the Tippoo was carried to rest beside his father. British troops lined the route and reversed their arms as the cortege passed. Muffled drums beat a slow tattoo as the Tippoo was borne on his sad last journey by his own defeated soldiers.
Sharpe, with three bright white stripes newly sewn onto his faded red sleeve, waited close beside the domed mausoleum. “I do wonder who killed him.” Colonel McCandless, restored to a clean uniform and with his hair neatly cut, had come to stand beside Sharpe.
“Some lucky bastard, sir.”
“A rich one by now, no doubt,” the Colonel said.
“Good for him, sir,” Sharpe said, “whoever he is.”
“He’ll only waste the plunder,” McCandless said severely. “He’ll fritter it on women and drink.”
“Don’t sound like a waste to me, sir.”
McCandless grimaced at the Sergeant’s levity. “That ruby alone was worth ten years of a general’s salary. Ten years!”
“A shame it’s vanished, sir,” Sharpe said guilelessly.
“Isn’t it, Sharpe?” McCandless agreed. “But I hear you were at the Water Gate?”
“Me, sir? No, sir. Not me, sir. I stayed with Mister Lawford, sir.”
The Colonel gave Sharpe a fierce glance. “A sergeant of the Old Dozen reports he saw a wild-looking fellow come out of the Water Gate.” McCandless’s voice was accusing. “He says the man had a coat with scarlet facings and no buttons.” The Colonel looked disapprovingly at Sharpe’s red coat on which Sharpe had somehow found time to stitch the sergeant’s stripes, but not a single button. “The man seems very certain of what he saw.”
“He was probably confused by the battle, sir. Lost his wits, I wouldn’t doubt.”
“So who put Sergeant Hakeswill in with the tigers?” McCandless demanded.
“Only the good Lord knows, sir, and He ain’t saying.”
The Colonel, scenting blasphemy, frowned. “Hakeswill says it was you,” he accused Sharpe.
“Hakeswill’s mad, sir, and you can’t trust a thing he says,” Sharpe said. And Hakeswill was more than mad, he was alive. Somehow he had escaped the tigers. Not one of the beasts had attacked the Sergeant who been discovered babbling in the courtyard, crying for his mother and declaring his fondness for tigers. He liked all pussycats, he had said to his rescuers. “I can’t be killed!” he had shouted when the redcoats led him gently away. “Touched by God, I am,” he had claimed, and then he had demanded that Sharpe be arrested for attempted murder, but Lieutenant Lawford had blushed and sworn that Sergeant Sharpe had never left his side after the mine was blown. Colonel Gudin, a prisoner now, had confirmed the claim. The two men had been discovered in one of the city’s brothels where they had been protecting die women from the drunken, rampaging victors.
“Hakeswill’s a lucky man,” McCandless said drily, abandoning any further attempt to drag the truth from Sharpe. “Those tigers were man-eaters.”
“But not devil-eaters, sir. One whiff of Hakeswill and they must have gone right off their feed.”
“He still swears it was you who threw him to the tigers,” McCandless said. “I’ve no doubt he’ll try to take his revenge.”
“I’ve no doubt either, sir, but I’ll be ready for him.” And next time, Sharpe thought, he would make certain the bastard died.
McCandless turned as the slow funeral procession appeared at the end of the long road that led to the mausoleum. Opposite him, behind an honor guard of the King’s 73rd, Appah Rao, now in the Rajah’s service, also watched the cortege approach. Appah Rao’s family and household all lived. McCandless had sat in Appah Rao’s courtyard, a musket on his lap, and turned back every redcoat or sepoy who had come to the house. Mary had thus survived unscathed and Sharpe had heard that she would now marry her Kunwar Singh, and he was glad for her. He remembered the ruby he had once promised to give her and he smiled at the thought. Some other lass, maybe. The Tippoo’s ruby was deep in his pouch, hidden like all the other looted jewels.
The muffled drumbeat came nearer and the red-coated honor guard stiffened to attention. Mourners followed the coffin, most of them the Tippoo’s officers. Gudin was among them. McCandless took off his cocked hat. “There’ll be more fighting to come, Sharpe,” the Colonel said softly. “We have other enemies in India.”
“I’m sure we have, sir.”
The Colonel glanced at Sharpe. He saw a young man, hard as flint, and the restless anger in Sharpe’s heart made him dangerous as flint and steel, but there was also a kindness in Sharpe. McCandless had seen that kindness in the dungeons, and McCandless believed it betrayed a soul that was well worth saving. “I may have uses for you if you’re willing,” the Colonel said.
Sharpe seemed surprised. “I thought you were going home, sir. To Scotland.”
McCandless shrugged. “There’s work undone here, Sharpe, work undone. And what will I ever do in Scotland but dream of India? I think I shall stay for a while.”
“And I’d be privileged to help you, sir, so I would,” Sharpe said, then he snatched off his shako as the coffin drew close. His hair, which he had still not clubbed or powdered, fell loose across his scarlet collar as he stood to attention. Far away, beyond the river, rain fell on a green land, but above Sharpe the sun shone, glistening its watery light on the mausoleum’s bulging white dome beneath which, in a dark crypt under their silk-draped tombs, the Tippoo’s parents lay. Now the Tippoo would join them.
The coffin was carried slowly past Sharpe. The men bearing the Tippoo were dressed in his tiger-striped tunic, while the coffin itself was draped with a great striped tiger pelt. It was a mangy skin, uncured and still bloody, but the best that could be discovered in the chaos following the city’s fall, and down one flank there was a long ancient scar and Sharpe, seeing it, smiled. He had seen that scar before. He had seen it every night that he was in the Tippoo’s dungeons. And now he saw it again, scored into a tiger skin that covered a brave dead king.
It was Sharpe’s tiger.
HISTORICAL NOTE
The siege and fall of Seringapatam (now Sriringapatna) in May 1799 ended decades of warfare between the remarkable Muslim dynasty that ruled the state of Mysore and the invading British. The British, under Lord Cornwallis, had captured the city before, in 1792, and at that tim
e they decided to leave the Tippoo on his throne, but mutual antagonisms, and the Tippoo’s preference for a French alliance, led to the final Mysore war. The aim of the war was simple: to do what had not been done in 1792, unthrone the Tippoo, to which end the British concocted some very thin reasons to justify an invasion of Mysore, ignored the Tippoo’s overtures for peace, and so marched on Seringapatam. It was a brutally naked piece of aggression, but successful, for with the Tippoo’s death the most formidable obstacle to British rule in southern India was removed, and with it the increasingly slim chance that Napoleon, then at the head of a French army stranded in Egypt, would intervene in the subcontinent.
The novel’s description of the city’s fall is mostly accurate. Two Forlorn Hopes, one headed by the unfortunate Sergeant Graham, led two columns of attacking troops across the wide South Cauvery and up the breach, and there the columns separated, one going north about the city’s outer ramparts and the other south. Major General David Baird commanded the assault, and he, judging in the heat of battle that the resistance to the south was more formidable, turned that way. In fact the northern column encountered the stiffest opposition, most probably caused by the Tippoo’s own leadership. Many eyewitnesses, from both sides, testified to the Tippoo’s personal bravery. He was gaudily dressed and bright with gems, but he insisted on fighting in the front rank of his men. Further difficulties were caused by the defenders firing from the inner wall’s sheltered firestep, and it was not until Captain Goodall, the commander of the 12th Regiment’s Light Company, had led his men across the buttressing cross-wall and so began the capture of the inner ramparts that the defense collapsed. The fight was short, but exceptionally bloody, causing 1,400 casualties among the attackers and over 6,000 from the Tippoo’s troops.
I did take one great liberty with the historical facts of the assault. There was no disused western gateway, nor any mine either, but the idea for the mine came from an enormous and spectacular explosion which occurred in the city two days before the assault. It is believed that a British shell somehow ignited one of the Tippoo’s magazines, which then blew up. I changed the nature of that explosion, and delayed it by two days, because fictional heroes must be given suitable employment.
There were a few French troops in Seringapatam, but Nelson’s victory at the Nile had effectively ended any real chance of French intervention in India. Colonel Gudin is a fictional character, though someone very like him did lead a small French battalion in the battle. Others of the novel’s characters, like Colonel Gent, did exist. Major Shee, a somewhat intemperate and unfortunate Irishman, commanded the 33rd during the time Wellesley served as one of Harris’s deputies and Lieutenant Fitzgerald, brother of the Knight of Kerry, was killed in the confused night attack on the Sultanpetah tope, probably by a bayonet thrust. That setback was Wellesley’s only military defeat and it gave him a lifelong aversion to night actions. Major General Baird did dislike Wellesley and fiercely resented the fact that General Harris appointed the younger man to be the Governor of Seringapatam after the siege, although, given Baird’s hatred of the Indians, the appointment was undoubtedly wise. Baird’s jealousy lasted many years, though in his later life the Scotsman generously admitted that Wellesley was his military superior. By then, of course, Arthur Wellesley had become the first Duke of Wellington. In 1815 only Napoleon still regarded Wellington with contempt, dubbing him the “Sepoy General,” but the Sepoy General still whipped Napoleon.
The Tippoo Sultan, of course, existed. His defeat was celebrated in Britain where the Tippoo was regarded as a peculiarly brutal and ferocious despot and for years afterward, despite many other momentous victories over much more formidable enemies, the British still harked back to the Tippoo’s defeat and death. The event was celebrated in numerous prints, it was turned into at least six stage plays, and it occupied many books, all tributes to the curious fascination the Tippoo exercised over his erstwhile enemies. Yet his death, despite being pictured and re-enacted so many times, was never fully explained because no one ever discovered who exactly killed him (it was most probably a soldier of the 12th’s Grenadier Company). The Tippoo’s body was found, but his killer never came forward and it is presumed that this reticence was caused by the man’s unwillingness to admit to ownership of the Tippoo’s jewels. Where many of those jewels are today, no one knows.
But much of the Tippoo’s grandeur can still be seen. The Inner Palace of Seringapatam, alas, was demolished in the nineteenth century (local guides insist it was destroyed by the British bombardment, but in fact the building survived the siege intact) and all that remains of its splendor are a few ruined walls and some pillars which now support the canopy of Sriringapatna’s railway station, but the Summer Palace, the Daria Dowlat, still exists. The mural of the British defeat at Pollilur was restored by Wellesley, who lived in this exquisite little palace while he governed Mysore. It is now a museum. The Tippoo’s mosque still stands, there is another small palace in the city of Bangalore, and, perhaps most moving of all, the Gumbaz, the elegant mausoleum where the Tippoo lies with his parents. To this day his tomb is covered with a cloth patterned with tiger stripes.
The Tippoo revered the tiger, and used tiger motifs wherever he could. His fabulous tiger throne existed, but it was broken up at his death, though large parts of it can still be seen, notably in Windsor Castle. His dreadful toy, the tiger organ, is now in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The organ was sadly damaged during the Blitz, but it has been superbly restored, though, alas, its voice is not what it was. The Tippoo did keep six tigers in his palace courtyard (Wellesley ordered them shot).
Sriringapatna’s outer wall still stands. The town, which has fewer inhabitants now than it did in 1799, is an attractive place and the site of the assault, overlooking the South Cauvery, is marked by an obelisk that stands immediately to the north of the repaired breach. Just behind the breach, and filling the whole northwestern corner of the defenses, is an enormous earthen bastion—all that remains of the inner wall. The rest of the inner wall has disappeared completely, probably demolished by Wellesley shortly after the siege. Later, during the high noon of the Raj, various sites were identified in Sriringapatna as historically significant locations, but I believe the absence of the inner wall caused some confusion. Modern visitors to Sriringapatna will discover plaques or memorials displayed at the Tippoo’s dungeons, at the Water Gate where he was supposedly killed and, much farther east, at the place where his body was found, but of the three I suspect only the last is accurate.
The so-called dungeons are beneath the Sultan Battery, and while it is quite possible they were used as cells in the 1780s (and thus the place where Baird spent his uncomfortable forty-four months) they were not so employed in 1799. By then the inner wall had been built (it was hastily constructed after Cornwallis’s 1792 siege), and it is much more likely that the “dungeons” were thereafter employed as a magazine (a use for which they were obviously intended). The Tippoo’s surviving prisoners all attested that they were held inside the inner wall during the siege, so that is where I placed Sharpe, Lawford, McCandless, and Hakeswill.
A plaque marks the Water Gate through the outer wall as the site of the Tippoo’s death, but again this seems wrong. The evidence of Mysorean survivors, some of whom were close to the Tippoo at the end, clearly states that the Tippoo was trying to get inside the city when he was killed. We know he had been fighting on the outer wall and that when he broke off that fight he came down to the space between the walls, and there the story becomes muddled. British sources claim he tried to escape the city through the outer wall’s Water Gate, but the Indian testimonies all agree that he tried to go through the inner wall’s Water Gate into the city itself. That second Water Gate has since vanished, but I suspect it was there that he died and not at the existing gate. It might seem logical that he should have attempted to flee the city, but the remaining Water Gate led, and still leads, to the flooded ditch inside the glacis, and even if he had negotiated those obstacles
(under fire from the attackers on the wall above him), he would only have reached the southern bank of the Cauvery which was under the guns of the British forces north of the river. By cutting through the city he could have reached the Bangalore Gate which offered a much greater chance of successful escape. Indeed, after the Tippoo’s death, or perhaps while he was still dying, some of his loyal retainers found him, placed him in the palanquin, and carried him eastward, presumably in an attempt to reach the Bangalore Gate. They were intercepted, the palanquin was overturned, and the Tippoo’s body lay undiscovered for several hours. It seems a pity to abandon the present Water Gate as the place where the Tippoo was shot, for its gloomy dank tunnel has a certain eerie drama, but doubtless the matching gate in the inner wall was equally atmospheric.
The Tippoo’s body was treated with honor, and next day, as the novel describes, he was buried beside his parents in the Gumbaz mausoleum. Wellesley, meanwhile, stamped out the looting in the city (he hung four looters, a remedy he would employ in the wake of future sieges), but what the common soldier could not take, the senior officers happily plundered for themselves. The East India Company’s Prize Agents tallied the Tippoo’s treasures at a value of two million pounds (1,799 pounds), and half of that fabulous fortune was declared to be prize money, so that many senior officers became rich men through that single day’s work. Most of the treasures returned to Britain, where they remain, some on public view, but many still in private hands.
Today the Tippoo is a hero to many Indians who regard him as a proto-independence fighter. This seems a perverse judgement. Most of the Tippoo’s enemies were other Indian states, though admittedly his fiercest fights were against the British (and their Indian allies), but he could never entirely rely on his Hindu subjects. No one is certain that he was betrayed on the day of his death, but it seems more than likely that several Hindu officers, like the fictional Appah Rao, were deliberately lukewarm in their support. The Tippoo’s Muslim religion and his preference for the Persian language mark him as being outside the mainstream of modern Indian tradition, which is perhaps why I was assured by one educated Indian that the Tippoo had, in truth, been a Hindu. He was not, and no amount of wishful thinking can make him into a more acceptably “Indian” hero. Nor does his story need embellishment, for he was a hero anyway, even if he never did fight for Indian independence. He fought for Mysorean domination over India, which was a quite different thing.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe's Triumph, Sharpe's Fortress Page 37