Hunting Revolutionaries
A somewhat historical short story by
Thomas Sewell
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, or groups, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Sewell
October 1st, 1776
Pandeshwar Fort, Madras Province, British East India Company
A boom of cannon fire echoed from the landward side of Pandeshwar Fort. From atop the grey river-stone wall a blue uniformed Madras Foot Artillery Lieutenant called out to me, "Major Drake!" Fixed artillery thundered once more.
I glanced up from reviewing my company's muster sheets.
He was a young sallow-faced sepoy, a native soldier serving under East India Company orders, but his blue gold-laced uniform coat with white trousers and cross-belts looked a little too much like a Royal Navy uniform for my liking. Spotting my look, he waved a piece of paper and expanded his cry, as if I didn't recognize my own name, “Major Jonathan Drake!”
I dusted off the gold braid on my Naval Officer's uniform coat and stared again at my paperwork. My company of His Majesty's Marine Forces was already assembled in the muggy sea air on the fort’s roughhewn wharf.
Our three-mast ship docked an hour ago under the guns of the blocky stone fort. When her Captain and I reported in to the Port Admiral in response to the fort's urgent signal flags, he'd ordered my company's immediate disembarkment and assembly. I was given to believe it had something to do with the sporadic musket and cannon fire we'd been hearing from the landward side of the fort, out of sight from the docks.
My Virginians and I stood in the blazing sunlight. We ignored the Sepoy Lieutenant.
Eventually, he took the hint to report in properly. He stopped yelling long enough to walk over and salute. We weren't a proud lot, and I was a long way from my native Virginia, but be-damned if we were going to toss out all military decorum just because some jumped up native lackey of the Madras Army felt in a hurry.
After a suitable pause, I raised my white-gloved right hand to my brow, palm down, in acknowledgement. The Lieutenant handed me a sheet of scribbled orders from the Port Admiral. He delivered the gist verbally. "Your company is to follow me to the east wall and lead a sally out the Judas gate to flank and route the Mysorean rebels."
"What do the rebels want?"
"The fort and her cannon, I presume, Sir. It's the key to controlling the mouth of the Netravathi River and logistical access to scores of miles inland."
De gustibus non est disputandum. There is no disputing about tastes. I'd just as soon head right back to Virginia, but the British Admiralty didn't trust an all-colonist Marine unit so close to home, friends and family. So here we stood, shipped literally to the other side of the world, watching the natives run around in a panic.
I doffed my hat and leaned in, "Why do the rebels attack today? Instead of, say, yesterday or tomorrow?"
"I'm sure I wouldn't know, Sir. I'm not privy to the rebel's council. Something's got them stirred up out there, though. Hyder Ali's men are usually awfully composed. He keeps them restrained."
"Hyder Ali?"
"The Rebel leader. He ran the Kingdom of Mysore on behalf of their royal family for years, but had a falling out with the hereditary leadership. Now he controls their army and no one's seen the official monarch for a decade."
I could think of a few other dynasties which'd started in a similar manner. Even King George's own House of Hanover had only ruled Britain for three score years now. No, anyone who'd taken over a Kingdom from the inside was sure to be a dangerous opponent. Fortunately, we had a couple of things going for us he wouldn’t be expecting.
I clapped on my blue fore-and-aft bicorne hat and started my red-coated marines following the Madras Army's finest.
We marched to the sounds of our fifes and drums.
Perhaps this Hyder Ali had a foolproof plan to distract and destroy the defenders they'd expected. Surely, they'd accounted for the local forces and knew their capabilities intimately. The fort was probably crawling with rebel spies, but with a three to four month news lag from Britain to India, even the Port Admiral wasn't actually expecting us that particular day. Maybe in a few weeks, but we'd had some luck with the monsoon winds during our passage.
The rebels wouldn’t expect the addition of a company of His Majesty's Marine Forces to join the fight.
We sallied out of the thick wooden postern gate, marching double-time in a thin column. The local defenders fired sporadic volleys at Hyder Ali’s men from the battlements without much effect. Frankly, the sepoy’s couldn't hit a tree at that distance, let alone a rebel. It seemed only the somewhat competently handled cannons, reinforced by a score of gunner's mates, kept the enemy lined up along the jungle tree line to fire on the stone fort's defenders, rather than crossing the furrowed potato fields to scale the walls.
We crossed the open to enter the woods as rapidly as possible. A regular musket unit would line up in the clearing to fire volleys. My company of Virginians carried rifles. Slower to reload, but longer ranged and capable of engaging the enemy from cover.
Upon reaching the woods, I gave the word, “Skirmish line, To the Right!”
On command, my marines turned and vanished into the concealment of the forest. My intention was to clear the woods of rebels from the edge of the fort to the river. With the river under command of the fort’s guns, there’d be no escape for them there.
Patches of sunlight rarely penetrated the jungle canopy. However, the lack of light at ground level provided space to move around the bases of the larger trees. Still, thinner branches and leaves sought exposure to the sun. We contended with vines and trampled down the brush down wherever there wasn't already a path. The bits of moisture from above mingled with my marine's sweat and the acrid smell of decomposing vegetation. After months aboard ship, much of that spent in monsoon weather, a sprinkle of rainwater wouldn’t deter us.
We kept our powder dry. That's what counted in the end.
My squirrel hunting marines fired from beyond the enemy’s musket range. Protected behind tree trunks, fallen logs, and moss-covered rocks, the broad-leafed jungle gave us even more concealment than we would've had in the pine forests of Virginia.
The rebels confronted the choice of dying, running or charging us. They were lined up facing the fort, which was the wrong way. Too thinly spread out to charge us with any hope of success, they instead undertook a great deal of running and dying. After the first few minutes of our advance from behind one tree to the next, they mostly ran. They observed their friends closer to my marines die.
Perhaps they had the discipline and leadership to live to fight another day. I didn't see many drop their muskets and powder in order to move a bit faster. Not in the manner I bet the Sepoys in the fort would've done under similar circumstances.
Despite some nasty bites from day mosquitos and weaver ants, we didn't lose a single marine in the fight, but I suspected this was just the beginning.
The next day I stood in the stone armory of Pandeshwar Fort. I'd spent the last ten minutes explaining my marine company's requirements to the quartermaster for the local regiment of Madras Pioneers. I believe he was deliberately obtuse. I was on the verge of calling him out, but bit my tongue after remembering regulations forbade it during times of insurrection.
The quartermaster tapped the forms he'd laid on his roughhewn desk, "Major Drake, in order to requisition powder and ball for your Marines, you'll need to fill out these six forms, and then sign, seal and return them along with the
counter-signed acknowledgement from the Port Admiral. Please be sure your signature and seal stay within the allocated areas of the page."
"Once again, we need rifled ammunition, not musket balls." My company of Virginians were all sharpshooters and carried rifles. Much more useful to be shooting at targets on enemy decks from the topsails individually. You wouldn't see us lined up on deck volleying short range musket fire. Ships had cannon for that sort of thing.
"Yes, yes, of course. Just list it on the forms and we'll see what we can find."
I clapped my bicorne hat firmly on my head and turned away from the quartermaster's desk. Our soldier's coats may both have been red with crossed white belts, but the local East India Company Pioneer soldiers weren't nearly up to the standards of His Majesty's Marine Forces. At least I wore the blue coat with gold trim of an officer in the Royal Navy. Without white cross-belts and one of their tall round hats, no one would mistake me for a local sepoy officer.
When the local rebellions against the Empire grew hotter, the Company made it virtually impossible to requisition ordinance. That may help prevent their native critics from easily acquiring weapons and ammunition, but it didn't help my mission to hunt down and capture the rebels. I couldn't imagine it helped the fort's defenders aim, either. Even musket practice occasionally requires using actual powder and ball.
Returning to the fort after our victory, we'd heard all about Hyder Ali, the flamboyant local rebel leader, from its permanent residents. He'd led a force of four-hundred highly disciplined natives in their attack against the Empire's fort. Without control of the fort and its cannons overlooking the harbor, dock and mouth of the river, he'd be boat-less and forced to move his troops slowly across the jungle, at best periodically fording the river which cut the local territory in half.
Without my marines, the local Madras Army garrison was unlikely to be alive, yet getting arms and ammunition from them, let alone back pay from the Port Admiral, was an exercise in overcoming one obstruction after another. It was almost enough to make me change sides, just to have less paperwork.
After all, I was only here because the Royal Navy didn't quite trust me nor the Marines under my command. Despite joining at the age of 14, I and my company of Marines were still considered colonists, and thus to be sent where we wouldn't be tempted by geography to sympathize with the locals.
No love lost between the official forces of His Majesty and the various East India Company troops in the garrison, I spent the next three days filling out forms to get my marines properly re-equipped and embarked on barges to head upriver. Three days Hyder Ali had to move his defeated troops out of my reach. Three days to set an ambush for us. I was not greatly looking forward to our next meeting.
My new orders were to use the river to cut off and capture or destroy the rebels. They assumed the rebels remained in full flight and just needed to be cut off by a disciplined force. Optimistic assumptions, I thought, but the orders were written in that weaselly way which placed all responsibility for disaster on my shoulders for poor judgment under the circumstances and any credit for success on the Admiral's brilliant plans for us.
The company's red coated Virginian marines were experienced rowers. They were mostly indifferent with a barge pole. Ten score men, scattered across a dozen river flatboats, fighting the eddies of the current, we made quite the sight. I could have requested experienced barge-men to travel with us, but I didn't know how many of them would be informers for the enemy and frankly, I also didn't want to do the paperwork for their recruitment and wages.
That's how we bumbled up the muddy green river, barges all askew, stacked supplies of powder and tentage in danger every time two barges briefly collided. Moving against the current beat walking, something any Marine was always loathe to do, so in that sense, the spectacle likely helped rather than diminished morale.
Give us an enemy in range of our rifles and we'd know what to do.
The river bank varied as we traveled. Some embankments were cut out of the mud, high and inaccessible. Others, the ancient tree roots dug down to the waterline. The unfamiliar sounds of disturbed birds calling out alarms, their wings flapping as they took flight, reminded us we weren't home in the colonies anymore. Along the river, we didn't have to worry much about ants, but the mosquitoes were deadly. Even during the night, the men dripped sweat from constant humidity. The green foliage may have preferred the overly moist air, but I'd exchange every one of the broad-leafed trees here for a good clean Virginian forest.
During the day, the river ensured a periodic supply of streaming sunlight through the jungle canopy, raising the temperature on our skin to offset the coolness of the river water. We attempted to stay away from the occasional large toothy mugger crocodile; a task made more difficult by their penchant for only surfacing their scaly ridged body during an attack. Each barge had at least one rifleman tasked to crocodile watch, but we still lost two marines the first few days of travel.
Poling up the river on the morning of the third day, we came upon a narrow strait, a throat perhaps thirty feet wide, where the water flowed rapidly against us. Trying to pole through rapid narrows would've been bad enough for my inexperienced men, but the trees felled slightly above the surface of the water made passage impossible, blocking us as thoroughly as an iron gate.
The muddy bank here was not conducive to a rapid debarkation. One or two men at a time from each barge could scramble up the riverfront with ropes and then tie them off on the plentiful tree trunks, but the river ran too low compared to the bank to actually beach the barges.
That mostly became a problem when Hyder Ali appeared out of the forest, holding a white flag. "Look behind you, Major!" he shouted above the rapid's roar.
The rest of his men inched muskets out of the forest on both sides of the river. I estimated the felled trees provided them an excellent bridge to position their men across the river.
More disturbing were the headman's crack from the trees dropping across the river downstream from our barges. My heart dropped into my stomach with them. We could move much faster if we turned and ran with the current, but those trees would slow us enough to allow Ali's rebels to fire several musket volleys before we moved out of range.
"Let's talk about this, Sultan Ali." At least talking would delay the otherwise inevitable massacre of my men.
Hyder Ali and I sat on a tree root protruding out of the bank of the river. We discussed the relative merits of our positions. I found his English that of one educated in the highest courts.
He picked at a stone in his shoe, "Your marines possess more powder. Their rifles are more accurate. They will kill many more of my men, were we to battle again."
I conceded the inevitable, "In the event of a conflict, my marines would be firing from a moving platform on the river, while your men possess stable ground." and thus didn't need to worry about sinking or colliding with each other.
"Your rifles nonetheless possess a significant range advantage."
"An advantage useless in these narrow rapids, where any fight will take place at short ranges, even for a musket volley."
"If you were to join our modest rebellion, such an act would avoid much bloodshed on both sides." He didn't insult me by implying I might live out the day as a result.
"I'm sorry, but the honor of my oath to the Commonwealth of Virginia doesn't allow such a solution."
He played his hole card.
Hyder Ali signaled one of his men, who brought me a newspaper from Boston, the New-England Chronicle, printed by Powars and Willis, carried for months across the oceans by a trading vessel.
The Chronicle announced the American Colonies declared independence from Britain.
The quoted Declaration listed the many grievances and justifications for their actions. An accompanying article hinted the French had joined in war on the American side by sending supplies of badly needed gunpowder.
"When in the course of human events . . ." the announcement began, purporting to be the
unanimous declaration of the thirteen States. Signed by Virginians I respected. Lee. Wythe. Harrison. Jefferson.
My heartbeat raced at the words as I digested them. "I will think on your kind offer."
"You have four hours to consider and discuss my offer with your marines. I will signal when the time is up."
In truth, the announcement fired my blood against the British. We'd always been treated as second-class citizens, even though ostensibly equal members of the British Empire, the officers and enlisted from England more equal than most.
Gathering our barges together into earshot, I read the announcement aloud. At first, the silence was palpable, but as I reached the part "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government", some of the men muttered "Hear, hear!"
This served to embolden the rest. By the time I read "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences", the men were loudly agreeing with every listed grievance. At "That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved;" the huzzahs began and didn't diminish until well after I was done reading the list of signers.
We were a company of Virginians, after all. Our loyalty lay primarily to our now Free and Independent State, not to the British Empire which had shipped us halfway around the world to defend the interests of the East Indies Company. The very company favored by the infamous Stamp Tax, ensuring their profits at the expense of our colonial firms.
Well before our truce expired, I concluded a verbal treaty with the founder of the new Sultanate of Mysore, Hyder Ali.
What I enjoyed most about our combined force's subsequent capture of Pandeshwar Fort was walking into the quartermaster's office and placing him under arrest. With my Marine Company's ability to pole our way into the fort and seize key positions around the cannons, barracks and armory before the Madras army could even load their weapons, we concluded the fight without any casualties on our side. The British only suffered one injury, purely out of stupidity, when the Port Admiral's aide drew his sword and had to be forcibly divorced from it. The Port Admiral himself was quite sensible in his rapid surrender.
Hunting Revolutionaries Page 1