Tippoo Sultaun: A tale of the Mysore war

by Meadows Taylor

Already prepared for active service, Herbert’s regiment was one of the first which sailed again from the island: its complete equipment, and the health and spirit of the officers and men, led the Government to place every dependence on its exertions in the coming arduous contest. It was followed on the same day by others; and three or four days of delightful sailing down the beautiful coast brought the armament to its desired haven, and the troops landed amidst the cheers and hearty welcome of their future brethren in arms.

A very few days served to make preparations for the campaign: bullocks and stores had already been collected, with a few elephants to assist the guns in their ascent of the passes; and, after the plans for the campaign had been determined by the leaders—Mathews, Macleod, Humberstone, and Shaw—the army moved from its camp toward its destination.

There was necessarily much of romance in the early campaigns in India: the country was unknown, and imagination peopled it with warlike races far different from the peaceable inhabitants of the coasts—men in whom the pride of possession, of high rank, of wealth, of fierce bigotry and hatred of the Christians, uniting, made them no less the objects of curiosity, than worthy enemies of the gallant bands which sought them in war. Those who were new to the country, and who, in the close atmosphere and thick jungles of the coast, saw little to realise their dreams of eastern beauty, looked to the wall of mountains spread out before them, with the utmost ardour of impatience to surmount them. Beyond them, they should see the splendour of Asiatic pomp, the palaces, the gardens, the luxuries of which they had heard; beyond them, they should meet the foes they sought in the fair field; there, there was not only honour to be won, but riches—wealth unbounded, the sack of towns, the spoil of treasuries, which, if they might believe the reports diligently circulated throughout the army, only waited their coming to fall into their possession; above all, they burned to revenge the defeat and destruction of Bailie’s detachment in the west, which was vaunted of by their enemies, and to retrieve the dishonour with which that defeat had tarnished the hitherto unsullied reputation of the British.

The spies brought them word that the passes were ill-defended, that the rich city of Bednore, with its surrounding territory, was unprotected, that its governor, an officer of Tippoo’s, and a forcibly-converted Hindoo, sought earnestly an opportunity to revenge his own dishonour, in surrendering this the key of his master’s dominions into the hands of his enemies. It is no wonder then, that, urged on by cupidity, and inflamed by an ardent zeal to carry the instructions he had received into effect, the commander, Mathews, looked to the realisation of his hopes with a certainty which shut out the necessity of securing himself against reverses, and hurried blindly on to what at first looked so brightly, but which soon clouded over, and led to the miserable fate of many.

It was a subject of painful anxiety to Herbert and his companions, so long as the destination of their regiment was unknown; for the army had to separate—part of it to reduce the forts and hold the country below the passes (a service which none of them liked in anticipation), and the other to press on through the open country to Bednore, the present object of their most ardent hopes. The strong fort of Honoor, however, which lay not far from their place of rendezvous, could not be passed; and to try the temper of the troops, and to strike terror into the country, it was assaulted and carried by storm, with the spirit of men whom no common danger could appal, and who, in this their first enterprise, showed that they had only to be led with determination in order to perform prodigies of valour. Nor was there any check given to their rapacity; the place was plundered, and thus their appetites were whetted both with blood and spoil for their ensuing service.

Now, indeed, shone out the true spirit of many an one whom Herbert and his companions had even respected hitherto; and they saw rapacity and lust possessing them, to the extinction of every moral feeling; while unbridled revelry, habitual disregard of temperance, and indulgence in excesses, hurried many to the grave whom even the bullet and the sword spared. They were thankful to be thus knit in those bonds of friendship which the conduct of their associates only drew the closer. They lived in the same tents, marched together, fought together, and found that many of their duties were lighter, and their marches and watches the shorter, for the companionship they had made for themselves.

The commander, Mathews, a man of deep religious feeling, quite amounting to superstition, had early remarked the appearance of Philip Dalton; his high bearing, his steady conduct, the grave expression of his face, impressed him with a sense of his assimilation to himself in thought; and the excellent appearance of his men, and his attention to their comforts, with a high estimate of him as a soldier. Nor did Herbert escape his observation, nor the evident friendship which existed between them. On inquiry he found that both bore the highest character, though their habits of exclusiveness and hauteur were sneered at; yet, perceiving the cause, they rose the higher in his opinion on that account. For some time he weighed between the two; but gradually leaning to the side of Dalton, he at last determined to offer to him the post of aide-de-camp and secretary, which he accepted; and this, though productive of temporary separations between the friends, still gave them ample opportunities of association.

A few days after the storm and capture of Honoor, in which Herbert’s regiment had borne a conspicuous part, and he, as commander of the light company, had been noticed by the general in orders, the army reached the foot of the pass, above which the fort of Hussainghurry reared its head, and from which it took its name. Of the defences of the pass all were in fact ignorant, but the native spies had represented them as weak and easily to be surmounted, and they were implicitly believed. A few straggling parties of the enemy had been met with during the day, and driven up the pass, without any prisoners having been made from whom an idea of the opposition to be encountered could be gained or extorted. The way, however, lay before them; the army was in the highest spirits; and, though the only road discernible was a rugged path, almost perpendicular, up the side of the immense mountain, yet to them there was nought to be dreaded—the morrow would see them on the head of the ascent, breathing a purer air, with the broad plains of India before them, to march whither they listed.

It was night ere the army was safely encamped at the foot of the pass; the regiments had taken up their ground in the order they were to ascend, and Herbert’s company was in the van; upon it would rest, if not the fate of the day, at least the brunt of the ascent. Philip Dalton sought him after his duties were over, the final orders had been given, and the various officers had been warned for the performance of their several parts in the coming struggle.

‘I am afraid you will have hot work to-morrow, Herbert,’ he said, as he entered his little tent, where sat his friend writing very earnestly. ‘I tried all I could to get the regiment another place, or at least to have the force march right in front, but it could not be done. Somehow or other the general had more than ordinary confidence in the light company of the —th, and was pleased to express a very flattering opinion of my friend; so—’