‘To hell with the Feringhees!—cut them down!—what impiety is this? What insult to the Sultaun?’ And many drew their swords and raised them on high to strike. The Frenchmen were in imminent peril, but they were firm.
It was a grand and striking scene—that excited crowd—those fierce gestures—gleaming weapons—and those hoarse shouts and threats. In the centre, the group on which all eyes were fixed, the bare-headed Sultaun, and those few needy adventurers, reckless and unprincipled, who had gained a mastery over one whose smallest gesture would have caused their instant annihilation.
‘Peace!’ he cried, raising his arm; ‘it is our will—it is decreed.’ The multitude was hushed, but many a muttered threat was spoken, many a prayer for the dire omen to be averted, many an expression of pity for the position of one whom all feared and many even venerated.
And truly, to see that degradation done to one who knew not its meaning, who, bareheaded before his people, and under a fierce sun, stood and looked on at the destruction of the emblems of his power—might have caused pity for his condition; but it did not in those who stood around him; the act sealed their own power—they had no thought of pity.
As the last fragments burned to ashes in the blaze of the fire, Chapuis lowered the spear on which was the cap, and presented it to the monarch. ‘Wear it!’ he said, ‘consecrated as it is in the smoke of those emblems which are destroyed for ever; wear it—an earnest of the victories thou wilt gain.’
The Sultaun put it on. Chapuis seized a tri-coloured flag which an officer bore near him, and waved it above his head. It was the signal agreed on: the artillerymen were at their posts on the ramparts, and the roar of two thousand and three hundred cannon proclaimed that Tippoo, the Light of the Faith, the Lion of Islam, the Sultaun of Mysore, was now citizen Tippoo of the French Republic, one and indivisible.
Then followed the coarse salutations of the French soldiery, who, excited by liquor and by the event, rushed around the Sultaun, and seized his hand, shaking it in rude familiarity; his cup of humiliation was full, and he returned to his palace in bitter mortification and anger. There were many of his officers who, deeply touched by the mockery of the exhibition, remonstrated with him, and advised him to revoke the act by a solemn scene in the mosque, attended by all his army and the high religious functionaries. But it was impossible to arouse him to the act—to shake off the domination to which he had subjected himself; and while it was whispered abroad that the Sultaun had become a Feringhee, those who wished well to his cause saw that he had with his own hands struck a vital blow at its interests.
It was happy for the British cause in India that a nobleman was appointed to the responsible station of Governor-General, who, from the moment he undertook the office, and during his passage out to India, bent his whole mind to the complete investigation of the politics of the country he came to govern. He was happy in having those with him who could afford him an insight into the designs and wishes of the native princes, and there is no doubt that Lord Mornington resolved to act upon many suggestions he received even before he arrived. To the intrigues of the Sultaun his notice had been particularly attracted, and the designs of the French were too obvious to be unnoticed for a moment. By a chain of events, which are points of history, the Sultaun’s intrigues with the French Government of the Mauritius became known; the proclamations of its governor were received at Calcutta, and though doubted at first, from the continued expressions of friendship made by the Sultaun, yet their authenticity was established beyond a doubt by subsequent inquiries.
After the scene in the fort which we have mentioned, Tippoo abandoned himself to the councils of his French officers. He was admitted by them, as a proof of brotherhood, to a participation in the secrets of the correspondence held between Chapuis, Raymond, and Perron. Buonaparte was successful in Egypt, and it was debated only when the time should be fixed for the army of Tippoo to be set in motion and to overwhelm Madras. The army itself was full of confidence, and great attention had been paid to its discipline by the French; all branches were more perfectly efficient than they had ever been. The Sultaun had now no apprehension about the fort, for he had been surrounding it with another wall and ditch, and the gates had been strengthened by outworks. There never was a time when all his prospects were so bright, when the political condition of India suggested movement—when all the native princes, by one exertion on his part, might be incited to make common cause against the English, and when, by the proposed expedition against Manilla, the British forces would be much reduced, both at Madras and in Bengal. It was at this hazardous moment that the genius of Lord Mornington, guided by the sound views of the political agents at the various courts, decided upon the line of action to be pursued. The French interest in India was to be annihilated at all hazards; therefore, after a preparatory treaty with the Nizam, an English force, by rapid marches, arrived at Hyderabad, and joining the subsidiary force there, surrounded the French camp, which was found to be in a state of previous mutiny against its officers. The whole submitted; and a blow, moral as well as physical, was struck against the French influence, from which it never recovered.
The effect of this news at Seringaptam may be imagined; and when it was followed up by that of the glorious victory of Nelson at the mouth of the Nile, the Sultaun’s spirit fell. It was in vain that he wrote apparently sincere letters to the Governor-General, and at the same moment dispatched camel-loads of treasure to Sindia to urge him to move southwards; the one estimated the true worth of the correspondence, and the wily Mahratta, though he took the money, yet stirred not a foot; he had too much at stake to be led into a quarrel of which he could not see any probable termination. Tippoo’s ambassadors at the courts of Sindia and Holkar, of the Peshwa, of the Rajah of Berar, all wrote word that these potentates would join the cause; but their letters were cold and wary, and the Sultaun discovered too late that he must abide the brunt of the blow himself.