His dread of the English was vented daily in his Durbar, in compositions the most abominable that his fertile brain could invent. Besides his pretended supernatural revelations, letters were read, purporting to be from Delhi, from Calcutta, from Lucknow, describing the atrocious conduct of the English, the forced conversion of Mahommedans to Christianity, the violation of females of rank by the soldiery, the plunder and sack of towns given up to rapine; and after reading them, Tippoo would give vent to frantic prayers that judgment might come upon them. In this, however, as in many other instances, he overreached the mark he aimed at. A few of the flatterers around him, at every succeeding story, swore to spread it abroad; and while they applauded, pretended to feel excitement; but they ridiculed them in secret, and they were soon listened to, except by the most bigoted, with contempt.
Thus passed the whole of 1798, a year of anxious suspense to the British in India, when their power rested in a balance which a hair might have turned. During this period the mind of Tippoo presents a humiliating spectacle; now raving for conquest, now sunk in despair and dread at the slow but certain preparations of the English—at times prosecuting, with all the bigotry and savageness of his nature, conversions of the Hindoos in various parts of his dominions, and at others bowing down in slavish obedience to the dictates of the Brahmins, and offering up in the temples of the fort sacrifices in secret for the discomfiture of his enemies; while in the retired apartments of the palace magical rites were held—abominable orgies, at which he himself assisted, to relate which as we have heard them told, would be to defile our pages with obscenities too gross to be repeated.
In the midst of this mental darkness there would break out gleams of kindly feeling towards his sons, his officers, oftentimes to a sick servant; and upon the lady Fureeda he lavished such love as his heart, cold by nature, possessed, and whom his secret sufferings, absolute prostration of intellect at times when fresh disastrous news reached him, would inspire with a compassion she would fain have expressed in words, in those consolings which to a fond and wounded spirit are acceptable and bearable only from a woman.
There was another on whom his memory rested, and whom he besought, now by threats, now by immense rewards, to join his cause—it was Herbert Compton. His existence was known only to Jaffar and the Sultaun; the latter had, during the lapse of years and while the repairs of his fort proceeded, offered him rank, power, women, all that his imagination could suggest to dazzle a young man, but in vain; he had threatened him with death, but this was equally vain. Herbert had looked on death too long to fear it; and despite of the climate, the weary life he led had grown almost insupportable, and he saw no relief from it; death would have been welcome to him, but he was suffered to live on. Even the visits of Jaffar were events which, however trying to him at the time, and exciting to one so secluded, were yet looked back upon with pleasure from the very thought they created. Sometimes the Sultaun would relent towards him, and seem on the point of releasing him and others; but the shame of the act, the indignant remonstrance that he dreaded from the British, and the advice of Jaffar himself, deterred him. Thus the poor fellow lingered on almost without hope or fear, and in the end, amidst other more stirring and anxious matters, his existence was almost forgotten.
How often too would Tippoo’s thoughts revert to Kasim Ali, his conduct to whom, in spite of the treachery denounced by Jaffar, would sometimes rise up in judgment against his conscience. To do him justice, however, it should be mentioned that, when the emissaries of Jaffar returned foiled and with Kasim’s message, he did make inquiries in the bazaars relative to the money which Jaffar had told him Kasim Ali had remitted to Hyderabad; and he found all his statements so completely established, that they confirmed in his mind at the time the conviction that Kasim had been false to him, and that his falsehood had been long meditated, and at last successfully executed. But this wore off at length; and for one so esteemed, nay loved, there remained a painful impression that injustice had been done; to say the truth, when all around him were suspected, the flatterers and courtiers from their habitual subserviency, and his elder and more trusted officers from their blunt advice and open condemnation of many of his schemes and proceedings, he often longed for the presence of the young Patél, who would in his own person have united the qualities he most needed—sincere affection, joined to a mild demeanour and an honest heart.
Early in 1799 it was impossible to disguise from himself that the time had come when he should either make resistance against the English invasion—for his attack upon Madras had long been abandoned as impracticable even by the French—or he should march forth at the head of his army and oppose them. He determined on the latter course; and leaving his trusty commanders, Syud Sahib and Poornea, in charge of the Fort, he marched, on a day when his astrologers and his own calculations of lucky and unlucky days promised an uninterrupted career of prosperity and victory, to meet the Bombay army, which was approaching through Coorg, at the head of fifty thousand men, the flower of his troops. Once in the field, his ancient vigour and courage revived; his army was in the highest efficiency; the Bombay force he knew could not be a fifth of his own; and by selecting his own ground, which he should be enabled to do, he might practise the same manœuvre as he had done at Perambaukum with Baillie, and, by drawing them into an ambuscade, destroy them. His low estimation, however, of the English, was fated to be corrected; and though at Sedaseer, where he met the Bombay army, he led in person several desperate charges upon the British, and though under his eye his troops fought well, and were driven back with loss, only to advance again and again in a series of desperate onsets for five hours, yet he was defeated. Losing all presence of mind and confidence in his army, although there was every chance of success had he persevered in his attacks on Lieut.-General Stuart’s corps, he retreated from the scene of action upon the capital, to draw from thence fresh troops with which he might oppose the march of the grand army from the East.
And now began that gloomy thought for the future, that utter despair of his life which continued to the last, chequered only by fits of the wildest excitement, by blind reliance at times upon vain rites and ceremonies, and forced hilarity, which, the effect of despair, was even more fearful to behold. The great drama of his fate was rapidly drawing to a close—a gorgeous spectacle, with mighty men and armies for actors, and the people of India for spectators.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
The morning of the twenty-seventh of March broke with unclouded splendour; the army of the Sultaun were expecting their enemies with impatience, and the result was looked to with confidence. Tippoo had been urged by Chapuis to take up a position upon the Madoor, in the same pass as that where Kasim Ali had been attacked; but the Frenchmen had lost very considerably the influence they possessed since the news of their defeat in Egypt, and the discomfiture of Raymond at Hyderabad, and he determined to pursue the bent of his own inclination, both as to the ground he should select and the disposition of his troops. Since daylight he had been on horseback, indefatigable in marshalling his army. The ground he had selected was commanding, and covered the road. Malvilly, he knew, was the destination of the English on that day; and as it was one marked by a particularly auspicious conjunction of the planets, he determined on trying the result of a general action. When a few attempted to dissuade him that morning from opposing the English, lest by a defeat he should dispirit his troops and unfit them for the siege which all felt sure must follow, he flew into a violent passion.