Military History: Lectures Delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge

by Sir J. W. Fortescue

In Madras likewise the British officials had lost their heads. They were threatened by two dangerous enemies, the Marathas, and Hyder Ali, a Mohammedan soldier who by sheer military genius had acquired the sovereignty of Mysore, and from that base was threatening the territory alike of the Marathas, the Nizam, and the British in southern India. The British might have played off their rivals against each other, but they contrived instead to make enemies of both; and Hyder Ali was a formidable opponent. Happily there was a British officer, Colonel Joseph Smith, who was more than his equal, and before whom Hyder trembled in the field. But the Council of Madras displaced Smith to make room for a creature of their own; and the consequence was that in 1769 Hyder Ali advanced to within five miles of Madras itself, and forced the Council to an humiliating peace. Even so, however, though they obtained the mercy, they did not obtain the forgiveness of the ruler of Mysore.

In 1773 the British Parliament passed an Act which, among other reforms, made the Governor of Bengal the Governor-General of all three provinces, but most foolishly omitted to make him supreme in his own Council, leaving him instead at the mercy of the majority. Warren Hastings was the first Governor-General, and well for us it is that he was so; for no smaller man would have sufficed to preserve our dominion in India against the folly and malignity of the adverse faction in his Council. He made of his own will but one war, against the predatory Rohillas, whom he compelled to pay due obedience to their suzerain the Nawab of Oudh. This action was afterwards distorted by the malignity of his enemies into a crime. But the Government of Bombay, like those of Madras and Bengal, had through greed of territory entangled itself in a war with the Marathas; and Hastings, while utterly disapproving its policy, found it imperative to send assistance. Moreover, he had the courage to order the reinforcements to march overland from the frontier of Oudh to Bombay, a thing which hitherto had never been dreamed of; and indeed the passage of six battalions of Sepoys across Hindostan over a vast extent of territory which no Englishman knew and where no one could say whether they would be welcomed or fired upon, is a sufficiently striking episode. Unfortunately the commander allowed himself to be tempted to do a little fighting for some petty potentates on the way; and this delay caused Hastings's heroic determination to be in great measure fruitless. The Bombay Government too managed its military affairs so ill that no operations of their designing could prosper; and finally it was necessary to patch up a hasty and discreditable peace with the Marathas in the north-west in view of a far more formidable danger elsewhere.

For in 1778, as will be remembered, the French declared war upon us in consequence of our disasters in America; and in 1780 Hyder Ali, the southern Marathas and the Nizam formed a confederacy to expel the British from India. In June of that year Hyder descended from Mysore upon Madras with ninety thousand men, including four hundred French, and fifteen thousand Sepoys trained and disciplined after the European manner. The wretched Council of Madras had nothing ready, neither men, nor stores, nor supplies; and unfortunately Hector Munro of Buxar, who held the command of such troops as there were, managed his affairs badly and divided his force. One detachment of three thousand men was cut to pieces; and matters were so serious that Hastings sent Sir Eyre Coote down to take command in the Carnatic, with every soldier that could be spared from Bengal. A superior French fleet was on the coast, and Hyder conceived the bold notion of capturing or destroying all supplies that Coote might use ashore, while the French cut off all that might arrive by sea. Happily the French admiral left the coast in the nick of time to save Coote, who averted all immediate danger by the victory of Porto Novo; but in the campaign that followed the British general was so much hampered by Hyder's light troops that he could hardly keep the field from want of transport and supplies. Another mishap then occurred; and a detachment of a thousand British troops was surprised and cut to pieces; while a succession of naval actions left the French fleet practically supreme on the coast. Hyder Ali died early in 1782, and Eyre Coote soon followed him, but Hyder's son Tippoo was an abler man than Coote's successor. In 1783 the crisis came. A detachment of a thousand men from Bombay, which had been sent to make a diversion on the west side of Mysore, was cut off and captured by Tippoo; and a month later a formidable French force landed at Cuddalore (Gadalur) on the east coast, and fought a severe though indecisive action against the British under General Stuart. Three days later the French squadron on the coast under Admiral Suffren drove off the British ships and landed yet more reinforcements, which gave them a decided superiority over the British. The fate of British supremacy in India hung in the balance for seven anxious days, when in the nick of time news came that peace had been concluded between France and England in Europe. So nearly were all the victories of Lawrence, Clive and Eyre Coote neutralised by incompetent administration at Bombay and Madras. The one able man among Indian officials, Warren Hastings, went home to be shamefully persecuted under the form of a judicial trial by a clique of vindictive politicians. They succeeded in ruining him financially by sheer blackguardly cunning; but they could not damage his great name, which will never be forgotten in India while British rule endures.

Parliament now amended the government of India by giving the Governor-General absolute and supreme power, and making the chief officials responsible to Parliament instead of to the Company. These were good and useful reforms; but extreme anxiety to check the levying of war for purposes of gain led English statesmen to enact further that the Governor-General should not make war at all except for defence, thus leaving to his enemies practically the undisputed power of taking the initiative in hostilities. Lord Cornwallis, a good soldier, was the first Governor-General under the new system; and Tippoo Sahib at once took advantage of it to make a raid into the Carnatic. Cornwallis accordingly took the field against him in 1791, and invaded Mysore from the east, while a detachment from Bombay invaded it from the west. The enterprise was most difficult, for it was certain that, as soon as the British arrived on the table-land of Mysore, Tippoo would draw a ring of devastation about them, destroying all food and forage. With enormous difficulty Cornwallis reached Seringapatam, Tippoo's capital city, and laid siege to it; but, strive as he would, he could not provide transport for more than twenty days' supplies, and he could only bring forward his ammunition by paying the women and boys among the followers to carry each a cannon-shot or two. Before he reached the city nearly all of his animals were dead, and not only his guns but all the public conveyances of the army were dragged by the troops. Ultimately he was obliged to destroy the whole of his siege-train and retreat, his camp being poisoned by the bodies of starved followers and cattle, and his troops weakened by want of food. He must not be blamed. It is not easy to take an army, even without a mass of followers, for a hundred miles through a country where there is neither food nor forage.

In the next year, 1792, Cornwallis decided to try again, having meanwhile captured several strong forts which would serve him as advanced bases and magazines. The whole force from Bengal and Bombay exceeded thirty thousand men; and, as he advanced, Tippoo as usual burned the whole country on his line of march. But the previous year's operations had given Cornwallis secure bases within little more than fifty miles of Seringapatam; and four marches sufficed to bring his force before the walls. Even so, if Tippoo had left a garrison in the capital and used the rest of his force to harass the British communications from end to end, Cornwallis would have had much ado to keep his army in sufficient strength before the walls; but Tippoo was proud of his disciplined infantry and of his fortifications, and preferred to meet the British with their weapons instead of with his own. The result was that Cornwallis stormed Seringapatam out of hand within forty-eight hours, and compelled Tippoo to sign a treaty which deprived him of half of his territory and resources.

Now came the war of the French Revolution, a war above all of French intrigues with every people, nation and language that might bear England a grudge. During the ten years which followed the peace of 1783 there had been little peril to the British in Hindostan owing to the gathering strength of the Sikhs, who in 1785 had mastered the whole of the eastern Punjab from the Jhelum to the Sutlej, where they formed at once a barrier against any invasion from the passes on the north-west, and a dam against the rising flood of the Marathas from the south. The Marathas had by this time thrown off the authority of the Peshwa, and broken up into five practically independent states; and the most powerful of their chiefs, Scindia of Gwalior, had reoccupied Delhi and Agra and had actually called upon the East India Company to pay tribute for Bengal to him, as the holder of the old Mogul capital. A contest between British and Marathas for the mastery of India was therefore certain, sooner or later; but meanwhile the various members of the late confederacy fought indiscriminately against each other. The whole country was overrun with mercenary bands, eager to sell themselves to the highest bidder; and adventurers of all nations were to be found among them, not the least remarkable of such being an Irish sailor, who became for a time a reigning prince with an army of ten thousand men. Luckily for us these adventurers prevailed upon many of the chiefs to train their armies after the European model, which was a fatal error for them; for, choosing to fight the British with their own weapons, they were bound to deliver themselves into their enemies' hands.

Cornwallis left India in 1793, and was succeeded by Sir John Shore. This well-meaning but feeble gentleman allowed both the Marathas and Tippoo to increase their strength at the expense of the Nizam, the ally of the British, and by his weakness encouraged Tippoo to cultivate relations with the French. In 1798 he was succeeded by a very different kind of man, Lord Mornington, better known as Marquess Wellesley, who speedily made up his mind that the anarchy outside the British dominions must cease, and that to this end British authority must become paramount in India. Tippoo Sahib, being the open ally of the French, was the first enemy to be attacked; and the command of the expedition was entrusted to General Harris with Colonel Arthur Wellesley, Mornington's younger brother, for one of his brigadiers. Harris, knowing Tippoo's trick of devastating his country before an invading army, had to think out some method of neutralising it, for his difficulties of transport and supply were frightful. In all he had 120,000 bullocks to draw supplies and stores for his army, and those bullocks must be fed, or the campaign would go for nothing. To protect them he was obliged to advance in a hollow square, two miles broad and seven miles deep, an extremely cumbersome formation; and yet his only resource was to make feints of an advance in one direction so that Tippoo should destroy the country in that quarter, and then swerve away to a district which Tippoo had spared. This device was successful. By much zig-zagging Harris reached Seringapatam in thirty-two days without mishap, and after a month's siege stormed the city for the last time. Tippoo was killed; Tanjore and the Carnatic were annexed to the British dominions; and Mysore was restored to the Hindu dynasty which had formerly ruled it. Arthur Wellesley was meanwhile left in civil and military command of the province, and during the next two years did excellent service in restoring order in southern India. In particular he took note of the superiority, for purpose of transport, of the Mysore bullocks, which can trot six miles an hour.

Mornington's next step was to endeavour to restore the authority of the Peshwa, so as to keep the Maratha chiefs from fighting with their neighbours; but two of those chiefs, Scindia and Holkar, evaded all British overtures; and accordingly an army under General Gerard Lake was sent against Scindia's dominions in the north, and another under General Arthur Wellesley against those in the south. Scindia had a vast number of guns cast under European direction, and twenty thousand infantry trained by European officers; but Wellesley had thought out the means of beating him whether he should adopt European tactics or the old guerilla warfare—always worrying and never fighting—which was traditional with the Marathas. He would make his campaign in the rainy season, and always attack the enemy when on the march and not when in position, for the Maratha chiefs had the gift of choosing very strong positions. This he could ensure by organising his transport, his supply-service and his pontoon-train to perfection. The rivers being in flood he could always cross them with his pontoons, whereas the Marathas would be stopped by them, so that he could catch his enemy wherever he liked. Moreover, since the Marathas lived on the country, whereas he carried his food with him, he could always wait until hunger drove them from any position they might have occupied, and then follow them up. This plan seems very simple when you know it, but it needs a great general to think out the details of a campaign in this way. Matters did not turn out exactly as Wellesley had arranged; but he beat the Marathas in a first desperate action at Assaye, where only his own skill and coolness in the presence of tremendous odds saved the day; and in a second action at Argaum, which victory being crowned by the storm of the almost inaccessible fortress of Gawilghur crushed the Maratha power in the south. In the north Lake likewise stormed Aligarh, captured Agra, won one victory at Delhi, and then by a second most desperate action at Laswari broke the might of Scindia in the north. With Holkar however, who pursued guerilla tactics, Lake was less successful. Holkar almost annihilated one of his detachments under Colonel Monson, though this same Monson shortly afterwards beat him handsomely at Deig. Lake himself stormed Deig a little later, but failed with heavy loss in four several assaults upon Bhurtpore, and was obliged to abandon the attempt and take up the chase of Holkar, whom he hunted almost to the Indus before he brought him to terms after three years of hard warfare. Peace left the British in possession of Delhi and Agra with the contiguous tracts on both sides of the Jumna, the whole of the country between the Jumna and the Ganges, and the province of Cuttack, or in other words with a continuous length of territory from Bengal north and westward to the Upper Jumna, and southward to the Presidency of Madras. Mornington further instituted the principle that native states under British influence should keep no regular troops but those hired from the Anglo-Indian Government, should refer all disputes with their neighbours to British arbitration, and should enter into no negotiations with foreign powers.

Hereby Mornington made himself the re-founder, if the phrase may be used, of our British Empire in the East; but his wars had been costly, and his temper was too imperious to commend itself either to the Directors of the East India Company or to the Board of Control which represented the Imperial Governments authority in India. He was therefore recalled, and was succeeded first by Lord Cornwallis—who died almost immediately—and then for a time by Sir George Barlow, the senior member of the Council.