Age had not mellowed him. He is, one of his officers declared, a bloody old bad tempered Scotchman. He had no reason to regard Colonel Wellesley with benevolence. He considered that he should have been offered the command of the expedition to Manila which it had seemed likely at one time would be given to the far junior Colonel the Hon. Arthur Wesley; he also thought that he should have been given command of the Nizam of Hyderabads troops which had been assigned instead to the well-connected young Colonel and, in his disappointment, he had unwisely sent General Harris a strong remonstrance. Even so, according to his biographer, he demurred when the offer of superseding Wellesley was made to him. Dont you think, Sir, he said to Harris, it would be but fair to give Wellesley an opportunity of retrieving the misfortune of last night.*20
So Colonel Wellesley was given his chance; and over the next few days, his knee less painful, he made amends for the débâcle of that miserable night. Having driven the Sultans men from the wood, he successfully attacked one of Seringapatams defensive works, as the army settled down to the formalities of a siege. He was not, however, to lead the final assault, for this duty was assigned to General Baird so that he might take revenge for the privations and ignominy of his long captivity. Waving his sword and shouting, Forward, my lads, my brave fellows, follow me and prove yourselves worthy of the name of British soldiers!, he led his men over the walls and into Seringapatam where Tippu Sultan having put to death as oblations various animals, including two buffaloes, a goat, a bullock and an elephant, as well as, so it was said, various women of his court was found dead, shot through the temple.21
6 The Governor of Mysore
1799
I must say that I was the fit person to be selected.
GENERAL BAIRD expected to be placed in command of the captured city in which much treasure had to be guarded and a terrified populace reassured. But he was not considered a suitable officer for the task. He had no talent, no tact, Colonel Wellesley said later, while acknowledging his bravery and the regard in which he was held by his men. He had strong prejudices against the natives, and was peculiarly disqualified from his manner, habits and temper for the management of them. Having been Tippoos prisoner for years, he had a strong feeling of the bad usage which he had received during his captivity. I must say, Wellesley added, that I was the fit person to be selected. I had commanded the Nizams army during the campaign, and had given universal satisfaction. I was liked by the natives.1 General Harris, who had not forgiven Baird for his strong remonstrance over the command of the Nizam of Hyderabads troops, accepted that this was the case.
So, while Baird and his staff were having breakfast in the Sultans palace, news that he was not to be left in command at Seringapatam was broken to him by the Colonel himself who displayed on the occasion just that want of tact of which he accused the bluff Scotsman.
General Baird, he said to him, I am appointed to the command of Seringapatam, and here is the order of General Harris.
Come gentlemen, replied Baird, rising angrily from the table and ignoring Colonel Wellesley, we have no longer any business here.
Oh, pray, said the Colonel. Finish your breakfast.2
Baird stormed from the palace and sat down to write a furious letter to General Harris which elicited another reprimand for once more displaying a total want of discretion and respect. Baird was told to go back to Madras. He stormed out of Seringapatam; but Colonel Wellesley had not yet seen the last of him.3
As it happened it was just as well that Wellesley not Baird was appointed to command in Seringapatam; for the situation demanded talents and insights that the brave, blunt Scotsman did not possess. At first there was much looting and frantic selling of treasures and gold bars stolen from the late Sultans palace before order was restored by the hanging of four men and the flogging of others. Even then, the Colonel thought it would be best if most troops were withdrawn from the town since their presence, and their insatiable taste for plunder, occasioned great terror and confusion among the inhabitants, tending not only to obstruct the settlement of the country but also to destroy the confidence which, he was pleased to say, the people reposed in him.
He had no particular affection for the Indian peoples in general. Indeed, not long after his arrival in Calcutta he had decided that the climate and the natives combined to make India a miserable country to live in, and he came to the conclusion that a man might well deserve some of the wealth that was brought home as a reward for having spent his life here.4 The natives were the most mischievous, deceitful race of people [he had] ever seen or read of. I have not yet met with a Hindoo who had one good quality, he added, and the Mussulmans are worse than they are. Their meekness and mildness do not exist.5 When he was offered two half-caste officers for the 33rd, he replied that they might well be as good as others, but he had been told that they were as black as my hat and he declined to have them.6 And when he heard that the Resident of Hyderabad was openly living with an Indian princess he delivered himself of the outraged opinion that it was a disgrace to the British name and nation. Yet he was well aware how unwise it would be to offend against Indian customs and susceptibilities, and was determined not to tolerate in Mysore any of the dirty things which he had been told, soon after his arrival in India, were done in some of the commands.7 On being informed that the Commander-in-Chief had issued an order for a search of the Sultans zenana for hidden treasure, he strongly disapproved of it and, in carrying out his instructions, took every precaution to render the search as decent and as little injurious to the feelings of the ladies as possible.* In the same way, when the Abbé Dubois, who was making a vain attempt to convert Hindus to Roman Catholicism under the auspices of the Missions Etrangères, asked for the return of two hundred Christian women from the zenana, the Colonel, having satisfied himself that they were not ill-treated there, refused the request on the grounds that it was not proper that anything should be done which can disgrace [the East India Company] in the eyes of the Indian world, or which can in the most remote degree cast a shade upon the dead, or violate the feelings of those who are alive.8
Throughout his administration in Mysore he displayed this concern for Indian feelings. He asked the headquarters in Madras for a chaplain for the British garrison; but the people of Seringapatam were to be left free to practise their religion in their own way, and to be governed by their own laws in separate Muslim and Hindu courts.
While the tenor of Indian life in Seringapatam was allowed to continue undisturbed, there was much for the British Governor to do. There were the Sultans tigers to care for; there was the reconstruction of buildings damaged during the siege and assault; there was the surrounding country to pacify; there were forts to inspect, punitive expeditions to control and punishments to ameliorate. There was advice to be given on the partition of the conquered state of Mysore and on the vexed question of the Marāthās frontier: I recommend it to you not to put the Company upon the Mahratta frontier, he wrote, showing how well he had studied his texts on Indian affairs. It is impossible to expect to alter the nature of the Mahrattas; they will plunder their neighbours, be they ever so powerful It will be better to put one of the powers in dependence upon the Company on the frontier, who, if plundered, are accustomed to it, know how to bear it and retaliate, which we do not.9
While the tenor of Indian life in Seringapatam was allowed to continue undisturbed, there was much for the British Governor to do. There were the Sultans tigers to care for; there was the reconstruction of buildings damaged during the siege and assault; there was the surrounding country to pacify; there were forts to inspect, punitive expeditions to control and punishments to ameliorate. There was advice to be given on the partition of the conquered state of Mysore and on the vexed question of the Marāthās frontier: I recommend it to you not to put the Company upon the Mahratta frontier, he wrote, showing how well he had studied his texts on Indian affairs. It is impossible to expect to alter the nature of the Mahrattas; they will plunder their neighbours, be they ever so powerful It will be better to put one of the powers in dependence upon the Company on the frontier, who, if plundered, are accustomed to it, know how to bear it and retaliate, which we do not.9
The Colonel had personal problems, too. It was an expensive business being Governor. To be sure, he had his share of prize money which amounted to £4,000, a very welcome sum if hardly to be compared with General Harriss £150,000. But his expenses were heavy, and he thought that people probably did not get quite as rich in India as was imagined in England. Indeed, he began to believe that he was ruined certainly he was not yet able to pay off all his debts and he enquired about the prospects of other more profitable appointments.10 His brother, the Governor-General, offered him the opportunity of commanding an expedition against the Dutch in Java, where he would be sure to get more prize-money, if he could safely be spared from Mysore. But he did not think he could be spared from Mysore. Some of his troops were in the field; and who, after all, could replace him? British generals were, for the most part as he had so often said, so confoundedly inefficient. Besides, he was conscious that in Seringapatam he was rendering a service to the public; and that service was not yet completed.11
Moreover, there was trouble to the north of Mysore where the warlord Dhoondiah Waugh, soi-distant King of the Two Worlds, was threatening the peace by assembling an army of warriors in the territory of the Marathas. In the middle of 1800, Colonel Wellesley marched out of Seringapatam with a large force to deal with him. He proved an elusive quarry. Rivers were crossed, forts stormed, forests encountered (though not entered until reconnoitred). But nearly four months had passed before Dhoondiah Waugh was brought to bay, and forced to face his pursuers who were able at last to mount an attack in which Colonel Wellesley, for the first and last time in his life, led a cavalry charge.12
We have now proved (a perfect novelty in India), he reported with pride having sent the enemy scattering away, that we can hunt down the lightest footed and most rapid armies as we can destroy heavy troops and storm strong fortifications.13
Soon there came an opportunity for the Colonel to demonstrate his prowess on a more prominent stage. The Governor-General, deeply concerned by the French threat, had been considering ways of dealing with it. Bonaparte, by now First Consul, had left his army in Egypt and on 14 June had overwhelmed the Austrians at Marengo. A British force was to be assembled in Ceylon with a view to an attack on the French in Egypt; and, despite the great trouble that would be caused in consequence among the general officers in India, Colonel Wellesley was to lead it. I employ you because I rely on your good sense, discretion, activity, and spirit, his brother told him, and I cannot find all those qualities united in any other officer in India.14 Besides, in his brothers opinion, Arthur should have been promoted long ago, and the fact that, now thirty years of age, and despite his distinguished services, he was still a colonel, reflected badly upon himself as Governor-General, just as the British Governments fobbing him off with a mere Irish marquessate had done. Colonel Wellesleys being not only unnoticed but his promotion protracted so studiously, the Marquess had written earlier, had led to every Intriguer in India believing it to be delayed for the express purpose of thwarting me.15
Seemingly undisturbed by the thought that older and more experienced generals in Madras and Calcutta would not take at all kindly to his appointment, Colonel Wellesley sailed for Trincomalee in Ceylon towards the end of 1800, leaving behind in Seringapatam, for the guidance of his successor, detailed notes on all manner of subjects from the administration of Mysore to the relevant features of its topography.
By the time Colonel Wellesley landed in Trincomalee, the proposal for an assault on French troops in Egypt by way of the Red Sea had been superseded by plans for an attack upon the French island of Mauritius. But differences with the naval Commander-in-Chief in the area led to the abandonment of Mauritius as an object of attack and its replacement by Java. Plans for an attack on the Dutch were, however, also abandoned when definite orders came from England for the implementation of the original operation, a landing on the southern Egyptian coast in the region of Suez and a march from there against the French in Lower Egypt.16
Colonel Wellesley welcomed the opportunity to command such an expedition and was chagrined to learn that the Governor-General had been overborne by the army chiefs who had impressed upon him the impropriety of appointing indeed the outrage to military tradition which would be occasioned by appointing so junior an officer to the command over the heads of others so senior to him in rank and so much more seasoned by experience. The command was to be entrusted instead to General Baird.
Wellesley, who was already on his way to Egypt by way of Bombay, was furious on receipt of the new orders which placed him second-in-command and determined that, whatever orders he was subsequently to receive, he would endeavour to interpret them in such a way that they would not deny him this opportunity of advancing his career. The apologetic tone of his brothers letter breaking the news and offering him the alternative of returning to Seringapatam did nothing to mollify him.17 He wrote to Calcutta to express his indignation, angrily and unreasonably refusing to accept his brothers reasons for what he took to be his degradation in the eyes of the world. He had not, he wrote, been informed of the possibility that he would be superseded. It was all very well for his brother to plead that he could not now employ him in the chief command of so large a force which was now to proceed to Egypt without violating every rule of the service. How could the Governor-General think that General Baird would ever allow him to be of the smallest service to him? He stood publicly convicted of incapacity to do more than equip a force to be led by others.18
At first he decided he would return to Mysore rather than serve under Baird; but then he learned that Sir Ralph Abercromby had landed at Abū Qir Bay with some 15,000 men and had advanced on Alexandria. Wellesley, therefore, determined to leave Bombay immediately for the Red Sea, although General Baird had not yet arrived, since delay would entail the loss of the opportunity of cooperating with Abercromby in a pincer movement which would drive the French from Egypt. As soon as Baird appeared he would, of course, hand over the command to him, although, as he reported to the Governor-Generals office, this would much annoy him as his former letters would surely have shown. However, he had never had much value for the public spirit of any man who does not sacrifice his private views and feelings, when it is necessary. It was, therefore, his laudable and highly disagreeable intention to obey his brothers instructions.19