Sharpe’s Tiger: The Siege of Seringapatam, 1799

‘So when will you free Mrs Bickerstaff of Sharpe?’ Morris asked, buckling his sword belt.

‘Tonight, sir. With your help. You’ll be back here by midnight, I dare say?’

‘I might.’

‘If you are, sir, we’ll do him. Tonight, sir.’

Morris clapped the cocked hat on his head, made sure his purse was in his coat-tail pocket and ducked under the muslin. ‘Carry on, Sergeant,’ he called back.

‘Sir!’ Hakeswill stood to attention for a full ten seconds after the Captain was gone, and then, with a sly grin twitching on his lumpy face, followed Morris into the night.

Nineteen miles to the south lay a temple. It was an ancient place, deep in the country, one of the many Hindu shrines where the country folk came on high days and holidays to do honour to their gods and to pray for a timely monsoon, for good crops and for the absence of warlords. For the rest of the year the temple lay abandoned, its gods and altars and richly carved spires home to scorpions, snakes and monkeys.

The temple was surrounded by a wall through which one gate led, though the wall was not high and the gate was never shut. Villagers left small offerings of leaves, flowers and food in niches of the gateposts, and sometimes they would go into the temple itself, cross the courtyard and climb to the inner shrine where they would place their small gifts beneath the image of a god, but at night, when the Indian sky lay black over a heat-exhausted land, no one would ever dream of disturbing the gods.

But this night, the night after battle, a man entered the temple. He was tall and thin, with white hair and a harsh, suntanned face. He was over sixty years old, but his back was still straight and he moved with the ease of a much younger man. Like many Europeans who had lived a long time in India he was prone to bouts of debilitating fever, but otherwise he was in sterling health, and Colonel Hector McCandless ascribed that good health to his religion and to a regimen that abjured alcohol, tobacco and meat. His religion was Calvinism for Hector McCandless had grown up in Scotland and the godly lessons that had been whipped into his young, earnest soul had never been forgotten. He was an honest man, a tough man, and a wise one.

His soul was old in experience, but even so it was offended by the idols that reflected the small light of the lantern he had lit once he was through the temple’s ever open gate. He had lived in India for over sixteen years now and he was more accustomed to these heathen shrines than to the kirks of his childhood, but still, whenever he saw these strange gods with their multiplicity of arms, their elephant heads, their grotesquely coloured faces and their cobra-hooded masks, he felt a stab of disapproval. He never let that disapproval show, for that would have imperilled his duty, and McCandless was a man who believed that duty was a master second only to God.

He wore the red coat and the tartan kilt of the King’s Scotch Brigade, a Highland regiment that had not seen McCandless’s stern features for sixteen years. He had served with the brigade for over thirty years, but lack of funds had obstructed his promotion and so, with his Colonel’s blessing, he had accepted a job with the army of the East India Company which governed those parts of India that were under British rule. In his time he had commanded battalions of sepoys, but McCandless’s first love was surveying. He had mapped the Carnatic coast, he had charted the Sundarbans of the Hoogli, and he had once ridden the length and breadth of Mysore, and while he had been so engaged he had learned a half-dozen Indian languages and met a score of princes, rajahs and nawabs. Few men understood India as McCandless did, which was why the Company had promoted him to Colonel and attached him to the British army as its chief of intelligence. It was McCandless’s task to advise General Harris of the enemy’s strength and dispositions, and, in particular, to discover just what defences waited for the allied armies when they reached Seringapatam.

It was his search for that particular answer that had brought Colonel McCandless to this ancient temple. He had surveyed the temple seven years before, when Lord Cornwallis’s army had marched against Mysore, and back then McCandless had admired the extraordinary carvings that covered every inch of the temple’s walls. The Scotsman’s religion had been offended by so much decoration, but he was too honest a man to deny that the old stoneworkers had been marvellous craftsmen, for the sculpture here was as fine, if not finer, than anything produced in medieval Europe. The wan yellow light of his lantern washed across caparisoned elephants, fierce gods and marching armies, all made of stone.

He climbed the steps to the central shrine, passed between its vast, squat pillars and so went into the sanctuary. The roof here, beneath the temple’s high carved tower, was fashioned into lotus blossoms. The idols stared blankly from their niches with flowers and leaves drying at their feet. The Colonel placed the lantern on the flagstone floor, then sat cross-legged and waited. He closed his eyes, letting his ears identify the noises of the night beyond the temple’s walls. McCandless had come to this remote temple with an escort of six Indian lancers, but he had left that escort two miles away in case their presence should have inhibited the man he was hoping to meet. So now he just waited with eyes closed and arms folded, and after a while he heard the thump of a hoof on dry earth, the chink of a snaffle chain, and then, once again, silence. And still he waited with eyes closed.

‘If you were not in that uniform,’ a voice said a few moments later, ‘I would think you were at your prayers.’

‘The uniform does not disqualify me from prayer, any more than does your uniform,’ the Colonel answered, opening his eyes. He stood. ‘Welcome, General.’

The man who faced McCandless was younger than the Scot, but every inch as tall and lean. Appah Rao was now a general in the forces of the Tippoo Sultan, but once, many years before, he had been an officer in one of McCandless’s sepoy battalions and it was that old acquaintanceship, which had verged upon friendship, that had persuaded McCandless it was worth risking his own life to talk to Appah Rao. Appah Rao had served under McCandless’s orders until his father had died, and then, trained as a soldier, he had returned to his native Mysore. Today he had watched from the ridge as the Tippoo’s infantry had been massacred by a single British volley. The experience had made him sour, but he forced a grudging courtesy into his voice. ‘So you’re still alive, Major?’ Appah Rao spoke in Kanarese, the language of the native Mysoreans.

‘Still alive, and a full colonel now,’ McCandless answered in the same tongue. ‘Shall we sit?’

Appah Rao grunted, then sat opposite McCandless. Behind him, beyond the sunken courtyard where they were framed by the temple’s gateway, were two soldiers. They were Appah Rao’s escort and McCandless knew they must be trusted men, for if the Tippoo Sultan were ever to discover that this meeting had taken place then Appah Rao and all his family would be killed. Unless, of course, the Tippoo already knew and was using Appah Rao to make some mischief of his own.

The Tippoo’s General was dressed in his master’s tiger-striped tunic, but over it he wore a sash of the finest silk and slung across his shoulder was a second silk sash from which hung a gold-hilted sword. His boots were red leather and his hat a coil of watered red silk on which a milky-blue jewel gleamed soft in the lantern’s flickering light. ‘You were at Malavelly today?’ he asked McCandless.

‘I was,’ McCandless said. Malavelly was the nearest village to where the battle had been fought.

‘So you know what happened?’

‘I know the Tippoo sacrificed hundreds of your people,’ McCandless said. ‘Your people, General, not his.’

Appah Rao dismissed the distinction. ‘The people follow him.’

‘Because they have no choice. They follow, but do they love him?’

‘Some do,’ Appah Rao answered. ‘But what does it matter? Why should a ruler want his people’s love? Their obedience, yes, but love? Love is for children, McCandless, and for gods and for women.’

McCandless smiled, tacitly yielding the argument which was not important. He did not have to persuade Appah Rao to treachery, the very presence of the Mysorean General was proof that he was already halfway to betraying the Tippoo, but McCandless did not expect the General to yield gracefully. There was pride at stake here, and Appah Rao’s pride was great and needed to be handled as gently as a cocked duelling pistol. Appah Rao had always been thus, even when he was a young man in the Company’s army, and McCandless approved of that pride. He had always respected Appah Rao, and still did, and he believed Appah Rao returned the respect. It was in that belief that the Colonel had sent a message to Seringapatam. The message was carried by one of the Company’s native agents who wandered as a naked fakir through southern India. The message had been concealed in the man’s long greasy hair and it had invited Appah Rao to a reunion with his old commanding officer. The reply had specified this temple and this night as the rendezvous. Appah Rao was flirting with treachery, but that did not mean he was finding it either easy or pleasant.

‘I have a gift,’ McCandless said, changing the subject, ‘for your Rajah.’

‘He is in need of gifts.’

‘Then this comes with our most humble duty and high respect.’ McCandless took a leather bag from his sporran and placed it beside the lantern. The bag chinked as it was laid down and, though Appah Rao glanced at it, he did not take it. ‘Tell your Rajah,’ McCandless said, ‘that it is our desire to place him back on his throne.’

‘And who will stand behind his throne?’ Appah Rao demanded. ‘Men in red coats?’

‘You will,’ McCandless said, ‘as your family always did.’

‘And you?’ the General asked. ‘What do you want?’

‘To trade. That is the Company’s business: trade. Why should we become rulers?’

Appah Rao sneered. ‘Because you always do. You come as merchants, but you bring guns and use them to make yourselves into taxmen, judges and executioners. Then you bring your churches.’ He shuddered.

‘We come to trade,’ McCandless insisted equably. ‘And what would you prefer, General? To trade with the British or be ruled by Muslims?’

And that, McCandless knew, was the question that had brought Appah Rao to this temple in the dark night. Mysore was a Hindu country and its ancient rulers, the Wodeyars, were Hindus like their people, but the Tippoo’s father, the fierce Hyder Ali, had come from the north and conquered their state and the Tippoo had inherited his father’s stolen throne. To give himself a shred of legality the Tippoo, like his father before him, kept the old ruling family alive, but the Wodeyars were now reduced to poverty and to ceremonial appearances only. The new Rajah was scarce more than a child, but to many of Mysore’s Hindus he was still their rightful monarch, though that was an opinion best kept secret from the Tippoo.

Appah Rao had not answered the Scotsman’s question, so McCandless phrased it differently. ‘Are you the last Hindu senior officer in the Tippoo’s army?’

‘There are others,’ Appah Rao said evasively.

‘And the rest?’

Appah Rao paused. ‘Fed to his tigers,’ he eventually admitted.

‘And soon, General,’ McCandless said softly, ‘there will be no more Hindu officers in Mysore and some very fat tigers. And if you defeat us you will still not be safe. The French will come.’

Appah Rao shrugged. ‘There are already Frenchmen in Seringapatam. They demand nothing of us.’

‘Yet,’ McCandless said ominously. ‘But let me tell you what stirs in the wide world, General. There is a new French general named Bonaparte. His army sits on the Nile now, but there is nothing in Egypt that interests Bonaparte or the French. They have their eyes farther east. They have their eyes on India. Bonaparte wrote to the Tippoo earlier this year. Did the Tippoo show you his letter?’ Appah Rao said nothing and McCandless took the silence to mean that Rao knew nothing of the French General’s letter and so he took from his sporran a piece of paper. ‘Do you speak French, General?’

‘No.’

‘Then let me translate for you. One of our agents copied the letter before it was sent and it reads, “le sept pluviôse, l’an six de la République Française.” That’s the twenty-seventh of January this year to the rest of us, and it says, “I have reached the borders of the Red Sea with an innumerable and invincible army, full of the desire to deliver you from the yoke of England.” Here.’ McCandless offered Appah Rao the letter. ‘There’s plenty more in the letter like that. Take it back with you and find someone who will translate it.’

‘I believe you,’ Appah Rao said, ignoring the proffered letter. ‘But why should I fear this French General?’

‘Because Bonaparte’s ally is the Tippoo and Bonaparte’s ambition is to take away the Company’s trade. His victory will strengthen the Muslims and weaken the Hindus. But if he sees Mysore defeated, and if he sees your Rajah back on his ancestor’s throne, and if he sees a Hindu army led by General Appah Rao then he will think twice before he takes ship. Bonaparte needs allies in this land, and without Mysore he will have none.’

Appah Rao frowned. ‘This Bonaparte, he is a Muslim?’

‘He’s friendly to Muslims, but he has no religion that we know of.’

‘If he’s friendly to Muslims,’ Appah Rao observed, ‘why should he not be friendly to Hindus also?’

‘Because it is to the Muslims that he looks for allies. He will reward them.’

Appah Rao shifted on the hard floor. ‘Why should we not let this Bonaparte come and defeat you?’

‘Because then he will have made the Tippoo all powerful, and after that, General, how long will there be any Hindus in his service? And how long will the surviving Wodeyars live? The Tippoo keeps the Wodeyar family alive for he needs Hindu infantry and cavalry, but if he no longer has enemies, why will he need reluctant friends?’

‘And you will restore the Wodeyars?’

‘I promise it.’

Appah Rao looked past McCandless, gazing up at the small light reflecting off the serene image of a Hindu goddess. The temple was still here, as were all Mysore’s temples, for though the Tippoo was a Muslim he had not torn down the Hindu sanctuaries. Indeed, like his father, the Tippoo had restored some of the temples. Life was not hard under the Tippoo, but all the same the Tippoo was not the ancestral ruler of Appah Rao’s country. That ruler was a boy kept in poverty in a small house in a back alley of Seringapatam, and Appah Rao’s hidden loyalty was to the Wodeyar dynasty, not to the Muslim interlopers. The General’s dark eyes shifted to McCandless. ‘You British captured the city seven years ago. Why didn’t you replace the Tippoo then?’

‘A mistake,’ McCandless admitted candidly. ‘We thought he could be trusted to keep his promises, but we were wrong. This time, if God wills it, we shall replace him. A man bitten by a snake once does not let the snake live a second time.’

Appah Rao brooded for a while. Bats flickered in the courtyard. The two men in the gateway watched as McCandless let the silence stretch. The Colonel knew it would not serve to pressure this General too hard, but McCandless also knew he did not need to press. Appah Rao might not be certain that a British victory would be in Mysore’s best interest, but what would serve that interest in these hard, confusing times? Appah Rao’s choice lay between the Muslim usurpers and foreign domination, and McCandless knew only too well of the simmering distrust that lay between Hindus and Muslims. It was that breach that the Scotsman was assaulting in the hope that he could widen the rift into full betrayal.

Appah Rao finally shook his head, then raised an arm and beckoned. One of the two men in the gateway came running forward and knelt beside the General. He was a young man of startling good looks, black-haired and with a fine long face of strong bones and defiant eyes. Like Appah Rao he wore the tiger tunic and had a gold-hilted sword slung at his hip. ‘This is Kunwar Singh,’ Appah Rao introduced the young man. ‘He is the son of a cousin of mine’ – he announced the relationship vaguely, intimating that it was not close – ‘and the commander of my bodyguard.’

McCandless looked into Kunwar Singh’s eyes. ‘Do your job well, my friend. Your master is valuable.’

Kunwar Singh smiled and then, at a signal from Appah Rao, he took a roll of paper from inside his tunic. He unrolled the sheet and weighted its corners with a pistol, a knife, a handful of bullets and the lantern.

McCandless leaned forward. The scroll was a map and it showed the big island in the River Cauvery on which the Tippoo’s capital of Seringapatam was built. The fortress town occupied the island’s western tip, while beyond its walls, to the east, were pleasure gardens, suburbs, the Tippoo’s summer palace and the mausoleum where the fearsome Hyder Ali was entombed.

Appah Rao drew a knife from his belt. He tapped the island’s northern bank where it fronted the Cauvery’s main channel. ‘That is where General Cornwallis crossed. But since then the walls have been strengthened. The French advised us how to do it. There are new guns on the walls, hundreds of them.’ He looked up into McCandless’s eyes. ‘I mean hundreds, McCandless. That is not an exaggeration. The Tippoo is fond of cannon and rockets. He has thousands of rocketmen and deep arsenals crammed with weapons. All this’ – he swept the knife’s tip around the walls that faced the river – ‘has been rebuilt, refortified and given cannon and rockets.’

‘We have cannon too,’ McCandless said.

Appah Rao ignored the comment. Instead he tapped the knife against the western ramparts that overlooked the Cauvery’s smaller channel. ‘At this time of year, McCandless, the river here is shallow. The crocodiles have gone to the deeper pools and a man can walk across the river with dry knees. And when your army reaches Seringapatam they will see that these walls’ – he tapped the western fortifications again – ‘have not been rebuilt. They are made of mud bricks and the rains have crumbled the rampart. It looks like a weak place and you will be tempted to attack there. Do not, for that is where the Tippoo wants you to attack.’ A beetle flew onto the map and crawled along the line marking the western walls. Appah Rao gently swept the insect aside. ‘There is another wall there, a new wall, hidden behind that rampart, McCandless, and when your men get through the first wall they will be in a trap. Here’ – he pointed to a bastion that connected the outer and inner walls – ‘that used to be a water gate, but it’s been blocked up and there are hundreds of pounds of gunpowder inside. Once your men are trapped between the two walls the Tippoo plans to blow the mine.’ Appah Rao shrugged. ‘Hundreds of pounds of powder, McCandless, just waiting for you. And when that attack has failed you will have no time to make another before the monsoon comes, and when the rains do come the river will rise and the roads will turn to mud and you will be forced to retreat, and every foot of your way back to Madras will be dogged by the Tippoo’s cavalry. That is how he plans to beat you.’

‘So we must attack anywhere but in the west?’

‘Anywhere but from the west,’ Appah Rao said. ‘The new inner wall’ – he demonstrated on the map with the tip of his knife – ‘extends all the way round the north. These other walls’ – he tapped the southern and eastern ramparts – ‘look stronger, but don’t be deceived. The west wall is a trap, and if you fall into it, it will be your death.’ He moved the weights off the corners of the map and let it roll itself up. Then he unshielded McCandless’s lantern and held one end of the scroll in the candle flame. The paper blazed, lighting the intricate carvings of the shrine. The three men watched as the paper burned to ash. ‘Anywhere but from the west,’ Appah Rao said, then, after a moment’s hesitation, he lifted the bag of gold coins from beside the lantern. ‘All this will go to my Rajah,’ he said. ‘I shall keep none.’

‘I never expected you to,’ McCandless said. ‘You have my thanks, General.’

‘I don’t want your thanks. I want my Rajah back. That is why I came. And if you disappoint me, then you English will have a new enemy.’

‘I’m a Scot.’

‘But you would still be my enemy,’ Appah Rao said, then turned away, but paused and looked back from the inner shrine’s threshold. ‘Tell your General that his men should be gentle with the people of the city.’

‘I will tell General Harris.’

‘Then I shall look to see you in Seringapatam,’ Appah Rao said heavily.

‘Me and thousands of others,’ McCandless said.

‘Thousands!’ Appah Rao’s tone mocked the claim. ‘You may have thousands, Colonel, but the Tippoo has tigers.’ He turned and walked to the temple’s outer gateway, followed by Kunwar Singh.

McCandless burned the copy of Bonaparte’s letter, waited another half-hour and then, as silently as he had come to the temple, he left it. He would join his escort, sleep a few hours, then ride with his precious secret to the waiting army.

Few men of the 33rd slept that night for the excitement of fighting and beating the Tippoo’s vaunted troops had filled them with a nervous energy. Some spent their loot on arrack, and those fell asleep soon enough, but the others stayed around their fires and relived the day’s brief excitement. For most of the troops it had been their first battle, and on its slim evidence they built a picture of war and their own valour.

Mary Bickerstaff sat with Sharpe and listened patiently to the tales. She was accustomed to soldiers’ stories and shrewd enough to know which men exaggerated their prowess and which pretended not to have been nauseated by the horrors of the dead and wounded. Sharpe, after he returned from Captain Morris’s tent with the news that the Captain would ask Major Shee’s permission for them to marry, was silent and Mary sensed he was not really listening to the tales, not even when he pretended to be amused or amazed. ‘What is it?’ she asked him after a long while.

‘Nothing, lass.’

‘Are you worried about Captain Morris?’

‘If he says no, we just ask Major Shee,’ Sharpe said with a confidence he did not entirely feel. Morris was a bastard, but Shee was a drunk, and in truth there was little to choose between them. Sharpe had an idea that Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Wellesley, the 33rd’s real commanding officer, was a man who might be reasonable, but Wellesley had been temporarily appointed as one of the army’s two deputy commanders and had thus shrugged off all regimental business. ‘We’ll get our permission,’ he told Mary.

‘So what’s worrying you?’

‘I told you. Nothing.’

‘You’re miles away, Richard.’

He hesitated. ‘Wish I was.’

Mary tightened the grip of her hand on his fingers, then lowered her voice to something scarce above a whisper. ‘Are you thinking of running, Richard Sharpe?’

He leaned away from the fire, trying to make a small private space where they could talk without being overheard. ‘Got to be a better life than this, love,’ he said.

‘Don’t do it!’ Mary said fiercely, but laying a hand on his cheek as she spoke. Some of the men on the other side of the fire saw the tender gesture and greeted it with a chorus of jeers and whistles. Mary ignored them. ‘They’ll catch you, Richard,’ she insisted, ‘catch you and shoot you.’

‘Not if we run far enough.’

‘We?’ she asked cautiously.

‘I’d want you, lass.’

Mary took hold of one of his hands and squeezed it. ‘Listen,’ she hissed. ‘Work to become a sergeant! Once you’re a sergeant, you’re made. You could even become an officer! Don’t laugh, Richard! Mister Lambert in Calcutta, he was a sergeant once, and he was a private before that. They made him up to ensign.’

Sharpe smiled and traced a finger down her cheek. ‘You’re mad, Mary. I love you, but you’re mad. I couldn’t be an officer! You have to know how to read!’

‘I can teach you,’ Mary said.