Last week we saw the dissolution of the Continental Army back in America. The war was coming to an end, much too slowly for most, but as politicians wrapped up the paperwork, the soldiers’ work was at an end. All the parties had agreed to terms of peace. But as we have seen, getting the word out about peace to distant corners of the world often took months. Those who had not yet received word often continue the fight.
That was the case in India. We last looked in on India in Episode 306, when the Mysore leader Hyder Ali commanded an army in what is today southeastern India against the British army and the East India Company. Ali and the Mysore were allied with the French, who provided naval support under Admiral Pierre André de Suffren.
Tipu Sultan
Hyder Ali continued to wage war against the British through 1782. In December, the Mysore leader died from cancer. On his death, his son Tipu Sultan took the reigns of leadership and the title of Emperor of Mysore. Under his father, he had led armies numerous times against the British and had defeated them on several occasions.
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| Siege of Cuddalore |
The British bad faith led to the closer relationship between Mysore and France. Hyder Ali went to war with the British in the Second Mysore War that began in 1780, after France and Britain were already at war with each other.
After his father’s death, Tipu continued the long standing Mysore relationship with France. He also solidified alliances with the neighboring kingdoms of the Marathas and the Mughals.
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| Tipu Sultan |
The southeastern coast of India had been under Mysore control since the 1760’s, when Hyder Ali captured the area. The Muslim leader took a great deal of resistance from the local Hindu population, but through forced relocations and mass executions, took control of the area.
Since Mysore was allied with France, British forces took several coastal areas in the region shortly after Britain and France went to war in 1778. This is part of what caused Mysore to declare war on Britain in 1779. In the summer of 1782, Tipu Sultan was leading the fight against the British in this region. His father sent another General Makhdoom Ali to assist. Makhdoom was killed during a solid British victory at Tirurangadi. Tipu managed to keep the British forces pinned near the coast, but ended up leaving upon receiving news from his dying father in December of 1782.
The British captured the town of Mangalore again in March, 1783. Tipu returned to besiege and recapture Mangalore a short time later. While Tipu was tied up on the east coast at Mangalore, the British prepared for an assault on Cuddalore on the west coast, hundreds of miles away.
James Stuart
In an earlier episode, you may recall that Sir Eyre Coote was the military commander in India. Lieutenant Colonel James Stuart had replaced Sir Coote as the military commander in the area. Stuart had served under Coote in India. Coote, however, was physically in bad shape and had to leave the field. Coote would die of natural causes less than a year after giving up command.
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| James Stuart |
After their arrest, Pigot pushed through his agenda. When other members of the Council protested, Pigot had them arrested as well. This resulted in Colonel Stuart turning the tables and arresting Pigot himself. Pigot remained in prison for months, as word of all this traveled back to England. There, the proprietors of the East India Company ordered that Pigot be released and restored to power. Pigot came from a wealthy and influential family. His brother was an admiral. His other brother was Major General Robert Pigot, who we discussed extensively in earlier episodes because of his years of service in America during the early part of the war.
Although they ordered Pigot released and returned to power, Company officials were critical of many of his actions, and declared Pigot’s arrest of two council members to be illegal as well. All of these even ended up in front of Parliament for a few weeks in 1777. So, while Pigot was returned to his position as a matter of restoring his honor, the Company also said that after one week following his return to power, he must turn over his position to someone else and return to England.
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| George Pigot |
This was all part of a larger fight that began in 1773 when the British government tried to assume more authority over the East India Company. During this period, the chain of command was never quite clear, and the line between the British Army and the East India Company was blurry to say the least. Leading to power fights like the one we find here.
The reason for getting into all that, was to explain the background of the controversy for Stuart arresting Governor Pigot. As part of the confusion in all of this, Stuart was promoted to brigadier general during this time, but then also suspended from his position and denied any command at all. He demanded a trial, but did not receive one. Years went by.
During that time, the dead governor’s brother, Admiral Hugh Pigot, demanded prosecutions of various council members that had acted in a way that contributed to his brother’s death. In 1779, several members were tried in England for the unlawful arrest and imprisonment of Governor Pigot. They were found guilty and fined £1,000 each. A year after that, about four years after the initial arrest, Stuart finally got his own court martial. He was acquitted since he was simply obeying the orders of the council. He was finally returned to duty with back pay.
Despite his reinstatement, for his first five years in India, Stuart was mostly suspended from service and fighting to be reinstated. He remained in Madras while the war went on without him.
General Stuart fought under General Coote during 1781. His notable leadership in several battles resulted in his promotion to major general. Fighting these battles also cost him a leg, carried away by a cannon ball at the battle of Pollilore. Stuart took command of the forces and in December, 1783 received orders to attack the Mysore army as soon as the British learned that Hyder Ali had died.
Siege of Cuddalore
Stuart refused to act precipitously. He needed to prepare his army for battle. In June of 1783, nearly six months after receiving orders to attack immediately, Stuart led an army to Cuddalore on the western coast of India. He had with him at least three regiments of British regulars, two companies of Hanovarians, and thousands of Sepoys from Bengal.
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| French map of Siege of Cuddalore |
Inside Cuddalore, the French had their own army, which supplemented the Mysore soldiers who made up the bulk of the defenders. The Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau. The Marquis had spent decades in India, taking up service in the French East India company as a young teenager in 1736. In 1782, King Louis had named him commander of all French forces beyond the Cape of Good Hope.
As the British began their siege lines nearly two miles from the fort, de Bussy brought his forces out in front of the fort, about a half mile in front of his fort walls, to confront the British. The French and Mysore forces built redoubts and trenches to prevent a British advance.
On June 13, British forces assaulted the French redoubts. The assault began before dawn at around 4:00 in the morning. The French and Mysore kept up a stubborn defense which resulted in brutal fighting all day long. After nearly 12 hours of combat, the British managed to overrun the French right flank and held their ground against a counter attack. At around 5:00 in the evening, both sides agreed to a cessation of hostilities to tend to their wounded. The defenders lost about 500 men killed or wounded as well as thirteen cannons.
The British attackers took over 900 casualties, which was a substantial portion of the entire siege force. However, General Stuart held the position he needed to begin firing on the city walls of Cuddalore.
Naval Battle
Several days before the capture of the redoubts, French Admiral Pierre André de Suffren received orders to take the French fleet to break the siege. The French fleet arrived in the waters off Cuddalore on June 13, the same day that Stuart attacked the redoubts.
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| French and British fleets at Cuddalore |
After five days, Suffren was ready to confront the enemy fleet. The two fleets jockeyed for position for another two days. On June 20, Suffren believed he had as good a position as he was going to get, and engaged with the British fleet. The fighting, which lasted about three houses, was about a draw in terms of damage inflicted. Both sides lost about 100 men killed and another 400 wounded. But the larger British fleet was forced to withdraw, giving the French Navy control of the waters.
The British pulled back toward Madras, to the north. The French fleet followed, anchoring between the British fleet and Cuddalore. Two days later, the two fleets spotted each other again, but the British did not engage. Hughes later reported that too many of his ships were still damaged, hundreds of his men were sick, many with scurvy, and that his fleet was almost out of fresh water.
French Counterattack
British forces landed at Madras, where they could receive reinforcements and repairs for their ships. The French fleet returned to Cuddalore to return the 1200 Mysore soldiers aboard their ships. Suffren also landed another 2400 French marines to support the defense of the city. The French naval presence also prevented the British from landing transports with more reinforcements for their side of the siege.
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| Admiral de Suffren |
Since the French now had the advantage. The Marquis planned a counter attack, moving Mysore forces in a flanking maneuver to get behind the British siege lines at attack. An assault force under The French commander Chevalier de Dumas, struck British lines on June 25. Again the fighting was sustained and brutal. The summer heat in India also created problems of heat stroke.
The French forces were unable to break the British lines. Dumas, the French commander was taken prisoner during one failed assault, as were many other French officers.
The End
On June 29, however, a single British ship approached Cuddalore under a white flag of truce. The ship brought a message from Admiral Hughes, still in Madras. He just received word that Britain and France had agreed to a preliminary peace agreement seven months earlier.
No one was exactly sure what this meant. Although France and Britain were no longer at war, Mysore and Britain were, and France remained a Mysore ally. Both sides had lost more than 1000 killed and wounded each during the battle. News of the preliminary peace was sufficient reason for the British to withdraw and for both sides to await word of the final peace terms.
Stuart Removed
Lord George MacCartney, who had replaced Pigot as Governor of Madras. MacCartney believed that Stuart’s seven month delay in carrying out orders to attack Cuddalore, and his mismanagement of the expedition, was the reason Cuddalore remained in French hands as the war came to an end. Stuart faced formal accusations of disobedience and misconduct. In fact, this was part of the larger conflict I alluded to earlier. Governor MacCartney believed the British Army in India fell under his authority in the East India Company. General Stuart maintained independence and that he drew his authority as a British officer, with accountability to his military superiors in London.
McCartney had wanted a larger offensive, using the army to go after multiple targets at once. Stuart had wanted to concentrate forces on Cuddalore. They never really came to any agreement on that. Stuart had left for Cuddalore with a much smaller army than he wanted, then marched very slowly while sending orders to detachments sent elsewhere to join him at Cuddalore.
There is also some unclear evidence that Stuart may have been planning to arrest Governor MacCartney. Stuart seems to have made some threats, as well as some efforts to prevent Company officials in Madras from collecting money owed to them by organizations in other parts of the country.
In September, MacCartney dismissed Stuart from service in the East India Company, without even a hearing. Stuart’s performance in the Cuddalore campaign was the professed reason, but all these other things seemed to play a role.
The Governor also appointed one of Stuart’s subordinates, Colonel Ross Lang, as a lieutenant general in order to give command of the regulars in Madras over any other possible commander. This almost led to a civil war between British regiments as Major General John Burgoyne challenged Colonel Lang’s authority to command. (And no, it was not the General Burgoyne from Saratoga. This was a general who was a cousin with the same name). Regiments following the different officers dug entrenchments around their camp to prevent the other from attacking and drying to arrest their leader.
Stuart spent a month under continent at the fort in Madras. In October, officials summarily put him aboard a ship bound for England. They told him he had to work out his problems there.
This phase of the power struggle in India effectively ended in 1784 when Parliament passed the India Act, which gave the British government far more direct control over policies in India and better defined relations between the Company and the British Government. A new regime arrived in India in 1785 to enforce this new structure. Leading this new command was Lord Charles Cornwallis, yes that Cornwallis!
Mysore War Ends
Despite the fact that the French and Mysore had successfully defended Cuddalore, the French traded it to Britain in exchange for two other cities in India that Britain had captured from France earlier in the war.
The British war against Mysore would continue for another year, but no significant battles were fought during this time. In 1784, the two nations agreed to a peace treaty called the Treaty of Mangalore. Under the treaty’s terms, both sides simply returned land that they had conquered during the war, and the situation returned to exactly how things were before the war had started.
Next Week: officials in Paris finally formally sign the Peace Treaty ending the war.
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Next Episode 329 Signing the Peace Treaty
Previous Episode 327 Continental Instability
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Further Reading
Websites
The Tiger’s Revenge: The chase, capture and punishment of General Mathews for the Anandapuram atrocity https://toshkhana.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/the-tigers-revenge-the-chase-capture-and-punishment-of-general-mathews-for-the-anandapuram-atrocit
Smith, John L. Jr. “India: The Last Battle of the American Revolutionary War” Journal of the American Revolution, July 8, 2015. https://allthingsliberty.com/2015/07/india-the-last-battle-of-the-american-revolutionary-war
James Stuart: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Stuart,_James_(d.1793)
Hiscocks, Richard Battle of Cuddalore – 20 June 1783, Feb 11, 2018: https://morethannelson.com/battle-trincomale-20-june-1783
Vijayalakshmy, E. “The Siege of Cuddalore (1783)” International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2015. https://www.ripublication.com/ijhss/ijhssv5n1_09.pdf
Free eBooks
(from archive.org unless noted)
Henty, G.A. Tiger Of Mysore, London: Blackie and Son. Ltd., 1935.
Malleson, G.B. Final French Struggles in India and on the Indian Seas, London: W.H. Allen, 1884.
Mill, James The History of British India, Vol. 4, London: J. Madden, 1840.
Mohammed, Gholam, The History Of Hyder Shah Aiias Hyder Ali Khan Bahadur And Of Son, Tippoo Sultaun, Delhi: Cosmo Publications, first published 1855.
Stuart, Andrew Letters to the Directors of the East-India Company, and the Right Hon. Lord Amherst, undated.
“Memoir of General James Stuart” The Asiatic journal and monthly miscellany, Sept. 1819 (This is about James Stuart who was a colonel at Cuddalore. He served under the General James Stuart that I discussed in this episode).
Stuart, James Copies of some official papers concerning the proceedings at Madras, in September and October 1783, printed 1784.
Taylor, Meadows Tippoo Sultaun: A Tale of The Mysore War, Vol. 2, London: Rchard Bentley, 1840.
Wylly, H.C. Sir Eyre Coote, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922.
Books Worth Buying
(links to Amazon.com unless otherwise noted)*
Balakrishna, Sandeep Tipu Sultan The Tyrant of Mysore, RARE Publications, 2014.
Barry, Quintin Suffren versus Hughes: War in the Indian Ocean 1781-1783, Helion and Co. 2024.
Cavaliero Roderick Admiral Satan: The Life & Campaigns of Suffren, I.B. Tauris, 1994.
Glickstein, Don After Yorktown: The Final Struggle for American Independence, Westholme Publishing, 2015.
Haroon, Anwar Kingdom of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan: Sultanat E Khudadad, Xlibris, 2013.
* As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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