Tipu Sultan: the Mysore ruler who made the rocket a weapon of war

In the late 18th century, the Marathas, the Nizam of Hyderabad, the French and the British East India Company were locked in rivalry in southern India. In this struggle the state of Mysore emerged as a strong power. Its capital was Srirangapatna, a fortified city on an island in the River Kaveri. From 1782 to 1799 the state was ruled by Tipu Sultan, known as the “Tiger of Mysore”. His reign stands out in history for four Anglo-Mysore Wars, administrative experiments and the use of war rockets.

Early life

Tipu Sultan was born in Devanahalli, north of present-day Bengaluru. Accounts differ on the year of his birth. It is generally given as 1751, while the British historian Lewin Bowring wrote 1753. According to Bowring, he was named after a saint of Arcot, and his mother, Fakhr-un-Nisa, was the daughter of Mir Muinuddin, the governor of the fort at Cuddapah.

His father, Haidar Ali, was an experienced soldier who became the effective ruler of Mysore in 1761. Tipu received military training from an early age, partly from the French officers in Haidar Ali’s service. As a teenager he joined his father in the campaigns of the First Anglo-Mysore War, as Bowring also records.

Wars and rule

The First Anglo-Mysore War (1767 to 1769) ended with a treaty. The second war began in 1780. In September 1780, at Pollilur, a Company force under Colonel William Baillie was destroyed. According to Bowring, Haidar Ali had sent Tipu with his best troops to block Baillie’s path. According to the World History Encyclopedia, the Company commander Sir Hector Munro called the defeat the “severest blow” the British had suffered in India.

Haidar Ali died of illness in December 1782 during the war, and Tipu Sultan took over the government. The war ended in 1784 with the Treaty of Mangalore, and the borders were restored roughly to their pre-war state.

The third war broke out when the Mysore army attacked Travancore, an ally of the Company, on 29 December 1789. The Governor General, Lord Cornwallis, led the army himself, took Bengaluru and, together with the forces of the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Marathas, besieged Srirangapatna. The terms of the 1792 Treaty of Srirangapatna were harsh. Tipu had to give up a large part of his kingdom, pay an indemnity, release prisoners and hand over two of his sons to the Company as hostages.

Diplomacy

According to Bowring, Tipu Sultan sent an embassy to Constantinople. In 1787 a second embassy, led by Muhammad Darvesh Khan, went directly to Paris, where King Louis XVI received it warmly. However, no practical help followed, as France itself was on the brink of revolution. According to the World History Encyclopedia, Tipu later also wrote to Napoleon Bonaparte seeking military help, but Napoleon’s attention was then on Egypt.

Administration

According to Bowring, he introduced a new calendar in which years and months were given new names, and from 1784 his letters were dated according to it. His coins also carried a new “Mauludi” year, counted from the birth of the Prophet of Islam rather than from the Hijra. He also renamed several places, for example Devanahalli, which he called Yusufabad.

According to Bowring, he had a code for the army drawn up in 18 chapters, known as “Fath-ul-Mujahidin”. In 1796 a naval board was also set up to build 20 large warships and 20 frigates, but the plan was not completed before his rule ended.

The rockets of Mysore

The best-known feature of the Mysore army was its rockets. According to the World History Encyclopedia, hand-launched rockets had been used in the Mysore army since Haidar Ali’s time, often fired by cavalry and camel-mounted units. According to Bowring, under a decree of 1793 each regiment (kushun) of the regular infantry had a company of rocket men attached to it.

A journal of the history division of the US space agency NASA, citing the autobiography of the former Indian president and missile scientist APJ Abdul Kalam, says that after the war of 1799 the British seized more than 700 rockets. William Congreve took them to England, and work on rocket technology was based on them.

The last war and death

The fourth and last war came when the new Governor General, Richard Wellesley, decided to end a possible alliance between Mysore and France. The Company again had the support of the Marathas and the Nizam of Hyderabad. The siege of Srirangapatna began on 7 April 1799. At the start of May, after heavy guns breached the wall, the fort was stormed.

According to Bowring, Tipu Sultan was wounded while fighting near a gate and died there. The next day he was buried beside his father, Haidar Ali, in Lal Bagh. Bowring puts the dead on the Mysore side in this war at 8,000, while the World History Encyclopedia puts it at about 10,000. After the victory the city was plundered.

Library and legacy

Tipu Sultan’s library was also found in the palace at Srirangapatna. According to Bowring’s list, it held books on Quranic commentary, Islamic jurisprudence, history, astronomy, mathematics, medicine and poetry. Much of it was moved to the newly founded Fort William College in Calcutta. Tipu had made the tiger his emblem, and a mechanical tiger made for him is now kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Historians’ views of Tipu Sultan have not always been the same. According to the World History Encyclopedia, he was portrayed negatively in Britain after his death, while recent research has also highlighted his administrative ability, scholarly interests and love of scientific instruments. According to the same source, cases of harsh treatment of prisoners of war were also part of his reign.

With Tipu Sultan’s death, a major obstacle to the East India Company in southern India was removed. But his wars, administrative experiments and rockets remain an important chapter in the history of the subcontinent.