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Home accompanied Cornwallis’s army against Tipu Sultan, 1790-1792
from the attack on Bangalore to the taking of Seringapatam and a treaty
involving two of Tipu’s sons as guarantors. One of Home’s paintings (in the
National Army Museum, London) shows Cornwallis receiving the young
hostages and include the artist, holding his portfolio, at the rear. Home selected views
of Savendroog; Outradroog; Ramgurry; Chenapatam; Ooleadrog;
Shevagurry; Shevagunga and Peddinaigdurga ‘as a delight for those who
have never visited India and a faithful record for those who gallantly
fought there’. Three folded sheets complete the volume: plans of
Ootradroog’s 6-tier defences, of Bangalore fort, and a map of the
Carnatic and Mysore, with a Distance grid for nineteen towns.
'Occurrences of the Late War...' are listed too, because full descriptions
in the text ‘would take up too much room’. ‘Whatever tends to increase
the sphere of man’s knowledge is unquestionably important...’ the
Preface affirms, adding ‘it is our province to stimulate curiosity not to
gratify it.’
Text and engravings vividly create Home’s ‘on the spot’: Ramgurry’s
‘wild savage aspect,’ abode of tigers; Shevagurry, surrounded by forest
stretching 70 miles by 40 miles wide; the ‘incredible exertion’ required
to cut a gun road and transport artillery to Savendroog through thick
bamboo and rocky terrain. Imagine 6,000 cattle and 2,000 sheep near
Ooleadroog, or over 200 elephants before Seringapatam (plus 100,000
cavalry, a body of infantry and 50 large cannon), an earlier Mahratta
attack was thwarted by Haidar’s scorched earth policy. The Laul baug on the
island had ‘regular walks of shady cypress’ with ‘fruit trees, flowers and
vegetables of every known variety’ and ‘a pleasure house or ‘bungulo’
looking down the Cauvery.’ The airy splendour of the Palace interior at
Bangalore is almost tangible, ‘open to the four winds of heaven,’ with
flower gardens to north and south, and a fountain at each side.
Home’s military details certainly ‘stimulate curiosity.’ Seringapatam’s
prospect was ‘conspicuous’: ‘magnificent buildings’; ‘lofty mosques’
and the fort walls painted white. Bangalore fort, ‘improved in the modern
style’, had 30 semi-circular bastions, a cannon foundry and a machine
for making 130 musket barrels ‘all at once.’ When Col. Maxwell
attacked at 11.00 pm, the assailants were immediately ‘completely
illumined’ by numerous blue lights, hung from the ramparts.
'Elegant monuments’ commemorated those lost in the attack, although
in View of the Burial Ground at Bangalore ‘it was not possible in so
small a space to engrave the inscriptions’. All are transcribed in the text.
Home concludes ‘We cannot better terminate our work than with the
proud mausoleum of Hyder Ali’ with its adjacent ‘faquiers choultries’
and the recent memorial to Burham ud Din, who fell at Sattimungulum
(1790). His beautiful sister, one of Tipu’s wives, ‘died absolutely of fear’
as Cornwallis attacked Seringapatam. Her orphaned son, Mooza ud
Deen, aged eight, was the younger hostage prince. In 1799 he would lose
Tipu, his father, also. It’s an absorbing story.
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