Wellington: The Iron Duke

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His chief concern, though, was with the assortment of freebooters – ‘polygars, nairs, and moplahs’ – in arms around the state. His most obdurate opponent was Dhoondiah Waugh, a tough mercenary who had escaped from Tipoo’s custody just before Seringapatam fell, recruited a substantial following from amongst Tipoo’s former soldiers and other malcontents, and proclaimed himself ‘King of the Two Worlds’. He was beaten in 1799 and escaped northwards into Maratha territory, but was back again the following year. In May 1800, Wellesley himself mounted a full-scale campaign against Dhoondiah, his well-organised transport system enabling him to move across a desolate area. Even so there were difficult moments. On 30 June, he told Barry Close that he was a day later than planned in crossing the River Toombnuddra, and its sudden rise delayed him on the south bank for ten days. As no supplies could be brought in, the army ate much of the corn it had with it, and was now held up. ‘How true it is,’ he mused, ‘that in military operations, time is everything.’

(#litres_trial_promo) He systematically took Dhoondiah’s fortresses and finally caught up with him at Conaghull, right up on the borders of Hyderabad, on 10 September.

Although Wellesley, pursuing with two regiments of British cavalry and two of Indian, was badly outnumbered, he formed up his little army in a single line and led a charge that routed Dhoondiah’s army. Wellesley reported to the adjutant-general in Madras that: ‘Many, amongst others, Dhoondiah, were killed; and the whole body dispersed, and were scattered in small parties over the face of the country.’

(#litres_trial_promo) He could be magnanimous in victory. Dhoondiah’s young son, Salabut Khan, was found amongst the baggage. Wellesley looked after him, and when he departed from India, he left money for the boy’s upkeep with the collector of Seringapatam. Salabut, ‘a fine, handsome, intelligent youth’, eventually entered the rajah’s service and died of cholera in 1822.

In May 1800, Arthur had been offered command of a force to be sent to capture Batavia in the East Indies from the Dutch, but he told his brother that although he would welcome the appointment, it would not be in the public interest for him to leave Mysore until ‘its tranquillity is assured’. With Dhoondiah beaten, however, he was able to accept the command and, after assembling a staff, he departed for Ceylon, where he arrived on 28 December. Arthur soon heard that the expedition was to go to Egypt instead, and he duly ordered it to concentrate in Bombay. He was on the way there himself when he heard that his brother, who had anticipated ‘great jealousy from the general officers in consequence of my employing you’, had been pressed to supersede him with Major General Baird. This was not as unreasonable a decision as Arthur maintained. He was still only a colonel, albeit a senior one, and the governor-general told him privately that ‘you must know that I could not employ you in the chief command of so large a force as is now to proceed in Egypt without violating every rule in the service …’ There were limits to how far Richard could go on his behalf. Baird had been infuriated by his supercession by the governor-general’s brother at Seringapatam, and made this very clear in three interviews with Richard Wellesley. In her sympathetic anecdotal biography of Arthur, Muriel Wellesley suggests that Richard had no alternative but to act as he did: ‘He must either sacrifice his brother, or lose the confidence of those he governed, which he inevitably would do once the stigma of favouritism and partiality were to become attached to him.’ There were times when Arthur, like Achilles, was capable of sulking in his tent, and this was one of them.

Right or wrong, he was deeply hurt, and now began his letters to the governor-general not as ‘My dear Mornington’, but as the coldly official ‘My Lord’. He was franker in a letter to their brother Henry:

I have not been guilty of robbery or murder, and he has certainly changed his mind … I did not look, and did not wish, for the appointment which was given me; and I say that it would probably have been more proper to give it to somebody else; but when it was given to me, and a circular written to the governments upon the subject, it would have been fair to allow me to hold it till I did something to deserve to lose it.

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Although he was appointed Baird’s second-in-command, Wellesley remained in Bombay when the expedition set sail. Although he assured Henry that Baird’s conduct towards him was ‘perfectly satisfactory’, he first suffered from fever, followed by an attack of ‘Malabar itch’, which obliged him to undergo a regimen of nitrous baths. He knew that the episode would not redound to his credit, and when he felt well enough, he returned to Mysore. Captain George Elers observed that he had begun to grey at the temples and did not laugh as explosively as before. Responsibility followed by disappointment had marked him: ‘He may already have forgotten how to play.’

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But even now, in the depths of his disappointment, he recovered something of his sparkle. Elers wrote that he kept a ‘plain but good’ table, and had an excellent appetite, with roast saddle of mutton served with salad as his favourite dish. He was abstemious, drinking only four or five glasses of wine with dinner and ‘about a pint of claret’ afterwards. ‘He was very even in his temper,’ wrote Elers, ‘laughing and joking with those he liked …’ He could even smile in the face of adversity. Riding hard for Seringapatam with Elers and a tiny escort through dangerous country, he joked that if they were captured: ‘I shall be hanged as being brother to the Governor-General, and you will be hanged for being found in bad company.’ Hearing that there had been a promotion of colonels to be major generals, he called for a copy of the Army List, but found that he was not included. He admitted ruefully that his only ambition was ‘to be a major general in His Majesty’s service’.

When Wellesley returned to Mysore, India was on the verge of another major conflict, this time between the British and the Maratha Confederacy, now the East India Company’s principal rival on the subcontinent. The Hindu Marathas controlled the great mass of central India, bordered by the Ganges in the north and Hyderabad in the south, running from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal, and eventually including Delhi. In 1761 they had been beaten with great loss at Panipat, just outside Delhi, by the Afghan, Ahmad Shah Durrani, Muslim ruler of Kabul. However, they enjoyed a revival after Panipat and in 1778–82, the East India Company fought an inclusive war against them. Thereafter the Company was preoccupied with Mysore, but by 1800 the Maratha state had fragmented into what were, in effect, independent principalities, themselves uniting the fiefs of smaller semi-independent chiefs. The Peshwa Baji Rao, nominally the most senior, ruled at Poona, although his writ ran only around the frontiers of Hyderabad and Mysore. The most powerful of the maharajas was Daulat Rao Scindia, who controlled the northern Maratha lands from his capital at Ujjein, while at Indore, Jeswant Rao Holkar ruled a central slab of land between the Narmada and Godavari Rivers. The Bhonsla Rajah of Berar, with his capital at Nagpur, dominated the south-east Maratha lands. The Gaikwar of Baroda, fifth of the great princes, ruled territory in the west, around the Gulf of Cambay, but was to throw himself onto the Company’s protection and play no part in the coming conflict.

The fragmentation of Maratha power was both risk and opportunity for the Company. On the one hand growing instability meant there was a chance of war breaking out while the Company was busy elsewhere – it was for this reason that Sir Alured Clarke had been left in Calcutta when Mornington began his campaign against Tipoo. But, on the other, the Company might be able, as it had elsewhere, to exploit friction between local rulers. Their chance came in 1800, when Holkar defeated the Peshwa and Scindia at Poona. Scindia fell back into his own territory, but the Peshwa fled to Bassein, in British territory, and signed a treaty agreeing to give the Company control over his foreign affairs and to accept (and pay for) a garrison of six of the Company’s battalions in return for the Company’s help in restoring him to his throne.

The task of restoring the Peshwa was given to Arthur Wellesley in November 1802. He had just heard that he had been gazetted major general on 29 April that year, (news had only reached him in September), and given an appointment on the Madras establishment, where Lieutenant General Stuart, who had led the Bombay army column that fought at Seringapatam, was now commander-in-chief. As he had told Barry Close, soon to be political Resident with the Peshwa, in September 1801, ‘before long we may look to war with the Mahrattas’. He had already made a lengthy analysis of the terrain he might have to cover, highlighting the problems of providing food and water and crossing the many rivers that would lie across his path. As usual he delved into detail. He would need 10,000 gallons of arrack (native spirit) for his European troops, and this should be carried in 6 gallon kegs, ‘well fortified with iron hoops’. There would also have to be 90,000 lbs of salt meat, ‘packed in kegs well fortified, 54lbs in each keg, besides pickle, &c.; and the same quantity of biscuits in round baskets, containing 6olbs each; these baskets to be covered with waxed cloth’.

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Major General Wellesley moved off in March 1803, his own army numbering just under 15,000 men, with a Hyderabad force of nearly 9,000 also under his command. He was well aware that his task was to restore the Peshwa but not to bring about a wider war with the Marathas as he did so. In fact, there was no resistance. The careful preparations ensured that the march of some 600 miles was swift, and rigid discipline ensured that local inhabitants were not alienated by plundering. His leading cavalry reached Poona on 20 April, but the Peshwa would not re-enter his capital till 13 May, when the stars were propitious. Wellesley observed that he was ‘a prince, the only principle of whose character is insincerity’. He made heavy weather of re-establishing himself, but at the same time was already negotiating with the other Maratha princes. In May, Holkar raided into Hyderabad territory, replying civilly to Wellesley’s letter of remonstrance, stating that the Nizam of Hyderabad owed him money. The Nizam was in fact mortally ill, which induced Stuart in Madras to send troops to Hyderabad to help maintain order. This added to the political tension between the Marathas and the Company. Although open war was still not inevitable, Scindia was striving to draw the other Maratha chiefs into a coalition against the British.

Wellesley, as usual, was preoccupied with his logistics. His line of communication ran back down to Mysore, and although he did his best to ensure against its collapse when the monsoon came – locally-made coracles, ‘basket boats’, were stockpiled at all likely river-crossings – it would be much easier if he could open a shorter line to Bombay. However, the authorities there lacked his own attention to detail, and sent him pontoons for river-crossing at the moment when the weather broke, and the wagons carrying them foundered on the very first day. Stuart generously told the governor-general that he had no wish to take command, for Wellesley’s ‘extensive knowledge and influence … and his eminent military talents’ made him ideally suited for the appointment in which, Stuart was sure, his army would render ‘very distinguished services’. Accordingly, in June 1803, an order from Mornington gave Wellesley full military and political authority in central India, and he immediately ordered Colonel John Collins, British Resident at Scindia’s camp still on Maratha territory, now close to the Nizam of Hyderabad’s fortress of Ajanta, to ask Scindia precisely what he objected to in the treaty of Bassein. Wellesley was prepared to make minor concessions and was anxious not to fire the first shot in a new war. On 25 June, he told Colonel James Stevenson, his principal subordinate, that: ‘It will be our duty to carry out the war, with activity, when it shall begin, but it is equally so to avoid hostilities, if we possibly can …’

(#litres_trial_promo) On 3 August, Collins reported that Scindia and the Rajah of Berar would give no direct answer to his demands, and had left for the Nizam’s nearby fortress of Aurungabad. Wellesley at once announced that he was obliged to go to war ‘in order to secure the interests of the British government and its allies’.

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The Maratha armies looked formidable on paper. The core of Scindia’s invading force was his regular infantry, about 15,000 strong, which was trained and led by European officers and organised in brigades called ‘compoos’, including some cavalry and a few guns. Colonel Pohlmann, once a sergeant in a Hanoverian regiment in British service, commanded the largest, with about 7,500 men; the Begum Somroo, widow of a German mercenary who had become one of Scindia’s vassals, had recruited a slightly smaller force, commanded on her behalf by Colonel Saleur, and Colonel Baptiste Filoze, of Neapolitan-Indian ancestry, commanded a third. Scindia’s army had about eighty field pieces and a few heavier guns. His irregular troops included 10–20,000 infantry, and there were something between 30–60,000 light cavalry.

The governor-general had tried to persuade British subjects serving the Marathas to relinquish their posts, promising them employment if they did so and prosecution for treason if they refused. Some were certainly reluctant to fight. ‘John Roach Englishman and George Blake Scotsman lately commanding each a gun in the service of the Begum’ informed Wellesley that they ‘left camp by permission upon remonstrance against being employed to fight’ and told their countrymen all they knew.

(#litres_trial_promo) Stewart, an officer of Pohlmann’s compoo, also joined the British as soon as he could, as did Grant, brigade major (chief of staff) to one of the compoos. But some certainly stayed to fight, for Wellesley told Colonel Collins that some of his wounded had been killed by the cavalry attached to the compoos, and a British officer in enemy service had been heard to say to another: ‘You understand the language better than I do. Desire the jemadar [native junior officer] of that body of horse to go and cut up those wounded European soldiers.’

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Wellesley had already decided that he must act boldly. He told Colonel Stevenson that ‘the best thing you can do is to move forward yourself with the Company’s cavalry and all the Nizam’s and dash at the first party that comes into your neighbourhood … A long defensive war would ruin us and will answer no purpose whatever.’

(#litres_trial_promo) On 8 August 1803, he broke camp and marched to Ahmednuggur, the nearest Maratha-held fort. It was held by one of Scindia’s regular battalions under French officers and about 1,000 reliable Arab mercenaries, but Wellesley believed that this was too small a force to hold the fort and the surrounding town (the pettah), although both were walled. He determined to carry the town by assault, using ladders to scale the walls, without preliminary bombardment. The 78

Highlanders led the assault, and when they were beaten back, a lieutenant of the grenadier company, Colin Campbell – who was to die a general in 1847-hung his claymore from his wrist with a scarf to climb the better, and laid about him when he topped the wall. Other units entered elsewhere, and in twenty minutes the town was taken. One of the Peshwa’s officers summed it all up:

The English are a strange people, and their General a wonderful man. They came here in the morning, looked at the pettah wall, walked over it, killed the garrison, and returned to breakfast! What can withstand them?

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The fort capitulated on the 12

once Wellesley’s guns had breached the wall and the assaulting columns were formed and ready.

With Ahmednuggur in his hands, Wellesley snapped up all Scindia’s possessions south of the Godavari, and then crossed the river with an army of 2,200 Europeans and 5,000 sepoys, with 2,200 light cavalry from Mysore and 4,000 of the Peshwa’s cavalry. He reached Aurungabad, on the edge of the Nizam’s territory, on 29 August, and rode on to meet Colonel Collins, encamped just to the north. Collins told him that he need not worry about the Maratha horse – ‘You may ride over them, General, whenever you meet them’ – but his regulars were a different matter altogether. Collins had seen Scindia’s army at close quarters for five months, and declared that: ‘Their infantry and the guns attached to it will surprise you.’

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Wellesley was at Aurungabad, and Stevenson, with more than 10,000 men, was at Kolsah, a hundred miles away to the east. At first Wellesley feared that the Maratha cavalry, up on the frontier between these two forces, would use its superior mobility to raid deep into the Nizam’s territory. After nearly a month of shadow-boxing Wellesley and Stevenson met at Budnapoor on 21

September, and agreed a plan by which the two armies, moving separately, would manoeuvre in order to catch Scindia’s main army in or around Borkardan. The first phase went well enough, and Wellesley reached Paugy and Stevenson Khamagaon on the 22

September. On the following day, Wellesley’s force, which as usual had left camp well before dawn so as to complete most of its marching before the heat of the day, reached Naulniah just before midday. Borkardan was another ten miles on, and camp was already being laid out when a cavalry troop brought in some brinjarries who reported that the Maratha army, with three compoos and abundant cavalry, was not at Borkardan at all. It was much closer, on the far bank of the River Kaitna, under the command of Colonel Pohlmann.

Wellesley went forward with a strong cavalry escort and reached a spot from which he could see the Marathas, in all perhaps 200,000 strong, in the process of breaking camp. As he later told the governor-general, ‘it was obvious that the attack was to be no longer delayed’.

(#litres_trial_promo) If he waited for Stevenson, the Marathas would slip away, but if he attacked at once they must either fight, or flee and abandon their guns. He quickly discarded the option of a frontal assault, and instead led his army parallel with the river as far as the village of Peepulgaon. Just across the river lay the village of Waroor, and he decided that the villages would not have been built so close together without ‘some habitual means of communication’ between them: there simply had to be a ford.

I visited the battlefield in September 2001. The monsoon was late, but the heavens had finally opened when I flew in to Aurungabad the day before. Although two four-wheel drive vehicles took us out to the battlefield through the smoky early morning bustle of village India, the rivers had all risen alarmingly and the tracks were pure mud. North of Peepulgaon we borrowed a tractor and trailer, and slithered our way to the River Kaitna, looking, like Wellesley two hundred years earlier, for a ford. We found it just where Wellesley had expected it to be, between the two villages. I have long felt that there is a particular merit to viewing a battlefield from horseback: that extra few feet of height improves the view, and horses can go where most vehicles cannot. Rani, a tricolour Kathiawari horse with the breed’s signature ears – furry equine radars that curve round to cross above the horse’s head and seem capable of 360-degree movement – was not at her best after three hours in the back of a truck. As I nudged her down the muddy slope into the fast-flowing Kaitna, my spirits, cast down by the weather and worries about more floods, lifted.