Tipu's Tiger - Part 3

Throughout the 1790's Tippoo planned his revenge trying to cement an alliance with the new French Republic and Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon wrote to Tippoo in February 1799, 'full of the desire of delivering you from the iron yoke of England'. The same month under the new Governor General Richard Wellesley, Lord Mornington, the British made their move. This time the British were in no mood to compromise, an army of 21,000 men was dispatched under the command of General Harris. Tippoo rapidly fell back from Seringapatam. Many of the officers who marched on Seringapatam had fought him before, some had been his prisoners. On the 3rd of May the British breached the walls. Tippoo, surveying the breach at the end of the days fighting shook his head and said nothing.

The next day came the final assault, shortly after midday the British forded the river taking only 16 minutes and crossed the outer ditch and ramparts. They then divided, Colonel Dunlop swinging to the left, Baird and Sherbrooke to the right. Tippoo, fighting near the breach regained some of his former courage and ferocity but he was wounded fighting near the Watergate and was killed by a soldier for his jewels. Baird who'd been defeated by him at Pollilur and taken prisoner was now led to the body of the Tiger of Mysore, a scene which inspired a popular engraving.

A yet more fanciful version of Tippoo's death manages to create a Turneresque landscape with a distant view of Haider's tomb. The fallen Sultan was given a sumptuous funeral by the British and was buried beside his father with full military honours. The officer charged with restoring law and order was the Governor General's younger brother, Colonel Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington. The great man's contribution to the fall of Seringapatam had been modest, never again would he move forces at night in unfamiliar terrain. Once again the surviving sons were carried off as prisoners and once again the event was published in popular illustrations.

The entire army received medals depicting the rout of the Indian Tiger by the British Lion but the victorious generals were kept waiting for their just desserts. The elder Wellesley received an Irish Peerage and a full 15 years passed before the field commander General Harris received the Barony of Seringapatam and Mysore, East Indies and of Belmount, County Kent. His coat of arms redolent with Tippoo imagery shows the flags of the company and the union held by the grenadier of the 73rd foot and a Madras sepoy above Tippoo's banners and furled tricolours.

Meanwhile in London the East India Company had been receiving so many books, manuscripts, treasures and curiosities from India that a museum was opened. The most curious object that it acquired in the aftermath of Tippoo's fall was the tiger or rather the wooden organ in the form of tiger and man, discovered in the palace after Tippoo's death.
Lord Mornington dispatched it from India with the recommendation that the company present it to the king, to be kept in the tower. In the event it was the company's court of directors that acquired this crowd puller for the museum at their offices in Leadenhall Street. There, curious visitors could make the tiger roar and the victim shriek, disturbing the peace of many a reader in the library next door.

It was the Tutankhamun of the day, thousands thronging to see it, the poet John Keats among them:

"that little buzzing noise, what e'r your palmistry may make of it
comes from a play thing of the Emperor's choice
from a man-tiger the prettiest of his toys".

Not exactly the ode to Autumn

Tippoo also inspired various dramatic productions like this one at the Royal Coburg theatre in 1823 with no less than Henry Campbell treading the boards as the defiant Sultan.

Tippoo was very much a pantomime character and in fact as recently as 1905 Tippoo appeared in a mummers play in Sydmouth in Devon. So his popularity has endured I'm glad to say.

There was even Tippoo the board game or 'The New Game of Tippoo Sahib' as it was called. Staffordshire pottery figures were early on the scene depicting the demise of the unfortunate Munro. This lustreware terrine was created as recently as 1976. Nowadays in India Tippoo is back in the spotlight not only has he become a comic book hero but a massive television drama series has been broadcast, based on the events of his life.