A Miss of Grapeshot: Suffren and the Tiger of Mysore

[Bad@logic]

Chapter 1, The Battle of Porto Praya

Suffren’s Shadow: A History of the Naval War in the Indian Ocean, 1777-1783
The Battle of Porto Praya, for all of its diminutive size compared to other great naval battles of the American Revolution, compared to First Ushant, the Chesapeake, Grenada, the Saintes, Kokilai, has entered into the annals of history on the basis of the first of the independent victories of the great admiral the Bailli de Suffren, whose victories in the Indian Ocean were of such vital remit to the progress of the great war between England, France, and its allies. Victory at Porto Praya was decisive in forging the constellation of forces, men, and commanders who fought France’s war in the east to its conclusion.

If it is marked by historical import, Porto Praya is also known for its confused, chaotic fighting, a sign of the end of the era of classical, indecisive naval battles of the 18th century, prevalent since the end of the Nine Years’ War at the very least. Instead of stately and careful action, defined by limited losses and lines of battle, Porto Praya was a sign of the change of times - where the French fleet, like the British one as well, instead chose audacious and daring attacks, risking defeat for the greater prize of total victory and glory. Certainly, it was a transitional period of Suffren’s campaign, where his captains failed to all understand the new rules of aggression and offense, but Suffren’s blow would have important consequences nevertheless.

On the 16th of April, 1781, a French fleet of 5 ships of the line as well as accompanying lighter ships and a number of transports, under the command of the French admiral Bailli de Suffren, hove into view of the Portuguese port of Porto Praya, in the Azores. They had been tasked, in the context of the American Revolution and the British attack on the Dutch Republic, with reinforcing Dutch positions against possible British invasion in the Dutch Cape Colony, and bolstering French naval power in India. On their route, at Porto Praya, they wished to take on water and resupply. The forwardmost French ship, Artésien, spotted a fleet at anchor, which Suffren soon realized was British. Disregarding Portuguese neutrality, Suffren made the decision to attack, placing his own ship Héros in the front of the line.

The British fleet, which the French had correctly identified as 5 sails of line, was under the command of the British admiral George Johnstone. Just like the French fleet, it was resupplying and taking on water in the port, with a noticeably less powerful composition than the French - 1 74, 2 64s, and 2 50s, as compared to 2 74s and 3 64s on the French side, with the British accompanied by 3 frigates, a bomb vessel, and a substantially larger contingent of merchant ships, 37 in all, carrying supplies and 2,000 soldiers for service in India. Johnstone, despite having been provided decent and accurate intelligence on the movement and size of Suffren’s fleet, had failed to take any security precautions for his ships, with 1,500 men ashore, no patrols, and his flagship encumbered by surrounding vessels, leaving it hors combat until the chaos in the anchorage could be overcome. Not only this, but when Hero, the ship he was on, spotted the French fleet, he would waste further valuable time by rowing over to Hero from Romney, an ill-fated change of flag, then ordering his ships to weigh, rather than slip, anchors. The British fleet was badly positioned, crews still scattered, surprised, vessels preparing for combat, and with a French fleet bearing down on them. The state was set for battle, as the sails of Suffren’s ships bore closer, prows scything up and down through the waves.

Suffren’s ship Héros was the first to engage, firing two volleys as it passed along the line before the wind and currents carried it forward to anchor next to the ironically named British counterpart, Hero. Following it came the rest of the French ships in the line, with Annibal right behind - which astonishingly had neglected to clear for action but nevertheless gamely swung into battle, followed by Artésien, whose captain Chevalier de Cardaillac narrowly avoided being decapitated by a grapeshot round which whizzed past his shoulder,* and not so successfully by Vengeur and Sphinx, the captains of both of which engaged at long range in passing through the bay and then drifted off, carried by the currents. Both captains apparently could not believe that Suffren really would violate Portuguese neutrality in such a way. They failed to achieve much of note against the British merchant ships which they claimed their objectives were, and in fact received some degree of punishment back from the aroused Indiamen.

Meanwhile, a furious fusillade ensued. Although in the main fight the British had 4 ships to the French 3, they were hampered by much of their crews being ashore, and the narrow and crowded confines of the anchorage leading to a great deal of friendly fire being sustained by the Royal Navy ships. Artésien engaged Romney, which was restricted by the frigate Jason immediately to her stern, without Romney being able to fire back, and the demoralizing, brutal, close range fire caused Romney to strike her colors and in the process capturing the British admiral Johnstone. Hero, Monmouth, and Jupiter continued to engage the French ships Héros and Annibal, but Artésien swung back south and east, tacking behind Monmouth, and forcing her too to strike its colors.

As the British vessels faced the tide of battle turning against them, the battleships Hero and Jupiter cut their cables and fled for the sea, leaving Isis alone. In the ensuing melee, Isis put up a dramatic fight, but was encumbered by the surrounding supply and logistics ships, one of which - the Lord Townsend - caught fire, which spread to Isis, burning her to the waterline before her magazine went off in a catastrophic explosion. The conflagration destroyed both the Isis and vengefully smote the culprit of the fire, the Lord Townsend. The British frigates Apollo, Active, and Diana, swift footed, escaped to open sea, but the frigate Jason was captured, and in the mopping up operations afterwards the French captured 22 of the transport ships, many of them East Indiamen, and the bomb ship Terror and fireship Infernal.

Thankfully for the British, the 98th and 100th infantry regiments were mostly ashore, saving them from capture, but leaving them and around a thousand sailors stranded in Portuguese territory - and completely hors combat. The British menace to Cape Town had been completely eliminated, and in half a day of combat, Suffren had inflicted one of the harshest defeats that the Royal Navy had known in nearly half a century, since Cartagena in 1741. Worse, it had been in a style that had long been that which the Royal Navy had assumed was its own exclusive trade: the aggressive attack on an anchored enemy fleet, bold, dashing, risky, and contemptuous of international law. The French left behind them a bay covered with pieces of shattered, drifting ships, blackened burns of powder smoke, bodies washing up on the azure waves upon the grey beaches of the island, as if even the sand wept for the men whose crimson red stained the shores. It had been a remarkably quick and brutal affair.

Porto Praya had significant effects on the balance of power in the South Atlantic, and to some extent the coming India Campaign. The loss of 2 ships of the line (the Romney and Monmouth) captured by the French, and a third, the Isis, destroyed, with 2 more forced to sail battered and bruised for the high seas, as well as a major blow to the British merchant marine and the at-least temporary loss of thousands of soldiers headed for India was a bruising blow to British pride and warmaking capabilities. Furthermore it meant that the British would not only be unable to contemplate attacking the Dutch Cape Colony as originally intended, but without additional reinforcements would be heavily outnumbered in the coming India campaign. It also landed the British government the humiliation of having to repatriate thousands of stranded soldiers and sailors, and even Admiral Johnstone, from the Azores. Markets in Britain reacted badly to the second major loss of a convoy in as many years, after the catastrophic commercial losses of the Action of August 9, 1780 less than a year prior, when a Spanish fleet had captured a major British trade convoy.

Suffren’s victory could have been even greater if it wasn’t for the captains of Sphynx and Vengeur, who had failed to enter the fray. But the most important part, perhaps even more than the actual tactical outcome of the battle, was the increased confidence, trust, and esprit de corps which began to be built among Suffren and the captains who did attack. Suffren, the great fighter, aggressive tactician, the brilliant thinker, friend of his sailors, lacked the strengths of preparing the training needed for his commanders to carry out his ideas, and precisely and clearly outlining his ideas in battle. Suffren needed a group of men who thought like him, who would act according to his ideas and principles, who would understand his intent - and yet Suffren, who adored shocking his captains, was not the man to do so. Only in the school of battle, in the school of victory of Porto Praya, could the beginning of an understanding which would overcome this be forged - for victory would be the balm of injured sensibilities and would give the respect and confidence which would enable triumph. Porto Praya would begin the long process of shaping the captains of the battle into the sword that Suffren would wield throughout India, to cut his path to destiny.

*This is the POD. OTL, Chevalier de Cardaillac was hit and killed, causing Artésien to fall out of line. Here, Artésien stays in line and gives the French the extra ship they need to win the battle.

 

[Bad@logic]

I've been on the site for quite a few years and decided to finally try to take the plunge and start on my own timeline, commencing in the 1780s with the Kingdom of Mysore, and aiming to run to at least sometime in the 20th century. A Miss of Grapeshot: Suffren and the Tiger of Mysore is a story about a fluke of physics from a single cannon shot changing the course of history, in India, in Europe, and in the world.

A time and a place must be taken on its own merits, rather than merely seen in the shadow of the present. Late 18th century India was a land - a world really - in dramatic evolution, with the complete collapse of the Mughal Empire, a power vacuum in much of the north of the country, commercial integration into world markets and the rise of export economies, the rise of powerful states like Mysore or the Marathas - and above all else the introduction of British colonialism in Bengal, starting a process which brought India under British control for more than a century and a half, dramatically altering the face of both Britain and the land it colonized. But in many ways, the British conquest of a continent was a fluke of historical circumstance, even as late as the 1780s, enabled by the special conditions of the crippling of key opponent states, the temporary disappearance of French power in the region in the midst of the French Revolution, and the daring and ability of British actors themselves. History is never inevitable, and we often only see one facet of it.

Divided, fractured, incompetent military forces, stagnant, backwards, and tyrannical: but a story can just as well be written about dynamic, competitive states with militaries tailored to serve their own needs, capable of rapid reform, and based upon real and sophisticated conceptions of political thought and society. This is the story of the tiger and the admiral, and its effect on India, Europe, and the world. What would the world look like with an India that stayed mostly independent, with its cultural impact upon other societies, the unique nature of its own historical paths to modernity, the changes to the world economy - and the butterflies that it produces across the globe? It is a difficult road to travel, with a land as diverse as India, and how profound our conception of it changes in a world where British red doesn’t stretch from the Hindu Kush to the jungles of Burma, but hopefully one which can have some justice done to it.

Before beginning, as a disclaimer I’m not from India, and while I’ve done my best to read as many books on the subject as I can, some of the history still remains confusing to me, there are gaps in the historical record, and I certainly don’t have a complete understanding of the psyche or mentality of people of the continent. If there are mistakes or areas where I didn’t fully understand the subject, please feel free to bring them up.

Furthermore, this also deals with some inherently highly controversial issues. One of the principal players in this drama is Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore from 1782 to 1799, and who has enjoyed alternate beatification as a valiant anti-colonial martyr and condemnation as a bigoted Islamic theocrat fanatic who brutally repressed Hindus. There is some truth to both sides: I’ve done my best to attempt to fuse what sources I have available into what I see as a balanced view of Tipu, but fundamentally Tipu was a complex individual and much of what he did and believes rankles modern sensibilities, and there is no getting around that.

It is also the story, by the flapping of the butterfly wings, of France, and few panoramas of history are more dramatic than the dying years of the Ancién régime and the birth of the French Republic. It is also something I'm much more familiar with than India, so much less concerning.

My current plan is to try to put an update every week, which I'll fiddle with depending on how that feels. In any event, thank you for your feedback and I hope that you enjoy!

 

[Leonidas]

Excellent start for this timeline! I barely know anything about naval warfare, but this was well-written and engaging to read. I’m interested to see how TTL’s India develops.

 

[Talus I of Dixie]

I liked your idea, am too sleepy to elaborate, but this is certainly watched!

 

[Bad@logic]

In July 1780, the armies of Hyder Ali, the de-facto sultan of Mysore stormed into the Carnatic coastlands of Seatheast India, the infantry laying siege to the fort of Arcot while the fleet-footed Indian light cavalry pressed on deep into the Carnatic, under the command of the son of Hyder Ali, Tipu. If the Hungarian Hussars might have looked askance at Indian light cavalry’s flowing robes and turbans and the Indians raised some eyebrows at the skin-tight Hungarian trousers, they would have surely recognized in each other men of daring, speed, and while most infantry would steal anything not nailed down, the cavalry would delight in being able to pilfer the nails too - whence came the modern verb loot in English, from Indian cavalry. Secrecy and poor British intelligence left them unaware of the Mysorean movements until the smoke of burning farms was drifting before the walls of Madras, and the British governor barely escaped being captured, without even the time to saddle his horse and having to flee on a boat which had thankfully been tied up.

After recovering from the initial shock, and despite being heavily outnumbered, with some 26,000 men in the region compared to 80,000 Mysoreans, the British responded by sending a force to lift the siege of Arcot. Their force was miniscule, barely 5,000 men of their own, under the command of the British general William Baile. Worse, it had not yet grouped up with General Munro’s army at Madras, but British armies had triumphed in the past against equally steep numerical odds. Mysorean forces under Tipu, Hyder Ali’s son, were sent to intercept Baile’s army before it rendezvoused with Munro’s forces. Predictably, an attack by Mysorean cavalry at Parambakan failed to do anything at all against the stoic red-coated sepoys and regular British troops, and the dashing cavalrymen were driven off by crushing volleys of musket fire. Both sides were reinforced afterwards, the British by an additional thousand troops, the Mysoreans by Ali’s main army, and the British under General Baile were confident in victory.

Hyder Ali, the Mysorean ruler himself, was on hand, supervising the battle from his elephant. A man of moderate stature, around 168 centimeters tall, he was active, capable of great endurance, with a small nose slightly turned up, smooth shaven both for beard and mustache, he was bronzed by much time spent in the sun during his campaigns. Perhaps he would have been little noticed, with his unostentatious wear, with a vest of white satin, with gold flowers faced with yellow, pants much the same, his yellow velvet boots, a white silk scarf about his waist, and a crimson turban on his head, but Hyder Ali was the de-facto ruler and sultan of Mysore, and at the head of one of the three powers of southern India that opposed the British East India Company, Mysore, Hyderabad, and the Marathas. Although he was starting to age, with the beginning of a cancerous growth on his back, in 1780 he was still the main field commander, even if his son and heir Tipu had become the main cavalry leader.

Setting out to continue to forge their way to Arcot, the British came under heavy fire from Mysorean artillery, with the swarming Mysorean cavalry threatening their flanks. In response, General Baile formed a square, and his formation continued to advance forward resolutely, beating off any attack. Then a Mysorean cannon round hit a munitions tumbler[1], igniting it in a dramatic explosion of smoke and flame, spreading panic in the square, and in the best tradition of Indian cavalry, opportunistic and daringly fast, the Mysorean light cavalry charged and broke the formation’s front. More cavalry poured through, and Baile surrendered: his force had already taken heavy losses with 36 officers dead and 300 out of 508 European infantry gone. It was the most crushing loss that British forces had suffered in India up until then, with an entire army of nearly 6,000 soldiers wiped out, and British troops under General Munro fled back to Mysore, dumping their cannons in water tanks to speed their retreat and losing 500 men to a Mysorean pursuit. A series of magnificent murals were painted in Ali’s summer palace to commemorate the victory, marking it as a singular triumph of Mysorean arms.

If Ali had pressed his attack, he very well might have taken Madras, but he failed to follow up aggressively and returned to the siege of Arcot, ultimately falling on November 3rd. This respite gave the British time to organize their forces, dispatching troops from Bengal, and retaking Pondicherry from the French as well as several forts, under the command of General Coote. British lines of communication however, received what would ultimately turn out to be a fatal blow, for on Christmas day (not that that meant anything to Ali), 1781, a French fleet under the Chevalier d’Orves arrived off the coast, cutting supply lines to Bengal. Although Orves retreated soon after, the presence of French frigates and light ships served to keep supply lines sufficiently perturbed as to prevent any effective resupply.[2] Ali used his fast light cavalry to cut off Coote from food supplies from the interior, and throughout the first half of 1781, Coote’s army only received 125,000 out of 450,00 bags of rice needed: this fell further to 90,000 in the second half of the year. Salvation for Coote’s army would require resupply by sea, and only the Royal Navy could break the French blockade: the stage would be set for Yorktown avant la lettre, as the battle between the French fleet of Suffren (Orves having died on February 9th, 1782) and the British fleet of Edward Hughes would decide the fate of British forces on land. Unfortunately, it was clear that the British fleet was in little state to do so.

The French naval campaign had started off on a good omen, since on January 21st, 1782, Orve’s fleet which had sortied from Ile-de-France had under the command of Suffren’s component run down and captured the British 50-gun ship of the line Hannibal, soon after commissioned into the French fleet as Petit Annibal. Adding this to the fleet meant that the French had been reinforced from 13 ships of the line to 14, d’Orve’s original fleet of 6 ships of the line having been carried to 13 by Suffren’s arrival, and another ship of the line now joining it. Without equivalent reinforcements as Johnstone’s fleet had been scattered at Porto Praya, the British admiral Edward Hughes had been unable to increase his own fleet of just 7 ships of the line: he was massively outnumbered and outgunned by the French. The British admiralty could run the numbers just as well as Hughes, after Porto Praya, but the reinforcements that they had sent to the theater were still en route as the French fleet, now definitively under the command of Suffren since Orves health started to precipitous decline on February 3rd, sailed north to Madras where it hoped to surprise the British fleet. Sailing in Indian waters was always extremely difficult due to the nature of the monsoon, which blew in the cooler months from the north-east, and then during the warmer months from the south-west, meaning that coming to Madras required a circuitous route which took them around the gulf of Bengal, but the French were hopeful they might be able to surprise Hughes.

This was not to be, since the vagaries of currents and weather meant that Suffren’s fleet failed to catch Admiral Hughes’ forces. Hughes had drawn up his fleet in the harbor of Madras, in a formidable defensive position, and one which the French did not initially intend to attack, as Suffren in the council of war on February 9th had listed the difficulties involved as being too numerous: the strong British position with their anchored ships, supporting batteries on land, that additional men could be drawn from land, and that the principal objective was the disembarkation of troops. But the commander of the ship Fine, Pierre de Salvert, argued that to not attack when the French had such superior forces, and in light of the poor reputation that the French had gained from leaving precipitously before, would result in a drastic diminution of French prestige among the Indians, and that it would be possible to outflank the British from behind. In the end, Salvert’s argument won when the wind shifted so that the French held the weather gauge, the wind blowing towards the British fleet, and enabling their attack.

The French attack went in hastily, due to the need to take advantage of the wind, which would have unfortunate effects for the infantry thrown in at the last minute and supposed to land to capture the forts. Most of the French ships would engage the British fleet frontally, while Sphynx and Vengeur would suppress the English shore batteries, to provide for the lightest ships in the French line, Flamand, Petit Annibal, and Romney, would attempt to force their way through the shallow waters to outflank the British and take them from behind. If time allowed, troops from the escorted convoys were to land to silence the coastal batteries, under the suppressing fire of Sphynx and Vengeur.

Fire between the two sides was furious as the French attacked, getting the worst of it in the initial slugging match. Their hopes were pinned on the lighter ships making their way around to double up the British, but unfortunately Salvert’s proposition of being able to make it through the shallows proved to be too optimistic by far. The Flamand grounded and neither Petit Annibal nor Romney were able to make their way through. While the fire of Sphinx and Vengeur was able to draw some of the attention of the English coastal batteries away, Flamand would clearly have been lost if not for the arrival of the boats launched to land troops at the batteries, who managed to tow Flamand, which had been exposed to heavy fire for hours by now, away.

With the French attack having clearly failed, Suffren raised signals for the French to retreat, which began in some disorder as ships disengaged from the line, and had to confront the wind which was still blowing to the west, while the currents headed morth. The French used the currents to simply allow themselves to be carried away. At this point, Hughes hoped to capitalize on the French retreat to capture the heavily damaged Flamand as well as the also injured Petit Annibal and Romney. Weighing anchor and pushing his more intact line forward, he threatened to cut off the French ships. Fortunately for the French, the rear line of their fleet, which hadn’t advanced far beyond them, turned and managed to come back and aid their imperiled comrades. The rest of the ships were worse placed and their captains less bellicose, and in the end several French ships never re-engaged in the battle, and the French lines were terribly askew in any case - but superior numbers told now that the English were out of the protective fire of their coastal guns and not anchored, the French could fight far more effectively. The Eagle was nearly sunk, and ultimately the British had to return to port, while the French reconcentrated their forces.

The Battle of Madras had been a bloody affair on both sides, with heavy damage to ships and hundreds dead. The English had fairly convincingly won the first half, and had come very close indeed to winning a potentially transformative victory over the French if they had destroyed the isolated French detachment of Petit Annibal, Flamand, and Romney, but the valiant intervention of the French captains at the rear of the line saved the day. The French might have been disappointed at having failed to knock the British fleet out entirely, but it was heavily damaged enough that it would have to repair itself in port over the coming weeks, while the French set sail, once the normal southerly monsoon winds had returned, to the south, detaching frigates to keep up the blockade and reconnoiter the British fleet. The Bellone would be the most notably successful one, taking more than a dozen ships as it cruised the waters of the Bay of Bengal.

[1]Accounts differ whether this was a cannon round or a rocket. Sources also vary as to the size of the army, with mine being from The State at War by Pradeed P. Barua.

[2]This is my interpretation of what happened. The State at War in South Asia notes a significant supply crisis in the British army occasioned by French blockade, citing British minutes and internal discussion, but the French fleet did not stay permanently on station but rather retired to Ile-de-France.

 

[MagicalPhantom345]

I honestly expected you were going to have Hyder Ali take Madras unlike OTL. Because I am honestly having a hard time seeing how the British can't rebound from this.

 

[Harshavardhana]

It's good it see a Mysore timeline! Wondering where you will go from here with Hyderabad and the Marathas.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

This looks very interesting.

One stylistic point: numbering your footnotes rather than using asterisks will greatly improve readability.

 

[Bad@logic]

I honestly expected you were going to have Hyder Ali take Madras unlike OTL. Because I am honestly having a hard time seeing how the British can't rebound from this.

That'd be a perfectly decent POD, but I can hardly have two, completely separate PODs with no relationship between them.

It's good it see a Mysore timeline! Wondering where you will go from here with Hyderabad and the Marathas.

Those are actually harder questions and while I have both of them written out for the medium-long term, their short term development in the 1784-1800 era is still something I'm working on for them. There are vanishingly few sources that I've stumbled on so far for the 1785 Maratha-Mysore War, but we're still quite a few weeks from getting to that given the updates I will have on the war and the post-war social and economic commentary.

This looks very interesting.

One stylistic point: numbering your footnotes rather than using asterisks will greatly improve readability.

Yes that's true, I changed that.

Excellent start for this timeline! I barely know anything about naval warfare, but this was well-written and engaging to read. I’m interested to see how TTL’s India develops.

I liked your idea, am too sleepy to elaborate, but this is certainly watched!

Thanks, naval warfare for the era is certainly hard to write but it'll branch out to a more diverse set of subjects as things unfold.

 

[Bad@logic]

Suffren’s victory forced the British fleet to temporarily hole up in Madras and prevented any hope of lifting the blockade. Coote’s army, stationed now in the restored fortifications of formerly French Pondicherry, came under a full siege by Mysorean units. Mysorean heavy siege guns, reinforced by the French-disembarkment of a siege train under the command of De Bussy (of Dupleix fame, although the years had injected a great degree of apathy in his veins....) pounded the fort, alongside rocket batteries, but British artillery generally gave as good as it got and repeated attempts at storming Pondicherry failed, under the superior discipline, training, and firepower of British infantry. But without resupply, the already hungry troops withered and weakened, and mass diseases broke out in the British forces, with open starvation following soon after. An assault by Ali’s forces on July 6th encountered troops too weak to stand at their muskets, gunners unable to serve their cannons, and hospitals where healers required more care than their patients. The last Mysorean attack overwhelmed the British, and the remnant of Coote’s army surrendered. Losses had been terrible, with nearly three thousand dead, and the remaining 5,000 were marched off into captivity. The only British field force left in the Carnatic had been annihilated.

The consequences of the crushing of Coote’s army were dramatic. Without any additional troops in the region, there was nothing to defend Madras. This time, Ali didn’t dawdle, and his troops, aided by French siege engineers and a troop convoy escorted by Suffren, invested Madras soon afterwards. The city was already weakened by French blockade, and its garrison was demoralized by the repeated defeats. Their only hope was that Hughes would be able to bring in troops from Calcutta, where there were panicked reports about the calamities befalling British forces in the region. Stripping Bengal to the bone, the British were able to raise another 6,000 troops to send south, escorted by Hughe’s ships.

This was an extraordinarily difficult maneuver given the Indian monsoon, which was the bane of any naval movement off the Indian coast - it was possible to go from north to south during the winter months, and from the south to north during the summer months, but it was very hard to go back and forth due to the unidirectional nature of the winds. But Hughes proved a competent sailor and managed to, in late spring, get his ships north, rendezvous with the transports, and take advantage of the winds to come south, with desperately needed troops and supplies for Madras. He was dismayed by the delays occasioned in Calcutta, but given the perilous state of any British forces in Bengal, it was impressive that anything was managed at all.

It was thus with a sinking heart when on the morning of July 29th, 1782, Hughes spotted a collection of sail on the horizon, gaining on him. They were, ever so cruelly, not far from Madras. Over the coming hours it became clear: Suffren’s fleet had returned. They had taken another circuitous route to be able to get through the monsoon winds, in sailing and navigation skill that matched Hughe’s efforts, and were coming from the north. With the transports and troop ships along, and slower than the French warships, Hughes was faced with a dismal situation: stand and fight against overwhelming odds, abandon his merchant ships, or run.

He chose to run, but positioned his ships of the line at the rear of the formation to shield the merchant ships from the French. Over the day, the French gradually pulled closer to the British, with the first shots coming from their chase batteries at 4 in the afternoon. Suffren, in the lead, on his ship Héros, chose to focus on letting his ships catch up to the British rather than to concentrate them, trying to force the British to deploy into line rather than to run away. When Suffren’s chase batteries started to fire, Hughes grudgingly deployed his own ships into the line, but rather than Suffren deploying into line, he chose to try to exploit the British ships moving into their position to isolate them and to smash them in pieces. He signaled for his ships to follow after him, and plowed directly at the British line.

Héros suffered cruelly under the blows of the British rear ships, both of which concentrated their fire on the oncoming French line, but the British ships, still trying to form up, didn’t have the cohesion to manage to keep the French fleet at bay. Héros, followed up by the following French ships, broke through in between Hero, a veteran of Porto Praya, and Superb. Héros raked Hero and the rear of the line degenerated into a melee, as the French and British ships fought, but the follow-on forces, rather than pursuing Hughe’s fleet, chose to sail after the convoy. They managed to capture around half of the ships, a tremendous blow to the British, before the remainder made their way under the protective guns of Madras and the French, wary of repeating the last time they attacked Madras’ port, hove off.

With the French fleet divided, Hughes made the best of the situation and chose to counter-attack to try to save the embattled Hero and Superb. Numbers were almost even in this battle, pitting 8 French ships against 7 British ones, with the British ships with the advantage of an intact line of battle, while the French had inflicted severe damage on Hero and Superb already. Fighting was desperate on both sides, with the French ship Petit Hannibal being once again savaged by British guns, as was the Artésien. The Artésien’s captain, Chevalier de Cardaillac, gained once again his reputation for bravery, almost suicidal, standing on the bridge of his ship and narrowly once more escaping being decapitated by a piece of grapeshot which whirred over his head and even nicking his wig, exclaiming “Messieurs les anglais, les perruquiers de Paris vous remercieront!” (English gentlemen, the Paris wig makers will thank you!) Hughes’ courageous counter-attack was not without results and although Superb struck its colors, the British were able to recover her, and under the cover of night made for the open sea. Given the forces facing him and Suffren’s aggressive conduct, Hughes was admirable in managing to extract most of his fleet and save a goodly portion of his merchant men. In the monsoon weather off of the Indian coast, the captured Hero sunk shortly thereafter, heavily damaged.

Hughes escaped for the open sea, leaving the Third Battle of Madras a significant, if incomplete French victory. The Second Siege of Madras however, completed the French triumph, since although Madras had been reinforced, it was insufficient to forestall the major Franco-Mysorean army pummeling at its gates. A month later, the final assault came in. Multiple breaches had been made in the wall by the French and Mysorean siege guns, and when the Franco-Mysorean assault attacked, the British gunners and troops were suppressed by the long-muskets of the Mysorean camel corps, who used their long-ranged and accurate muskets to keep up a hail of deadly fire every time an enemy cannon fired or enemy troops showed themselves on the walls. With the ramparts gained, on August 28th, Madras surrendered. Hughes’ fleet managed to make its way north to Calcutta again, licking its wounds but at least having survived. They were the last defense for British power in eastern India. The Madras Presidency was gone.

 

[MagicalPhantom345]

The amount of detail you put into each chapter is phenomenal. Makes me feel ashamed for doubting you and project.

With that out of the way, how will the Maratha Confederacy and Asaf Jah II of Hyderabad respond to the Madras Presidency falling to Mysore?

 

[Sardar]

To say that I am excited to see the continuation of this timeline would be an understatement. Indian history, let alone South Indian history, is so criminally under appreciated and I am so glad it is finally getting some love on the site.

 

[MagicalPhantom345]

To say that I am excited to see the continuation of this timeline would be an understatement. Indian history, let alone South Indian history, is so criminally under appreciated and I am so glad it is finally getting some love on the site.

So how do you think southern India will develop without British rule?

 

[Bad@logic]

The amount of detail you put into each chapter is phenomenal. Makes me feel ashamed for doubting you and project.

With that out of the way, how will the Maratha Confederacy and Asaf Jah II of Hyderabad respond to the Madras Presidency falling to Mysore?

I appreciate the confidence But you definitely should doubt me: your questions show the limitations I have, since source materials about their maneuverings is hard to get, and I'd rather wait a while before I start getting into making things up as I go along. As of now the plan is for things to remain as OTL with the breakdown coming post-war but we still have two more updates about the war so if I happen on any useful info in the next weeks I might change that.

To say that I am excited to see the continuation of this timeline would be an understatement. Indian history, let alone South Indian history, is so criminally under appreciated and I am so glad it is finally getting some love on the site.

Thanks for your support! It's certainly an intriguing subject although I can definitely understand why people are intimidated by it: I am intimidated myself when attempting to understand how politics worked in southern Indian states, much less getting a grasp on the individuals and mentalities. It's also a delicate balance with how they develop over time, figuring out a course for them beyond simple westernization. While the timeline is naturally military-focused right now and war will definitely play a significant part in it I'm hoping to be able to move in a more social direction eventually so it isn't just a paint-the-map-different-colors game and this is going to be difficult, and input about Indian culture and society is always appreciated to try to get some additional ideas.

 

[Harshavardhana]

Good chapter! Nice to see the British out of Madras. Only Bengal and Bombay remains..

 

[Sardar]

So how do you think southern India will develop without British rule?

Thanks for your support! It's certainly an intriguing subject although I can definitely understand why people are intimidated by it: I am intimidated myself when attempting to understand how politics worked in southern Indian states, much less getting a grasp on the individuals and mentalities. It's also a delicate balance with how they develop over time, figuring out a course for them beyond simple westernization. While the timeline is naturally military-focused right now and war will definitely play a significant part in it I'm hoping to be able to move in a more social direction eventually so it isn't just a paint-the-map-different-colors game and this is going to be difficult, and input about Indian culture and society is always appreciated to try to get some additional ideas.

It is hard to predict what India would look like without British rule. Of course Bengal and much of central India remains under Britain and will do so for the time being but the biggest change will be the political ones, and more effects will spring from there.

The cultivation of an Anglo-friendly Indian elite will never occur, and neither will its proclivity for British liberal democracy. The political culture will of course remain Indo-Persianate, and like it was until 1858 (at least theoretically) the Emperor in Delhi remains sovereign of most* of India.

Yet India is more exposed to Western developments and tech more than most Asian countries, and that will certainly have an affect on any future developments. To what extent...anywhere from an early Meiji type modernization as Indian Kingdoms take the military revolution already happening to its fullest extent to a wholesale rejection of Western influence is possible. Of course Mysore in this period is rather wealthy, so they may take leadership of South India by unifying the Carnatic and maybe even the Deccan.

 

[MagicalPhantom345]

It is hard to predict what India would look like without British rule. Of course Bengal and much of central India remains under Britain and will do so for the time being but the biggest change will be the political ones, and more effects will spring from there.

The cultivation of an Anglo-friendly Indian elite will never occur, and neither will its proclivity for British liberal democracy. The political culture will of course remain Indo-Persianate, and like it was until 1858 (at least theoretically) the Emperor in Delhi remains sovereign of most* of India.

Yet India is more exposed to Western developments and tech more than most Asian countries, and that will certainly have an affect on any future developments. To what extent...anywhere from an early Meiji type modernization as Indian Kingdoms take the military revolution already happening to its fullest extent to a wholesale rejection of Western influence is possible. Of course Mysore in this period is rather wealthy, so they may take leadership of South India by unifying the Carnatic and maybe even the Deccan.

While the political landscape is up in the air for British rule, the direction of future EIC military can go in one of two directions as I see it. If they continue west into the Subcontinant, they can carve up the Maratha Empire with Mysore and Hyderabad. Especially with British holdings in Sarat and Bombay at the time, right on the Maratha Empires borders.
If they go eastward, they can develop Francis Lights project in Penang, where they can expand their influence at Dutch east india company. Along with intervening in the Burmers-Siamese wars as a means of obtaining territories to connect the Bombay Presidency to their holdings on the Malay Peninsula. All will be dictated by which will be the lest costly venture(s).

 

[Bad@logic]

Over the fall, naval activity fell off. Both took time to rest and refit, the French in particular needing it since not all of their ships were copper-bottomed, so they were forced to spend extra time scraping the bottoms of their ships. Furthermore, losses in sailors in the battles, and even more importantly, from disease, had been significant. Suffren’s fleet became a notably heterogeneous composition of men, drawing sailors from any sources it could find - Indian lascars, European merchant sailors, Portuguese, etc. But the time also offered an opportunity for politicking and seeing the sights: Hyder Ali and Suffren would spend a significant amount of time in various meetings and exchanging gifts, discussing the campaign and post-war plans (Ali’s heir apparent, the Tipu Sultan, also put in appearances, useful since his father was dying of cancer and would expire that December), while the officers would popularize the Indian temples of Mahabalipuram, not far from Madras, sketches of it becoming a hit back in Europe and launching the first waves of Indomania.

On the British side, things were less cheery, as they were profoundly outnumbered and effectively trapped in a strategic sense. But some hope was restored by news of a British reinforcement fleet of 9 ships of the line, which would restore numerical superiority in the region for the British. It managed to slip through Suffren’s net of scouts, and brought the British up to 15 ships of the line to 14 French ships of the line, when they rendezvoused in late November.

The question was however, what to do with this formidable concentration. By now the French and Mysoreans firmly controlled the Carnatic, the Dutch were reinforced and held Ceylon. Despite the risks, Hughes decided that the latter was the better target, and he hoped that by capturing the Dutch port of Trincomalee he could both gain back a valuable port in the south as well as lure Suffren to fight out under potentially disadvantageous terms. Furthermore he hoped that it would help restore British prestige, and give a base to potentially undertake a reconquest of the Carnatic in the event that the Marathas could be convinced to switch sides and join the British - with promising developments shown by the Treaty of Salbar which had put an end to the Anglo-Maratha war, and evident Maratha concern over Mysore’s startling successes.

Suffren had anticipated a British move to attempt to land an army on the Carnatic coast, and so was caught by surprise by the British attack which quickly seized Trincomalee in a coup de main. Potentially worse was yet to follow, for the French quickly assembled their fleet and a variety of transports to retake the lost port and set sail soon thereafter from Madras, but during the night of 14 February, 1783, the British fleet had by chance gotten in between the French fleet and their transports, so that when the sun rose the French had to attack the British or face the loss of their troop convoy. Thus began the confused battle of Kokilai.

Suffren’s fleet attacked in a ragged disorder, with Suffren himself, in the center, attacking the most fiercely, with only 6 of his ships engaged directly at first, although the rest joined up more irregularly throughout the rest of the day. Fighting was fierce in the center, but it looked as if by nightfall, things would be indecisive and end - except that the French continued to press their attack, and in the confused fighting in the darkness, and the French ship Vengeur managed to cut in between the Monarca and the Superb, raking the former, and the two assumed that the other was the attacking French ship and started cannonading each other. The rest of Hughe’s fleet managed to make its way to Trincomalee, but both Monarca and Superb were captured in the confused night time fighting, and the ships Gibraltar and Africa run aground, shattering the capability of the British fleet to stand against the French in open combat. Although Hughe’s fleet was in a skillful and well conducted retreat capable of extricating itself, and in some brilliant sailing made its way to Bombay, Tricomalee was recaptured and it was the last major naval battle in the Indian Ocean during the war, as the British retreated to Calcutta and spent the remainder of the conflict until June when news of peace in Europe arrived engaged largely in local commerce protection, bothered largely only by the occasional French privateer.

For Hughes it was quite a very personal disaster. Hughes was a good admiral facing a near impossible situation with the loss of most of his bases, failing ground forces, and a competent enemy in a better strategic position, and he hardly deserved the fate that was meted out to him, when after the war vengeful government had him executed as a scapegoat under spurious claims of him having failed to do his utmost - replaying the fate of John Byng 30 years before, or Thomas Arthur, the French officer executed in 1766 by the French after their own lost war in India. Another victim claimed by the land of burning sun and riches.

By the end of 1782, Pondicherry had been retaken by the Mysoreans for the French, Negapatam secured, and Madras was firmly under the control of the allies, leaving Haider Ali and the French the master of the entire Karnatic. Haider Ali would not have long to enjoy the fruits of his victory: on December 7th, 1782, he perished from a cancerous tumor on his back, leaving his son, Sultan Fateh Ali Sahab Tipu, the new sultan of Mysore, an ambitious young man, both intensely competent and energetic, fresh from a major victory at Mandalore but with a streak of fanaticism about him quite different from a father more capable of seeing gray and nuance. Tipu inherited the strongest state in Southern India, stretching from the border of Portuguese Goa in the west and along the Mandalore coast, to the expanses of the Carnatic in the east - but his suzerainty would still have to wait to be confirmed by a subsequent peace treaty. 1783 only served to reinforce these trends with the British defeat in Ceylon.

On his deathbed, Haidar Ali left behind a letter to Tipu, warning him about the dangers of the British and arguing for eternal vigilance:

India since the death of Aurangzeb, has lost her rank among the empires of Asia. This fair land is parceled out into provinces which make war against the other; the people divided into a multitude of sects, have lost their love of the country. The Hindus…are little able to defend their country, which has become the prey of strangers…The greatest obstacle you have to conquer is jealousy of the Europeans. The English have lost this war, but they can just as well return tomorrow. It is necessary to always be on your guard against them, to never let your attention falter. The resources of Hindustan do not suffice to expel them from the lands they have invaded. Pit the nations of Europe one against the other. It is by the aid of the French that you could conquer the British armies which are better trained than the Indian. The Europeans have surer tactics; always use against them their own weapons.*

Wise counsel, but it came from a man who had faced the British before in the First Anglo-Mysore War and was acutely conscious of the sheer ferocious, dogged power of the British: his son, coming of age into power upon the wave of victory and with his armies having marched from sea to shining sea, would not have his father’s acute sense of caution…

For the French and Dutch, the campaign had been a miraculous resuscitation of their fortunes, with both threatened by British advance. France in particular, had reasons to adulate Suffren, who emerged as one of the greatest French naval heroes from the war, and the only one whose hard-fighting aggressive tactics endeared him with the public, unlike De Grasse - an excellent admiral strategically but much less dramatic tactically, and who suffered a painful defeat in the Battle of the Saintes. In his brief campaign Suffren had inflicted two crippling defeats on the Royal Navy, driven them from their prized port of Madras, recaptured Pondicherry, and saved France's ally’s possessions of Negapatam and the Cape Colony. For Paris, it appeared as a miraculous return of their fortunes after disaster in the Seven Years’ War.

The Dutch had less reason to rejoice. Certainly, their fortunes at Negapatam had been rescued by the French campaign, which had retaken their trading post for them, while British power which had threatened to drive the Dutch either commercially or fully from the region, evincing them from Ceylon and the East Indies, had been held at bay, leading to the possibility of a status quo ante bellum - but it was difficult to ignore that the Dutch themselves had only had a miniscule role in the fighting in the East, and until French and Mysorean intervention had saved them, they faced utter ruin. Domestically, like the French they faced severe internal issues, as shown by the Dutch navy’s refusal to sortie and fight, and there was no after-glow of victory to hide this like with the catastrophic French financial situation. Not as evident, but still worrisome for the Dutch, was the destruction of something approaching a balance of power in Southern India, where Mysorean-British opposition kept Dutch interests in Travancore somewhat safe. Now, the annihilation of British power threatened to leave the Dutch completely isolated in the region, and powerless to defend its interests. With the clear weakness of the Dutch revealed, only the French seemed capable of defending them...

For Britain, it was a grim portrait. The campaign had seen two full British armies wiped out, catastrophically undermining British military prestige. Their once preponderant position in the Carnatic had been destroyed, Madras had fallen again just like in 1746, the Royal Navy defeated, and British trade in the Bay of Bengal was decimated by raiding French ships. The execution of the innocent admiral Hughes did nothing to assuage the British public, nor the British moneyed classes, despairing over the collapse of East India Company prices on the London stock market. Coming soon after major setbacks against the Marathas with the surrender of an entire British army at Wadgaon (although allowed to escape by the Marathas in subsequent negotiations), and the collapse of the British Empire in the Thirteen Provinces, it seemed as if the entire basis of British power had collapsed, and that the preceding twenty years had all been a dream before the nightmare of the present.

*A historical letter, slightly edited to reflect the fact that the Mysoreans have actually won here.

 

[Harshavardhana]

Cool. Would love to see where this goes in the next chapter.

The Marathas would actually be the key so to speak since on the top of my head native Indian armies had started absorbing European military tactics with Indian flavours to them quiet quickly. It's the poor leadership of the various kingdoms and empires that saw the wholesale fall of the regions to the British.

 

[Sardar]

Another nice chapter.

Love that letter. Where did you source it from?