Know Your City: The siege of 1791, when British cannons and bared bayonets descended upon Bangalore | Bangalore News

Just over a decade earlier, 3,800 soldiers commanded by Colonel William Baillie were cut off en route to a larger British force in Kanchipuram and ambushed by the Mysore forces at Pollilur. While they had initially managed to defend against several Mysorean cavalry attacks, the British quickly became a target for cannons and Tipu Sultan’s famous rockets. The colonel’s younger brother wrote afterwards that for over an hour, the British were “exposed to the hottest cannonade that was ever known in India.” They soon sustained thousands of casualties, with the survivors being captured.

But the Mysore that Britain faced in 1791 was not the same that had humiliated it at Pollilur. For instance, Hyder Ali was no more. While his son Tipu Sultan was, like his father, a seasoned battlefield commander, he did not share Hyder Ali’s diplomatic capability. Hyder Ali had managed to ensure that the forces of the Nizam and the Marathas were either neutral or nominally on his side for the most part when war against the British ensued. Tipu Sultan had turned these major powers against him.

To effectively attack Tipu Sultan in his island fortress at Srirangapatna, Bengaluru could not be left as a threat in the British ‘rear’, and Earl Charles Cornwallis therefore moved to capture it. Lt Col EWC Sandes writes in The Military Engineer in India, “Bangalore, like Madras, had a fort, with a pettah, or fortified town, outside it. This layout was a feature of almost all the cities or settlements in India… The fort at Bangalore had a perimeter of about one mile; it was of solid masonry, surrounded by a wide ditch which was commanded from 26 towers placed at intervals along the ramparts. To its north lay the pettah, several miles in circumference and protected by an indifferent rampart, a deep belt of thorn and cactus, and a small ditch. Altogether, Bangalore was not a place which invited attack. But Cornwallis had no choice in the matter.” His move against Bangalore began in March.

The British had to capture the pettah or town before moving against the fort, which had been reinforced with stone since its original construction by Kempe Gowda. But neither the garrison nor the Sultan would allow this uncontested – Tipu Sultan himself was present, organising constant harassment of the British positions with raids and rockets. The British initially breached the northern gate of the pettah, but not without the loss of the senior officer, Lt Col Moorhouse, who was killed alongside several other British soldiers by gunfire from Mysorean positions on nearby turrets and houses.

Initial casualties notwithstanding, the British soon captured a large portion of the town of Bangalore. But apart from the loss of the town itself, a huge quantity of military supplies fell into the hands of the British, greatly assisting their efforts. Contrary to the orders of Tipu, these supplies had not been destroyed to prevent them from being captured. Roderick Mckenzie, who wrote a detailed account of the siege from the British perspective, gives us an idea of what the city looked like back then: “There are many streets laid out with regularity, and of great width, few towns of Hindustan can boast of better houses, or of richer inhabitants…”

By no means was Tipu Sultan content to leave the pettah in British hands – 6.000 troops were dispatched to reinforce the Bangalore Fort while giving the appearance of attacking the British camp. However, the trick was seen through by Cornwallis, who sent the 36th and 76th regiments to block the Mysoreans from reinforcing their comrades. The battle devolved into a close-range struggle, and the Mysore soldiers were repulsed with a few hundred casualties. Even in retreat, they inflicted heavy casualties on the men of the 76th while fighting for every inch of defensible ground.

Having established several batteries of cannons to smash the defences of the Fort, the British finally took it by storm through a surprise night attack on March 21. The Pioneers, who later became today’s Madras Engineering Group, were said to be foremost in the attack.

Among the numerous dead Mysoreans, one won the admiration of the British who had fought him – the Qiledar or fort commander, the aged Bahadur Khan. Mckenzie recalls in his writings that, “True to his trust, he resigned it with life, after receiving almost as many wounds as were inflicted on Caesar… wounds all received from before (the front) and close to the point of attack, clearly declared that this resolute Mogul, besides a firm attachment to his Prince, possessed the genuine spirit of a soldier.”

Mckenzie records that when Lord Cornwallis had offered to return the Qiledar’s body after the capture of Bangalore, Tipu Sultan had replied that there was no better place for him to be buried than that which he had given his life defending. The Qiledar’s funeral was also attended by the Muslim soldiers serving in the British army at the time, “with every mark of respect and attention.”

The success of the night attack could not have come at a better time for the British – at this point, they had exhausted most of their grain supplies, ammunition for heavy cannons, as well as hundreds of losses in the cattle used for transportation.

The loss of Bangalore marked a major downturn in Tipu Sultan’s war effort. Apart from the capture of 85 usable cannons (including French, Spanish, and captured English guns), the British had also captured a huge quantity of ammunition. Extensive gunpowder factories had also been present in Bangalore, along with facilities for manufacturing gun barrels.