breach and the discovery of the murdered prisoners, were not inclined to give quarter. When we later consider Wellesley’s inflexible view of discipline, we must remember the sounds that drifted through that sultry night as the victors remorselessly looted and raped in Seringapatam.
Early the next day, Wellesley was ordered to take command of Seringapatam. Baird had already asked to be relieved because he was physically exhausted – although he later claimed to have cancelled this request – and Wellesley, although not, strictly speaking the next brigade commander for duty, was appointed, probably because Barry Close, Harris’s adjutant-general, had a high opinion of him. Wellesley went straight to Baird’s headquarters in Tipoo’s summer palace, outside the fort, and told Baird that he had been superseded. Baird, breakfasting with his staff, snapped ‘Come, Gentlemen, we have no longer any business here.’ ‘Oh,’ replied Wellesley, ‘pray finish your breakfast.’16 Wellesley later told John Wilson Croker that:
I never inquired the reason for my appointment, or for Baird being laid aside. There were many other candidates besides Baird and myself, all senior to me, some to Baird. But I must say that I was the fit person to be selected. I had commanded the Nizam’s army during the campaign, and had given universal satisfaction. I was liked by the natives.
He added that:
Baird was a gallant, hard-headed, lion-hearted officer, but he had no talent, no tact, had strong prejudices against the natives; and he was peculiarly disqualified from his manners, habits &c., and it was supposed his temper, for the management of them.
Although Baird fiercely resented his supersession, in 1813 he told Sir John Malcolm that he had long since forgiven Wellesley, and: ‘His fame is now to me joy, and I may also say glory, and his kindness to me and mine has all along been most distinguished.’17
As soon as Wellesley was in command, he went into Seringapatam to restore order: four soldiers were hanged and others flogged. He was soon writing to Harris that ‘plunder is stopped, the fires are all extinguished, and the inhabitants are returning to their houses fast’. He asked Harris ‘to order an extra dram and biscuit for the 12th, 33rd and 73rd regiments, who got nothing to eat yesterday, and were wet last night’ and emphasised that the place needed a permanent garrison with its own commander. Harris decided that Wellesley was the man for the job. The governor-general had already declared that when Tipoo was beaten, his policy would be one of conciliation, and Wellesley had made a very good start. A commission with military and civilian members had been appointed at the start of the campaign to run affairs in captured territory, and after the fall of Seringapatam a new commission was set up, its members including Arthur and Henry Wellesley.
Although Arthur’s direct responsibilities were at first confined to Seringapatam island, he was soon not only head of the commission, but, as the main armies withdrew, the senior military officer in the region. When the commission was dissolved he retained power, warning the governor-general that he would not accept ‘any person with civil authority who is not under my orders’. Lieutenant Colonel Barry Close, who he regarded as ‘the ablest man in the Company’s army’ was sent down as Resident, an arrangement which worked well. A five-year-old boy, the closest surviving descendent of the line of Hindu rajahs which had been overthrown by Hyder Ali, was appointed ruler of Mysore, with Purneah, an able man who had served Hyder Ali with distinction, as his chief minister.
Arthur Wellesley had played a principal part in winning a significant victory and had gone on to wield exceptional power for a thirty-year-old colonel. He had also been paid £4,000 of the prize money distributed when the proceeds of the victory were divided up, the shares varying with rank: Harris received £150,000, a British soldier £7, and a sepoy £5. Although Arthur had still not received the allowances to cover his campaign expenses, he immediately offered to repay Mornington ‘the money which you advanced to pay my lieutenant-colonelcy, and that which was borrowed from Captain Stapleton on our joint bond’.18 Richard generously replied that: ‘I am not in want of money and probably never shall be: when I am, it will be time enough to call upon you.’19 But the governor-general was not at his best. Although his hoped-for marquessate had arrived at last, he was Marquess Wellesley of Norragh – in the peerage of Ireland. It was, as he called it, a ‘double-gilt potato’. ‘As I felt confident there had been nothing Irish or pinchbeck in my conduct or its results,’ he wrote, ‘I felt an equal confidence that there should be nothing Irish or pinchbeck in its rewards.’20
Arthur dealt with the myriad of military and political issues that crossed his writing-desk in Tipoo’s cool and spacious summer palace, whose wonderful murals – some of which depicted the British being roundly beaten by Hyder Ali and his French allies – were restored on his orders. He denied a request from a French priest to have 200 Christian women who had been carried off by Tipoo ‘in the most indecent and tyrannical manner’ returned to their homes. This refusal was, he admitted, unjust, but they were currently living with Tipoo’s family, and as the Company had undertaken to protect the family, sending the women home would have been a breach of faith. He pondered the composition of courts, civil and military, though the demonstrative nature of justice was never far from his mind: ‘the criminals shall be executed after the facts have been clearly ascertained by an examination of witnesses …’21 He dealt sternly with officers who stole or accepted bribes, and although they sometimes had reason to complain of the slowness of the rajah’s government, ‘they had none to ill-use any man’. One senior officer whose conduct towards the Indians had caused complaint was warned that ‘he must either act as he ought, or he shall be removed from his command’.22 Yet Wellesley was moved to pity by the case of one of the Company’s lieutenant colonels, convicted of ‘very serious crimes’ before a general court-martial and stripped of his commission. Wellesley observed that when he had repaid the Company the money he owed it, he would be entirely destitute. Wellesley begged the governor of Madras ‘to give him some small pension to enable him to support himself, or … recommend him for some small provision … on account of his long services and his present reduced situation’.23
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.’24 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
