The novel’s description of the city’s fall is mostly accurate. Two Forlorn Hopes, one headed by the unfortunate Sergeant Graham, led two columns of attacking troops across the wide South Cauvery and up the breach, and there the columns separated, one going north about the city’s outer ramparts and the other south. Major General David Baird commanded the assault, and he, judging in the heat of battle that the resistance to the south was more formidable, turned that way. In fact the northern column encountered the stiffest
opposition, most probably caused by the Tippoo’s own leadership. Many eyewitnesses, from both sides, testified to the Tippoo’s personal bravery. He was gaudily dressed and bright with gems, but he insisted on fighting in the front rank of his men. Further difficulties were caused by the defenders firing from the inner wall’s sheltered firestep, and it was not until Captain Goodall, the commander of the 12th Regiment’s Light Company, had led his men across the buttressing cross-wall and so began the capture of the inner ramparts that the defence collapsed. The fight was short, but exceptionally bloody, causing 1400 casualties among the attackers and over 6000 from the Tippoo’s troops.
I did take one great liberty with the historical facts of the assault. There was no disused western gateway, nor any mine either, but the idea for the mine came from an enormous and spectacular explosion which occurred in the city two days before the assault. It is believed that a British shell somehow ignited one of the Tippoo’s magazines, which then blew up. I changed the nature of that explosion, and delayed it by two days, because fictional heroes must be given suitable employment.
There were a few French troops in Seringapatam, but Nelson’s victory at the Nile had effectively ended any real chance of French intervention in India. Colonel Gudin is a fictional character, though someone very like him did lead a small French battalion in the battle. Others of the novel’s characters, like Colonel Gent, did exist. Major Shee, a somewhat intemperate and unfortunate Irishman, commanded the 33rd during the time Wellesley served as one of Harris’s deputies and Lieutenant Fitzgerald, brother of the Knight of Kerry, was killed in the confused night attack on the Sultan-petah tope, probably by a bayonet thrust. That setback was Wellesley’s only military defeat and it gave him a lifelong aversion to night actions. Major General Baird did dislike Wellesley and fiercely resented the fact that General Harris
appointed the younger man to be the Governor of Seringapatam after the siege, although, given Baird’s hatred of the Indians, the appointment was undoubtedly wise. Baird’s jealousy lasted many years, though in his later life the Scotsman generously admitted that Wellesley was his military superior. By then, of course, Arthur Wellesley had become the first Duke of Wellington. In 1815 only Napoleon still regarded Wellington with contempt, dubbing him the ‘Sepoy General’, but the Sepoy General still whipped Napoleon.
The Tippoo Sultan, of course, existed. His defeat was celebrated in Britain where the Tippoo was regarded as a peculiarly brutal and ferocious despot and for years afterwards, despite many other momentous victories over much more formidable enemies, the British still harked back to the Tippoo’s defeat and death. The event was celebrated in numerous prints, it was turned into at least six stage plays and it occupied many books, all tributes to the curious fascination the Tippoo exercised over his erstwhile enemies. Yet his death, despite being pictured and re-enacted so many times, was never fully explained because no one ever discovered who exactly killed him (it was most probably a soldier of the lath’s Grenadier Company). The Tippoo’s body was found, but his killer never came forward and it is presumed that this reticence was caused by the man’s unwillingness to admit to ownership of the Tippoo’s jewels. Where many of those jewels are today, no one knows.
But much of the Tippoo’s grandeur can still be seen. The Inner Palace of Seringapatam, alas, was demolished in the nineteenth century (local guides insist it was destroyed by the British bombardment, but in fact the building survived the siege intact) and all that remains of its splendour are a few ruined walls and some pillars which now support the canopy of Sriringapatna’s railway station, but the Summer Palace, the Daria Dowlat, still exists. The mural of the British defeat at Pollilur was restored by Wellesley, who lived in this