Art
When the British fought the four bloody and back-breaking Mysore wars in central southern India in the 18th century, a disproportionate number of Scotsmen took active, often leading, roles. I say "disproportionate" because, after the failed Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745, the first kilted regiment to be ordered abroad by London simply mutinied. Evidently they shunned fighting the battles of the English crown in faraway lands, seeing scant reward in helping to buttress the sprawling fiefdom of the East India Company.
However, public perception of events in the subcontinent gradually changed, not least because of French colonialist ambitions there and a growing awareness of the spoils to be won. So the traditionally canny Scots decided this was one foreign field that might yield handsome commercial dividends. Seaforth Highlanders and the First Battalion, 73rd Highland Foot, were raised specifically for the continuing Mysore campaigns.
These would-be conquering heroes can hardly have anticipated the ruthless resistance they met from Tipu Sultan (1750-99). The tyrannical "Tiger of Mysore" was so named because he obsessively decorated almost everything he possessed with the stylised tiger-stripe motif called the bubris, which looks more like an elongated leaf. He built on the dynasty founded by his father, Haidar Ali, and between them they held the British at bay for 50 years, until Tipu was killed at Seringapatam, his capital, on 4 May 1799. With his death, a legend was born, and now, to coincide with the Edinburgh Festival, the National Gallery of Scotland has mounted an ambitious and thoroughly impressive exhibition marking the 200th anniversary of Tipu's demise.
The British had lost the first two Mysore wars. At the battle of Pollilur, in 1780, described as "the most grievous disaster [to] befall the British arms in India", the British force was surrounded by the Haidar-Tipu troops. Ironically, after the allied commander, Sir Hector Munro, waved a handkerchief on his sword and asked for quarter, it was only the intervention of French officers fighting with Tipu that prevented wholesale slaughter. The Haidar-Tipu cavalry were "drunk from the fumes of opium", while allied troops were fortified before these occasions with nothing more than "a cheering dram and a biscuit".
The British were gradually pushing the French out of India, but they stayed long enough to precipitate Tipu's rout and death in 1799. There was an omen for Tipu Sultan in the third Mysore war, of 1790. Lord Cornwallis's forces got tantalisingly near Seringapatam but were beaten more by the "bullocks [for transport], money and faithful spies [which were] the sinews of war" in India than by Tipu's considerable military skills. The British were partially successful in this third campaign, and Cornwallis extracted huge concessions from Tipu, even taking two of his sons hostage. He assured them that "every possible attention would be shewn to them . . . Their little faces lightened up." They were not harmed, but Robert Home's fine painting of Cornwallis gently receiving them is a sly masterpiece of colonialist propaganda.
The exhibition, with its celebration of Scottishness and its exquisite paintings, artefacts and manuscripts from both the British and Indian sides, makes clear that Tipu brought the fourth war, which killed him, on himself. He had asked the French to send troops, and British sources intercepted a sympathetic letter from Napoleon. The British declared war on 3 February 1799. Three months later British troops pulled Tipu's body from beneath a pile of corpses on the battlefield. As the press at home was quick to trumpet, the British Lion had triumphed over the Indian Tiger.
If naked jingoism ran riot, Tipu had shown he could be a brutal foe. After Pollilur, British captives who died were taken out and tied to stakes as tiger fodder and the POWs were led off, chained in pairs. They included the British commander, Major General Sir David Baird. According to Walter Scott, who alludes to Tipu in several of his novels, Baird's mother exclaimed: "Pity the poor man who is chained to Oor Davie!"
It was Baird who was later to find Tipu dead, and the exhibition features Sir David Wilkie's renowned picture of him discovering the body. Perhaps the most beautiful painting on show, however, is a 32-foot-long panorama, by an unknown Indian artist, of the British hopelessly fenced in by Tipu's troops at Pollilur. We see "Tipu's tiger", a grotesque "musical model" (which also emitted roars and screams) of a tiger devouring a hapless British officer. There are cartoons, handbills and satirical pamphlets about Tipu defeated. At least one entrepreneur staged a play-cum-circus about the events. Turner and Cotman were among several artists who painted the Tipu story without ever having been anywhere near India. As Scott has one of his characters remark: "My good friend, you will tell us about [events in India] all the better that you know nothing of what you are saying."
"The Tiger and the Thistle: Tipu Sultan and the Scots in India c1760-1800" is at the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, until 3 October. An illustrated catalogue is available for £12.95. For information tel: 0131-556 8921
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