Last Nizam (9781742626109) Read online

  Salabat Jung soon found out there was a price attached to the privilege of French protection. Although de Bussy’s contingent was always paid on time, Salabat Jung had to borrow from local moneylenders to pay for his own troops. Not for the last time would the treasury run dry in order to pay a foreign force ostensibly there for the Nizam’s protection, but in reality asserting European dominance over Hyderabad.

  The outbreak of the Seven Years’ War between the British and the French in 1756 had important ramifications for India as a whole and the Deccan in particular. Seen as too ambitious and divisive, Dupleix was recalled to Paris. Two years later de Bussy was also told to withdraw his forces from Hyderabad. With de Bussy gone, Salabat Jung was left fatally weakened.

  The main players in the competition for control of India’s trade were also changing. Robert Clive, who had risen through the ranks from a lowly Company writer to a brilliant general, now entered the picture. In 1758 a small force sent by Clive from Bengal invaded the Northern Circars. The French forces were defeated. Feeling exposed, Salabat Jung promised the district to the British in exchange for their military protection. But Salabat Jung’s vacillations cost him the support of his nobles and he was thrown into prison in the fortress of Bidar on 6 July 1762, where he was eventually strangled.

  In 1762, after 14 turbulent years during which the map of southern India was redrawn a dozen times, the Mughal Emperor in Delhi issued a farman recognising Nizam Ali Khan as the rightful heir to the Asaf Jahi dynasty and proclaimed him the Second Nizam. The fourth son of Nizam ul-Mulk, Nizam Ali Khan was 28 years old when he took power. Over succeeding generations the Nizams grew more corpulent and their jewellery more extravagant as they increasingly left the running of the state to others and indulged in more sensuous pursuits. But Nizam Ali Khan was clearly a fighting man. He dispensed with his father’s long, white beard, but maintained the carefully manicured moustache that his successors adopted. Of all the Nizams, Mukarram Jah most closely resembles this great ancestor. They share the same prominent chin, resolute gaze and deeply furrowed eyebrows and prominent Turkoman nose. Nizam Ali Khan was destined to become the second-longest-serving ruler of the Asaf Jahi dynasty and the last to lead its armies into battle, but his longevity and military prowess did not translate into glory for the Nizam’s Dominions.

  Though he had come to power with the support of the East India Company, Nizam Ali Khan believed the British had no right to rule over the kingdoms of southern India. For their part the British constantly derided the Nizam and exploited his weaknesses to their full advantage in their skirmishes with the French. In military matters he would prove to be a poor strategist and his insistence on going into every battle with his extensive zenana nearly cost him his empire and his life. James Kirkpatrick, who served as the British Resident in Hyderabad around the turn of the century, found Nizam Ali Khan to be ‘a Prince who though not endowed with either splendid talents or great mental resources, has proved himself on some trying occasions not deficient in those arts which are considered in the East as constituting the essence of Government . . . His defects as a warrior are amply compensated by his skill as a politician.’18

  Too weak to take on the East India Company by force, but too ambitious to give up pretensions of power, Nizam Ali Khan’s constantly shifting interests and alliances so frustrated the British that they ultimately forced him to sign no fewer than six treaties to keep him in line. By the end of the century he had played into their hands so completely that the East India Company was the strongest power in southern India and the leading trading conglomerate in the world. For its part, Hyderabad became the largest and most important princely state in India, but its independence would be nominal.

  After his inauguration, the Nizam’s first priority was to restore some of the territory lost to the French and the British following the death of the Nizam ul-Mulk. For their part the British wanted to strengthen their hold over the Northern Circars because of the protection they provided for Madras. In November 1766, the first of a series of treaties between ‘the great Nawab, high in station, famous as the Sun, Nawab Asaf Jah Nizam Ali Khan’ and the East India Company was signed in Hyderabad. Under the treaty the Northern Circars were ceded to the English, who agreed to pay the Nizam a rent of 900,000 rupees a year. They also agreed to furnish the Nizam with a ‘body of their troops ready to settle the affairs of His Highness’s Government in everything that is right and proper, whenever required’. In return for the protection of what became known as the Subsidiary Force, the Nizam was obliged to raise a corps of troops should the English require it.19

  The terms of this treaty were very favourable compared with those that followed. Nizam Ali Khan had yet to commit the tactical blunders that would increasingly strengthen the Company’s stranglehold. However, its Court of Directors in London did not have long to wait.

  Even as he was negotiating the treaty’s terms with the British, Nizam Ali Khan was setting aside half a century of hostilities and conducting secret talks with the Marathas on a new military alliance. The reason for the change of heart towards his most bitter foes was the emergence in Mysore of a powerful new dynasty. Located to the south of Hyderabad, the ancient Hindu kingdom of Mysore was now the fiefdom of a Muslim nobleman and military adventurer called Haider Ali and his son Tipu Sultan. With the help of French mercenaries Haider Ali had built up a formidable army and was looking to expand his territories.

  Having secured the support of the Marathas, the Nizam called on the British to join an alliance to attack Mysore. Alarmed by Haider Ali’s conquest of Kerala and fearing that the Carnatic was next on his list, the British agreed to send a body of troops to help in the campaign. The Nizam’s motives for calling on his old adversaries the Marathas and burying the hatchet with the British were based entirely on self-interest and self-preservation. He needed the Marathas’ military strength, but also wanted to keep the English on his side in order to ensure a favourable division of the spoils of battle.

  When Nizam Ali Khan set out from Hyderabad with 17,000 of his own troops and 10,000 Maratha soldiers paid for out of his treasury in January 1767, Haider Ali decided his best defence was bribery. The Maratha leader was bought off for 3.5 million rupees plus land, but the Nizam proved harder to sway. He wanted 5 million rupees, but Haider Ali was only prepared to give 2 million. The Nizam, however, had other grievances that the ruler of Mysore proved adept at exploiting. It was already March and the troops promised by the British in December had yet to arrive. As the commander of the British forces later concluded gloomily, Haider Ali’s ‘treasure (I am afraid) has found its way here, sooner than our troops’.20 The Nizam also felt he had been cheated by the East India Company into ceding the Northern Circars. He had never attacked any of the Company’s settlements or interfered with their trade, yet in return they had seized the Circars at gunpoint. As the Madras Government later conceded, the Nizam could be forgiven for believing that: ‘Once possessed of them as renters we might be tempted to keep them as Lords.’21

  When the Madras army finally reached the Nizam’s encampment on 13 April 1767 for the three-pronged assault on Haider Ali, they were shocked to find that the Marathas were nowhere to be seen and the Nizam had changed sides. ‘I blush when I think of the degree of contempt I was treated with, considering my Station and those I represented,’ the commander of the British forces Lieutenant Colonel Charles Tod wrote to his superior Colonel Joseph Smith.22 The Madras Government had suspected the Nizam might return to Hyderabad, but they never believed he would enter into an offensive alliance with a power he set out to control. They now found that he was preparing to fight the Company forces. ‘What you deem treachery in Nizam Ally,’ the Court of Directors later explained to the Governor in Madras, ‘is nothing more than his ideas of his own interest which most probably is, that an alliance with Hyder Ally will be the best security he can have against the Marathas.’23

  In the end, Haider Ali had been able to buy off the Nizam quite cheaply. So defect
ive were Nizam Ali Khan’s forces in arms, discipline and pay that Haider Ali secured his acquiescence for a mere 600,000 rupees a month for the duration of the war. In August 1767 their combined forces swept across the Ghats in what was to be the first of four wars against the British for the control of Mysore. Meeting only sporadic resistance, the Mysore forces were soon at the gates of Madras and by the end of September were ‘scampering about’ in the gardens of the Company’s villas around St Thomas’s Mount.24 The British, however, gave Haider a severe beating at Tiruvannamalai. The Nizam had proved to be a useless ally.

  Determined to teach the Nizam a lesson, the British decided to send a military force to invade the largely undefended city of Hyderabad. Fearful of losing his capital, the Nizam again switched sides and sent his representatives to Madras to negotiate a new treaty. This time the British were not as generous. Under the treaty of ‘Perpetual Friendship and Alliance’ signed on 26 February 1768, Nizam Ali Khan was made to cede the Northern Circars to the East India Company and pay war expenses of 2.5 million rupees, which was to be deducted from the annual peshkash (tribute) of 700,000 rupees over six years. It was also agreed that in the case of another outbreak of hostilities with Mysore, the forces of the Nizam and the Marathas ‘in number not less than 25,000 but as many more and as much greater an equipment as may be’ should immediately invade his Dominions and ‘seriously and vigorously’ prosecute the war. Unlike the previous treaty, the Nizam was now made to pay for the privilege of having British troops in his territory whether he needed them or not. The Nizam was also forced to declare Haider Ali ‘an usurper, a rebel, a restless and troublesome man’ and revoke all treaties with him.25

  The signing of the treaty did little to allay the fears of the Bombay Government as to the Nizam’s intentions. There were ‘evident signs of an intention to keep the late peace as ill as he did the former’, the Records of Fort William noted. ‘Notwithstanding the most scrupulous exactness on our part in observing the treaty . . . Nizam Ally will pay little or no regard to his engagement if any opportunity offers to give us trouble.’26

  If there was a strategy behind the signing of this treaty and other moves the East India Company was making in southern India at the time, it can be found in the East India Board minutes of 17 November 1867:

  The grand point we ought to aim at is to have the Carnatic, Mysore country and the Deccan so much under our influence that no disputes or jealousies may arise between the several governing powers, and that we may be able by this system to lay the foundation of internal tranquillity in these countries by which means alone the Marathas can be kept in bounds.27

  Although their aims were clearly spelled out, the British lacked a coherent strategy to achieve them. They were challenged by the shifting alliances of the sub-continent, they felt vulnerable to attack and were constantly looking over their shoulder to try to ascertain the views of the French. They were also prey to political machinations in London between the Directors of the East India Company and the British Government, as well as events overseas such as France’s intervention on the side of the colonists in the American War of Independence.

  The Nizam, meanwhile, was planning his revenge. In 1778 he opened secret correspondence with Nana Phadnavis, the ‘Maratha Machiavelli’ Prime Minister, on creating a grand alliance against the British. ‘We shall manage the English by means of the French whose Vackeel is with us, with who we have entered into a Treaty,’ Nana wrote to the Nizam in August 1778. ‘After the present Disturbances are quelled we shall call in his Troops, act in the most vigorous manner, to be a future example to others.’28 Unfortunately for both men the letter was intercepted by the British, as was the Nizam’s reply a few months later. ‘I will repair in person to you, and rouse that bad race from their Dream of Security, and overthrow all their ambitious designs.’29

  The contents of the letters and other intelligence that the Governor-General Warren Hastings collected made for disturbing reading. The ‘Vackeel’ Nana was referring to was the French agent Chevalier de St Lubin who had been favourably received in Pune in 1777. The French, Hastings believed, had ‘seized on the only means by which they can ever be formidable to us in India’. He immediately began to consider plans to ‘avert the dreadful consequences’ of their designs.30

  Those designs were complicated by the formation in 1780 of a powerful confederacy comprising the Nizam, the Marathas and Haider Ali. All three held strong grudges against the British and now they conspired to attack all three presidencies – Bombay, Madras and Bengal – simultaneously. Nana Phadnavis and Maratha military chieftain Madhaji Sindia were to attack Bombay, the Nizam and Haider Ali would march on Madras, while Bhonsle, the Maratha ruler of Nagpur, would take on Bengal. The depth of the Nizam’s hatred towards the British at this time was apparent in a letter he wrote to the Mughal Emir Najaf Khan in September 1780:

  The World is now involved in calamities through the turbulence of the English; the deceits of this wicked nation are spread over the whole Empire . . . A handful of people without a head of foundation have possessed themselves of the three richest Provinces in the Empire, every one of which is equal to a Kingdom, a set of merchants without a name and scarcely known have engrossed and disposed of as they please.31

  Such ‘extorted and palliated confessions’32 were enough to convince Hastings that the Nizam was behind the formation of the confederacy, but he also knew the dangers of alienating Hyderabad’s ruler. Nizam Ali Khan was now at the height of his power, successfully playing off the British against the French. Through the confederacy he was threatening the very future of the East India Company’s presence on the sub-continent. With Haider Ali’s troops now marching once again towards the Carnatic and the Nizam threatening to join them, Hastings had to act fast. Through the skilful mix of military force, diplomacy and a little bribery, Hastings managed to avert disaster. Pune was brought to heel by the unexpected arrival of six sepoy battalions that had been marched all the way from Bengal, and Nagpur’s leader was bought off. Hastings also sacked the controversial Governor of Madras, Sir Thomas Rumbold, and reappointed the British Resident John Holland in Hyderabad, who had been suspended by the Madras Government. Impressed by Hastings’ evident good faith, the Nizam abandoned his hostile intentions.

  Hastings was replaced as Governor-General in 1786 by Lord Cornwallis, who arrived in India fresh from his surrender to George Washington at Yorktown during the American War of Independence. Although Hastings had restored the East India Company’s fortunes in India, he left some unfinished business. Cornwallis’s intention from the moment of his arrival was to go to war against Tipu Sultan, but first he needed to build up alliances with Hyderabad and the Marathas. Then he needed a pretext.

  The trigger for the Third Maratha War was what Cornwallis described as an attack on Travancore in December 1789. Tipu Sultan denied there had been an attack, describing it as a skirmish, but instead of backing off, he followed the skirmish up with a full-scale invasion. Cornwallis reacted by instructing his Residents in Pune and Hyderabad to bring the Marathas and the Nizam into a tripartite alliance against Mysore and assemble the strongest possible armies to press an attack.

  Appointed Resident of Hyderabad in 1788, John Kennaway was considered to be ‘a gentleman well acquainted with the country, languages and customs’.33 An ex-grammar-school boy, he arrived in India in 1772 and rose quickly through the Company’s ranks. Under the terms of the treaty concluded with the Nizam in July 1790, which was almost identical to one signed with the Peshwa of Pune, it was agreed that Hyderabad would wage war separately against Tipu Sultan. Both treaties contained clauses that bound the peshwa and the Nizam to each send on demand 10,000 cavalry to operate with the British. In return the British would supply them with two detachments of battalion strength. Each party would receive a third of the share of any territory captured during the campaign.

  This time the Nizam kept to his side of the bargain, but his forces moved so slowly that it was April before they final
ly joined Cornwallis’s at Kottapalli, some 140 kilometres north of Bangalore. According to the nineteenth-century historian Mark Wilks, the Nizam’s cavalry, numbering 10,000 to 15,000 men, was one of the most bizarre forces ever assembled on the sub continent. ‘It is probable that no national or private collection of ancient armour in Europe contains any weapon or article of personal equipment which might not be traced in this motley crowd,’ wrote Wilks. ‘The Parthian bow and arrow, the iron club of Scythia, sabres of every age and nation, lances of every length and description, metallic helmets of every pattern, simple defences of the head, a steel bar descending diagonally as a protection to the face; defences of bars, scales of chain work descending behind or on the shoulders, cuirasses, suits of armour . . . quilted jackets, sabre proof.’ Wilks was also struck by ‘the total absence of order, or obedience, or command, excepting groups collected around their respective flags; every individual an independent warrior, self impelled, affecting to be the champion whose single aim was to achieve victory; scampering among each other in wild confusion’.34 When Cornwallis selected 3000 of the most capable soldiers to join one of his brigades, hardly any turned up. ‘The only alacrity they showed was in devouring forage and grain and in setting fire to villages.’35

  The Nizam’s forces never fully recovered from their ‘wild confusion’. Their horsemen stumbled between an English battalion and Tipu’s forces during the attack on Seringapatam, allowing the latter to regroup. They were successful in the siege of Koppal, but instead of taking the remaining Mysore forces head-on they swung into the district of Cuddapah, where they became bogged down in another time-consuming attack on the hill-fortress of Gurramkonda. The war itself culminated in the year-long siege of Seringapatam, where a heavily outgunned and outnumbered Tipu finally called for a negotiated settlement in February 1793. The settlement which Kennaway negotiated on behalf of Cornwallis was severe. Tipu was to pay an indemnity of 33 million rupees, surrender half his territories and hand over to the British custody of two of his children, both aged eight, as surety.