'Go, Your Majesty!' A wounded aide thrust a rifle into the Tippoo's hands, then dared to push his monarch into the tunnel. The Tippoo allowed himself to be pushed into the shadows, but stopped close to the mouth of the tunnel and from there he stared into the vaporous darkness. Was an enemy there? He could not see because of the smoke. Behind him were the harsh sounds of volleys and curses as his bodyguard died, and as they died their bodies were making a terrible barricade that protected the Tippoo, but what waited in front of him? He peered, reluctant to go forward into the shit-stinking gloom, but then the aide snatched at the Tippoo's elbow and dragged him deeper into the darkness. The few surviving bodyguards were defending the tunnel with bayonets, stabbing at the crazed redcoats who tried to scramble across the bloody pile of corpses.
'Open the gate!' the aide shouted, then he saw the shadow within the shadow at the end of the tunnel and he dropped to one knee and took aim with his jewelled rifle. He fired, and the golden tiger-mask doghead snapped forward onto the frizzen. Sharpe threw himself to one side just as the gun fired, heard the bullet snick the wall and ricochet into the teak door, then he saw the aide pull a long pistol from his sash. Sharpe fired first, the boom of his musket echoing in the tunnel like doom's thunder. The ball hurled the aide back into a deep pool, and suddenly there was only the Tippoo and Sharpe left.stood and grinned at the Tippoo. 'Bastard,' he said, seeing the glint of light reflected from the ruby in his enemy's helmet. 'Bastard,' he said again. He had one loaded musket left. The Tippoo was holding a rifle. Sharpe stepped forward.Tippoo recognized the hard, bloody face in the gloom. He smiled. Fate was most strange, he thought. Why had he not killed this man when he had the chance? Behind him his bodyguard was dying and the victorious redcoats were plundering their bodies, while in front of him was freedom and life, except for one man to whom the Tippoo had shown mercy. Just one man.
'Bastard,' Sharpe said again. He wanted to be close when he killed the Tippoo, close enough to make certain of the man's death.the Tippoo the bright daylight was dulled by the swirling gun smoke where dying men gasped and victorious men looted. 'Mercy is God's prerogative, not man's,' the Tippoo said in Persian, 'and I should never have been merciful to you.' He aimed the rifle at Sharpe and pulled the trigger, but the gun did not fire. In the panic of the last seconds the aide had handed the Tippoo an unloaded rifle and the flint had sparked on an empty pan. The Tippoo smiled, tossed the gun aside and unsheathed his tiger-hilted sword. There was blood on his arm, and more on his chintz trousers, but he showed no fear, he even seemed to relish the moment. 'How I do hate your cursed race,' he said calmly, giving the sword a cut through the smoky air.did not understand the Tippoo any more than the Tippoo understood Sharpe. 'You're a fat little bastard,' Sharpe said, 'and you took away my medal. I wanted that. It's the only medal I've ever got.'Tippoo just smiled. His helmet had been dipped in the fountain of life, but it had not worked. The magic had failed and only Allah was left. He waited for the snarling redcoat to shoot, then a shout sounded in the mouth of the tunnel and the Tippoo turned, hoping that one last bodyguard would come to save him.no bodyguard appeared and the Tippoo turned back to face Sharpe. 'I dreamed of death last night,' he said in Persian as he limped forward and raised the curved blade to strike at the redcoat. 'I dreamed of monkeys, and monkeys mean death. I should have killed you.'fired. The bullet went higher than he intended. He had thought to put it through the Tippoo's heart, but instead it struck the King in the temple. For a second the Tippoo wavered. His head had been whipped back by the bullet's force and blood was soaking into his cloth-padded helmet, but he forced his head forward and stared into Sharpe's eyes. The sword fell from his nerveless hand, he seemed to smile a last time, then he just slumped down.booming echo of the musket shot still battered Sharpe's ears so he was not aware that he was talking as he crouched beside the Tippoo. 'It's your ruby I want,' Sharpe said, 'that bloody great ruby. I wanted it from the very first moment I saw you. Colonel McCandless told me, he did, that it's wealth that makes the world turn and I want my share.' The Tippoo still lived, but he could not move. His expressionless eyes stared up at Sharpe, who thought the Tippoo was dead, but then the dying man blinked. 'Still here, are you?' Sharpe said. He patted the Tippoo's bloodied cheek. 'You're a brave fat bastard, I will say that for you.' He wrenched the huge ruby off the blood-spattered feather plume, then stripped the dying man of every jewel he could find. He took the pearls from the Tippoo's neck, twisted off an armlet bright with gems, tugged off the diamond rings and unlatched the silver-hung necklace of emeralds. He pulled on the Tippoo's sash to see if the dagger with the great diamond called the Moonstone in its hilt was there, but the sash held nothing except the sword scabbard. Sharpe took that, but left the tiger-hilted sword. He lifted the blade from a puddle of sewage and placed it in the Tippoo's hand. 'You can keep your sword,' he told the dying man, 'for you fought proper. Like a proper soldier.' He stood up and then, awkwardly, because of his burden of jewels and because he was suddenly conscious of the dying King's gaze, he saluted the Tippoo. 'Take your blade to paradise,' he said, 'and tell them you were killed by another proper soldier.'Tippoo's eyes closed and he thought of the prayer that he had copied into his notebook that very morning. 'I am full of sin,' the Tippoo had written in his beautiful Arabic script, 'and Thou, Allah, art a sea of mercy. Where Thy mercy is, where is my sin?' That was a comfort. There was no pain now, not even in his leg, and that was a comfort too, but still he could not move. It was like one of the dreams he copied each morning into his dream-book and he wondered at how peaceful everything suddenly seemed, as peaceful as though he was floating on a gilded barge down a warm river beneath a blessed sun. This must be the way to paradise, he thought, and he welcomed it. Paradise.felt a pang of sorrow for the dying man. He might have been a murderous enemy, but he was a brave one. The Tippoo had fallen with his right arm trapped beneath his body, and though Sharpe suspected there was another jewelled armlet on that hidden sleeve, he did not try to retrieve it. The Tippoo deserved to die in peace and, besides, Sharpe was rich enough already, for his pockets now held a king's ransom while a leather scabbard sewn with sapphires was hidden under his shabby coat, and so he picked up one of his empty muskets and splashed through the tunnel's bloody puddles towards the pile of dead that lay in the smoky sunlight. A sergeant of the 12th, startled by Sharpe's sudden appearance from the tunnel, snatched up his bayonet, then saw Sharpe's filthy red jacket and let the weapon fall. 'Anyone alive in there?' the Sergeant asked.
'Just a fat little fellow dying,' Sharpe said as he climbed over the barrier of the dead.
'Did he have any loot?'
'Nothing,' Sharpe said, 'nothing worth the trouble. Place is full of shit, too.'Sergeant frowned at Sharpe's unkempt dress and unpowdered hair. 'What regiment are you?'
'Not yours,' Sharpe said curtly, and walked away through the crowds of celebrating redcoats and sepoys. Not all were celebrating. Some were massacring trapped enemies. The fight had been brief but nasty, and now the winners took a bloody revenge. On the far side of the inner wall Colonel Wellesley had brought his men into the streets and they now surrounded the palace to preserve it from plunder. The smaller streets were not so fortunate, and the first screams sounded as the sepoys and redcoats found their hungry way into the unprotected alleys. The Tippoo's men, those that still lived and had escaped their pursuers, fled eastwards while the Tippoo, left alone in the tunnel, lay dying.Richard Sharpe slung the musket and walked around the base of the inner wall, seeking a passage into the city. He had only a few moments of freedom left before the army took him back into its iron grip, but he had won his victory and he had pockets full of stones to prove it. He went to find a drink.day it rained. It was not the monsoon, though it could have been, for the rain fell with a ferocity that matched the fury of the previous day's assault. The pelting warm rain washed the blood off the city's walls and scoured the hot season's filth out of its streets. The Cauvery swelled to fill its banks, rising so high that no man could have crossed the river in front of the breach. If the Tippoo's prayers had been answered and the British had waited one more day, then the floods would have defeated them.there was no Tippoo in Seringapatam, only the Rajah, who had been restored to his palace where he was surrounded by red-coated guards. The palace, which had been protected from the ravages of the assaulting troops, was now being stripped bare by the victorious officers. Rain drummed on the green-tiled roof and ran into the gutters and puddled in the courtyards as the red-coated officers sawed up the great tiger throne on which the Tippoo had never sat. They turned the handles of the tiger organ and laughed as the mechanical claw savaged the redcoat's face. They tugged down silk hangings, they prised gems out of furniture and marvelled at the simple, bare, white-painted room which had been the Tippoo's bedchamber. The six tigers, roaring because they had not been fed and because the rain fell so hard, were shot.Tippoo's father, the great Hyder Ali, lay in a mausoleum east of the city and, when the rainstorm had stopped, and while the garden around the mausoleum was still steaming in the sudden sultry sunlight, the Tippoo was carried to rest beside his father. British troops lined the route and reversed their arms as the cortege passed. Muffled drums beat a slow tattoo as the Tippoo was borne on his sad last journey by his own defeated soldiers., with three bright white stripes newly sewn onto his faded red sleeve, waited close beside the domed mausoleum. 'I do wonder who killed him.' Colonel McCandless, restored to a clean uniform and with his hair neatly cut, had come to stand beside Sharpe.
'Some lucky bastard, sir.'
'A rich one by now, no doubt,' the Colonel said.
'Good for him, sir,' Sharpe said, 'whoever he is.'
'He'd only waste the plunder,' McCandless said severely. 'He'll fritter it on women and drink.'
'Don't sound like a waste to me, sir.'grimaced at the Sergeant's levity. 'That ruby alone was worth ten years of a general's salary. Ten years!'
'A shame it's vanished, sir,' Sharpe said guilelessly.
'Isn't it, Sharpe?' McCandless agreed. 'But I hear you were at the Water Gate?'
'Me, sir? No, sir. Not me, sir. I stayed with Mister Lawford, sir.'Colonel gave Sharpe a fierce glance. 'A sergeant of the Old Dozen reports he saw a wild-looking fellow come out of the Water Gate.' McCandless's voice was accusing. 'He says the man had a coat with scarlet facings and no buttons.' The Colonel looked disapprovingly at Sharpe's red coat on which Sharpe had somehow found time to stitch the sergeant's stripes, but not a single button. 'The man seems very certain of what he saw.'
'He was probably confused by the battle, sir. Lost his wits, I wouldn't doubt.'
'So who put Sergeant Hakeswill in with the tigers?' McCandless demanded.
'Only the good Lord knows, sir, and He ain't saying.'Colonel, scenting blasphemy, frowned. 'Hakeswill says it was you,' he accused Sharpe.
'Hakeswill's mad, sir, and you can't trust a thing he says,' Sharpe said. And Hakeswill was more than mad, he was alive. Somehow he had escaped the tigers. Not one of the beasts had attacked the Sergeant who had been discovered babbling in the courtyard, crying for his mother and declaring his fondness for tigers. He liked all pussy cats, he had said to his rescuers. 'I can't be killed!' he had shouted when the redcoats led him gently away. 'Touched by God, I am,' he had claimed, and then he had demanded that Sharpe be arrested for attempted murder, but Lieutenant Lawford had blushed and sworn that Sergeant Sharpe had never left his side after the mine was blown. Colonel Gudin, a prisoner now, had confirmed the claim. The two men had been discovered in one of the city's brothels where they had been protecting the women from the drunken, rampaging victors.
'Hakeswill's a lucky man,' McCandless said dryly, abandoning any further attempt to drag the truth from Sharpe. 'Those tigers were man-eaters.'
'But not devil-caters, sir. One whiff of Hakeswill and they must have gone right off their feed.'
'He still swears it was you who threw him to the tigers,' McCandless said. 'I've no doubt he'll try to take his revenge.'
'I've no doubt either, sir, but I'll be ready for him.' And next time, Sharpe thought, he would make certain the bastard died.turned as the slow funeral procession appeared at the end of the long road that led to the mausoleum. Opposite him, behind an honour guard of the King's 73rd, Appah Rao, now in the Rajah's service, also watched the cortege approach. Appah Rao's family and household all lived. McCandless had sat in Appah Rao's courtyard, a musket on his lap, and turned back every redcoat or sepoy who had come to the house. Mary had thus survived unscathed and Sharpe had heard that she would now marry her Kunwar Singh, and he was glad for her. He remembered the ruby he had once promised to give her and he smiled at the thought. Some other lass, maybe. The Tippoo's ruby was deep in his pouch, hidden like all the other looted jewels.muffled drumbeat came nearer and the red-coated honour guard stiffened to attention. Mourners followed the coffin, most of them the Tippoo's officers. Gudin was among them. McCandless took off his cocked hat. 'There'll be more fighting to come, Sharpe,' the Colonel said softly. 'We have other enemies in India.'
'I'm sure we have, sir.'Colonel glanced at Sharpe. He saw a young man, hard as flint, and the restless anger in Sharpe's heart made him dangerous as flint and steel, but there was also a kindness in Sharpe. McCandless had seen that kindness in the dungeons, and McCandless believed it betrayed a soul that was well worth saving. 'I may have uses for you if you're willing,' the Colonel said.seemed surprised. 'I thought you were going home, sir. To Scotland.'shrugged. 'There's work undone here, Sharpe, work undone. And what will I ever do in Scotland but dream of India? I think I shall stay for a while.'
'And I'd be privileged to help you, sir, so I would,' Sharpe said, then he snatched off his shako as the coffin drew close. His hair, which he had still not clubbed or powdered, fell loose across his scarlet collar as he stood to attention. Far away, beyond the river, rain fell on a green land, but above Sharpe the sun shone, glistening its watery light on the mausoleum's bulging white dome beneath which, in a dark crypt under their silk-draped tombs, the Tippoo's parents lay. Now the Tippoo would join them.coffin was carried slowly past Sharpe. The men bearing the Tippoo were dressed in his tiger-striped tunic, while the coffin itself was draped with a great striped tiger pelt. It was a mangy skin, uncured and still bloody, but the best that could be discovered in the chaos following the city's fall, and down one flank there was a long ancient scar and Sharpe, seeing it, smiled. He had seen that scar before. He had seen it every night that he was in the Tippoo's dungeons. And now he saw it again, scored into a tiger skin that covered a brave dead king.was Sharpe's tiger.Notesiege and fall of Seringapatam (now Sriringapatna) in May 1799 ended decades of warfare between the remarkable Muslim dynasty that ruled the state of Mysore and the invading British. The British, under Lord Cornwallis, had captured the city before, in 1792, and at that time they decided to leave the Tippoo on his throne, but mutual antagonisms, and the Tippoo's preference for a French alliance, led to the final Mysore war. The aim of the war was simple: to do what had not been done in 1792, unthrone the Tippoo, to which end the British concocted some very thin reasons to justify an invasion of Mysore, ignored the Tippoo's overtures for peace and so marched on Seringapatam. It was a brutally naked piece of aggression, but successful, for with the Tippoo's death the most formidable obstacle to British rule in southern India was removed, and with it the increasingly slim chance that Napoleon, then at the head of a French army stranded in Egypt, would intervene in the subcontinent.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.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.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 Sultanpetah 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.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 12th'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.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 exquisite little palace while he governed Mysore. It is now a museum. The Tippoo's mosque still stands, there is another small palace in the city of Bangalore, and, perhaps most moving of all, the Gumbaz, the elegant mausoleum where the Tippoo lies with his parents. To this day his tomb is covered with a cloth patterned with tiger stripes.Tippoo revered the tiger, and used tiger motifs wherever he could. His fabulous tiger throne existed, but it was broken up at his death, though large parts of it can still be seen, notably in Windsor Castle. His dreadful toy, the tiger organ, is now in London's Victoria and Albert Museum. The organ was sadly damaged during the Blitz, but it has been superbly restored, though, alas, its voice is not what it was. The Tippoo did keep six tigers in his palace courtyard (Wellesley ordered them shot).'s outer wall still stands. The town, which has fewer inhabitants now than it did in 1799, is an attractive place and the site of the assault, overlooking the South Cauvery, is marked by an obelisk that stands immediately to the north of the repaired breach. Just behind the breach, and filling the whole north-western corner of the defences, is an enormous earthen bastion — all that remains of the inner wall. The rest of the inner wall has disappeared completely, probably demolished by Wellesley shortly after the siege. Later, during the high noon of the Raj, various sites were identified in Sriringapatna as historically significant locations, but I believe the absence of the inner wall caused some confusion. Modern visitors to Sriringapatna will discover plaques or memorials displayed at the Tippoo's dungeons, at the Water Gate where he was supposedly killed and, much farther east, at the place where his body was found, but of the three I suspect only the last is accurate.so-called dungeons are beneath the Sultan Battery, and while it is quite possible they were used as cells in the 1780s (and thus the place where Baird spent his uncomfortable forty-four months) they were not so employed in 1799. By then the inner wall had been built (it was hastily constructed after Cornwallis's 1792 siege), and it is much more likely that the 'dungeons' were thereafter employed as a magazine (a use for which they were obviously intended). The Tippoo's surviving prisoners all attested that they were held inside the inner wall during the siege, so that is where I placed Sharpe, Lawford, McCandless and Hakeswill.plaque marks the Water Gate through the outer wall as the site of the Tippoo's death, but again this seems wrong. The evidence of Mysorean survivors, some of whom were close to the Tippoo at the end, clearly states that the Tippoo was trying to get inside the city when he was killed. We know he had been fighting on the outer wall and that when he broke off that fight he came down to the space between the walls, and there the story becomes muddled. British sources claim he tried to escape the city through the outer wall's Water Gate, but the Indian testimonies all agree that he tried to go through the inner wall's Water Gate into the city itself. That second Water Gate has since vanished, but I suspect it was there that he died and not at the existing gate. It might seem logical that he should have attempted to flee the city, but the remaining Water Gate led, and still leads, to the flooded ditch inside the glacis, and even if he had negotiated those obstacles (under fire from the attackers on the wall above him), he would only have reached the southern bank of the Cauvery which was under the guns of the British forces north of the river. By cutting through the city he could have reached the Bangalore Gate which offered a much greater chance of successful escape. Indeed, after the Tippoo's death, or perhaps while he was still dying, some of his loyal retainers found him, placed him in the palanquin, and carried him eastwards, presumably in an attempt to reach the Bangalore Gate. They were intercepted, the palanquin was overturned and the Tippoo's body lay undiscovered for several hours. It seems a pity to abandon the present Water Gate as the place where the Tippoo was shot, for its gloomy dank tunnel has a certain eerie drama, but doubtless the matching gate in the inner wall was equally atmospheric.Tippoo's body was treated with honour, and next day, as the novel describes, he was buried beside his parents in the Gumbaz mausoleum. Wellesley, meanwhile, stamped out the looting in the city (he hung four looters, a remedy he would employ in the wake of future sieges), but what the common soldier could not take, the senior officers happily plundered for themselves. The East India Company's Prize Agents tallied the Tippoo's treasures at a value of two million pounds (1799 pounds) and half of that fabulous fortune was declared to be prize money, so that many senior officers became rich men through that single day's work. Most of the treasures returned to Britain, where they remain, some on public view, but many still in private hands.the Tippoo is a hero to many Indians who regard him as a proto-independence fighter. This seems a perverse judgement. Most of the Tippoo's enemies were other Indian states, though admittedly his fiercest fights were against the British (and their Indian allies), but he could never entirely rely on his Hindu subjects. No one is certain that he was betrayed on the day of his death, but it seems more than likely that several Hindu officers, like the fictional Appah Rao, were deliberately lukewarm in their support. The Tippoo's Muslim religion and his preference for the Persian language mark him as being outside the mainstream of modern Indian tradition, which is perhaps why I was assured by one educated Indian that the Tippoo had, in truth, been a Hindu. He was not, and no amount of wishful thinking can make him into a more acceptably 'Indian' hero. Nor does his story need embellishment, for he was a hero anyway, even if he never did fight for Indian independence. He fought for Mysorean domination over India, which was a quite different thing.would like to thank Elizabeth Cartmale-Freedman who ransacked the files of London's India House and did much other research for Sharpe's Tiger, and for all the useful things she discovered and which I left out, I apologize. I must also thank my agent, Toby Eady, who went above and beyond the call of duty by accompanying me to Sriringapatna. Research has rarely been more enjoyable. As usual, when writing Sharpe, I owe gratitude to Lady Elizabeth Longford for her superb book Wellington, the Tears of the Sword, and to the late Jac Weller for his indispensable Wellington in India.is still dominated by the Tippoo's memory. He was an efficient ruler whom Indians revere and the British consider a callous tyrant. That tyrannical reputation was caused, above all, by his execution of thirteen British prisoners before the assault (only eight of them had been captured in the night skirmish, the others were already prisoners). It is unlikely that the executions took place at the Summer Palace, but they were carried out by the Tippoo's jettis who did kill in the manner described in the novel. Those murders are reprehensible, yet they should not blind us to the Tippoo's virtues. He was a very brave man, a considerable soldier, a talented administrator and an enlightened ruler and he makes a worthy foe for young Richard Sharpe, who still has a long road to march under his cold, but very clever, Sepoy General.
Дата добавления: 2015-11-04; просмотров: 30 | Нарушение авторских прав
| <== предыдущая лекция | | | следующая лекция ==> |