Wellington in India by Jac Weller

Author:Jac Weller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century
ISBN: 9781473822627
Publisher: Frontline Books
Published: 2013-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

IX

The Mahratta War Begins

Wellesley’s orders were issued for the morning of 7 August 1803: at sunrise the army was to march the seven miles to Ahmednuggur. The monsoon of 1803 was irregular and generally light, but 7 August was a day of hard rain. It began so early that the commander cancelled his marching orders. He did not want to take his fine new army into the field for its first day of real campaigning in a downpour.

The 8th was clear, however, so the head of the British column reached the vicinity of Ahmednuggur in two hours. As was usual in India at the time, this fortified city consisted of a fort and a town or pettah nearby for civilians dependent upon the fort for employment. Both were surrounded by defences, but the walls and bastions of the fortress were higher, stronger and more carefully designed.

On several occasions during his daily rides for exercise Wellesley had examined carefully fort and town through his telescope. On the 8th he rode ahead of his army, accompanied only by Bisnapah and a squadron of the 19th Dragoons. He had the pettah and the fort summoned to surrender while his infantry pickets were still two miles away. He received the expected refusal, but was prepared to take the town by assault without a preliminary bombardment.

Wellesley already knew the composition of the garrisons of both pettah and fort. One of Scindia’s Regular Battalions had been encamped just outside the town for some time and had now entered. It consisted of ‘1,000 sepoys in white jackets, with five brass guns, smaller than our 6-pounders, commanded by three French officers, a little dark-coloured, who wear blue clothes. They have twelve one-pole tents.’1 There were also 1,000 Arab mercenaries in the town. These men were noted for their courage and their good faith to those who employed them, the latter an unusual attribute in India at that time. But they fought as individuals, and were rarely well organized and disciplined.

Wellesley felt sure that the place could be carried by escalade because there was but a single relatively low wall far too long to be properly held by only 2,000 professional soldiers. The town might have some sort of militia, but undoubtedly poorly armed and nearly useless. The wall had forty bastions and a total length of near 4,000 yards. Wellesley immediately issued his instructions for three separate, but mutually supporting assaults. The composite battalion of infantry, the pickets of the day, consisted as usual of a half company from each King’s and EIC infantry battalion in the army, a total of one company of Europeans and two and a half of sepoys under the field officer of the day. It was to assault the wall to the left of a gateway with the assistance of the flank companies of the King’s 78th; Lieutenant-Colonel Harness was in command. The gateway itself was to be attacked by the battalion companies of the 74th supported by the 1/8 Madras all under Lieutenant-Colonel Wallace.

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