Thorns in the enemy's path

In the past, each town had a multi-layered security system to protect itself from outside attacks. Ameen Ahmed explores defence mechanisms of two forts of the state.

India was a land of many kingdoms for a long time before the British gained control of its vast geography. It was not uncommon for friendly states to turn against each other. And most armies of those days, particularly of the kingdoms that didn’t exist for long and which had loosely defined boundaries, could not afford salaries to full time soldiers as they did not have fixed revenues. As a result they resorted to recruiting men on a temporary basis in the run up to military campaigns. That meant soldiers would often take away whatever they could carry during their raids into the enemy territory. In his work, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for the Government, Lewis Rice (1897), refers to the practise prevalent during the rule of Mysore king Haidar Ali, when peasants were hired as soldiers during the non-farming season.

Literary sources in English indicate that the 18th century kingdom of Mysore saw frequent incursions by many of its neighbouring kingdoms notably by the Maratha armies. This was particularly true in the run up to the disintegration of the Moghul Empire. Sira in Tumakuru district was the southernmost Subah or province of Moghuls and went into oblivion around 1757.

Each village and town in medieval India often had to fend for itself from invading armies. And almost every town had its own multi-layer defence against outsider attacks. While fortifications, originally in mud, were the last line of defence, they were often surrounded by moats, usually filled with water. Hedges of thorns would be grown around such deep ditches. In the Mysore Gazetteer, Lewis informs of the attention paid to repairing hedges and village walls by Haidar Ali in his territories.

Surviving the ravages of time
Although most of the forts in the erstwhile kingdom of Mysore have either disappeared in full or have just small portions of them remaining, one fort that retains much of its original character is the Sira fort in Tumakuru district. Oral history attributes the formation of Sira town and the construction of the fort to Kasturi Rangappa, a 16th century Nayaka ruler.
According to the Mysore Gazetteer (1897), the Sira fort originally had a moat around it.

Much of this fort is intact even today just like the many Adil Shahi and Moghul era mosques and mausoleums in this town. It also had a moat surrounding the  palace inside it. According the Mysore State Gazetteer (1969), Rustam Jung a Moghul Governor of Sira is also said to have built one fort at Sira along with a pettah (fortified township), probably at the beginning of 18th century.

Towards the later part of 16th century there are records of new forts being constructed just outside the existing fortified towns, to station military. In his book, History of Aurangazeb, J.N.Sarkar (1912) writes about the Ahmednagar fort having a military force in it and being located outside the Ahmednagar pettah. And the Bengaluru fort seems to have evolved from the same defence strategy.

Kempegowda I constructed a mud fort in the 16th century to protect Bengaluru town. M Fazlul Hasan in his popular book Bangalore Through The Centuries, writes that Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar constructed another fort to the south of the fortified Bengaluru pettah. And to protect itself from invaders, over the decades a wide hedge of thorns was grown around it, encircled by a deep ditch. According to Gazetteer of Southern India — With the Tenasserim Provinces and Singapore (1855), the hedge around Bengaluru Pettah was about 80 yards wide (approximately about 73 metres). Lewin B Bowring in his book Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan and the struggle with the Musalman powers of the South (1893), concludes that the hedge together with the deep ditch had “sufficiently protected the place against the Maratha horse”. 

In 1761, Haidar Ali rebuilt Chikka Devaraja Wodeyar’s fort using stone. Haidar by then had successfully defended the Mysore Kingdom from the Maratha incursions. According to Bowring, the fort then was oval in shape, with “round towers, five cavaliers, a fausse-braye, and a deep ditch.” He opined however that the glacis was “defective, and the flanking defence imperfect.”
During the 3rd Anglo-Mysore war (1790 - 1792), the Bengaluru town and fort were the scene of one of the many fierce battles between the Mysoreans and the British, allied with the Marathas and the Hyderabad Nizam, across southern India. And the hedge proved the proverbial ‘thorn in the path’ of Bengaluru’s enemies.

To each town, its own defence
On March 7, 1791, Lord Cornwallis began the British assault on the town. Their difficulty increased as this thorn thicket was impenetrable and hid the town’s defences. Also the town’s gate fortified with strong masonry laid behind it. The hedge confused the attacking troops, who were being fired upon from the towers. Finally the British managed to pull up heavy guns and made their way through the gate. Rev William Arthur about the siege in A mission to the Mysore with scenes and facts illustrative of India, its people & its religion, (1850). But the victory for the British came at a heavy price. Colonel Moorehouse who commanded the British artillery was among the many who either died or wounded on both the sides. The town was looted of all its riches during the ensuing plunder, suggests Rev. Arthur quoting a source.

Heavy fire was then directed on the fort and the Mysoreans were forced to concede the fort, which is said to be due to the treachery of a Mysorean commander.

Notable of the men who perished on the Mysorean side was Bahadur Khan, Killedar of the fort. His name is among the handful that are repeatedly referred to in the British literature on their wars with the native armies of India. The other names are of Badar-uz-zaman, Killedar of Dharwar fort, who held on to that fort for six months against the combined might of Marathas and British, Lutf Ali Baig, the 60-year old Bakshee of Nandi Durga (Nandi hill) and lastly the unknown Killedar of Hutri Durga in Tumakuru District who refused to surrender.

Post the capture of Mysore by the British in May 1799, Purnaiah was the Dewan of the province till 1810. According to the Mysore Gazetteer (1897) he spent about Rs. 15 lakh on the reconstruction and restoration of this fort along with the one at Chennapatna. The British took away the authority of the Mysore king in 1831 and began direct administration of the province once again. The palace of Tipu Sultan, then located inside the fort, served as the seat of the British administration from 1831 until 1868 when it was found unsafe to occupy and a major portion of it was demolished.

But much of the fort, like almost every other fort of the Mysore Kingdom broke apart due to disuse. According to Bowring, the hedge was completely removed in 1861 and the ditch encircling it was also filled up and levelled. Thus came to an end the glorious chapter of a structure that protected the life, honour and wealth of the residents of Bengaluru pettah from its enemies for over a century.