Chapter Four: The Indian Division
…The Indian front of the Seven Years War is often neglected in popular histories despite the importance the war had on the future history of the Indian Subcontinent. Indeed the war was close fought, and its outcome as a relative stalemate with the "sorting" of French and British zones of influence and control in India was not preordained. When the war in India is remembered it is usually portrayed as a battle between French and British troops in red and blue uniforms with a few Indian sepoys fighting alongside them, usually a painter will include an elephant somewhere in the picture to make the audience remember this is an Indian scene. This is a travesty of course, the war was fought largely by Indians, not just sepoys, but the soldiers of the princely states who picked sides.
In southern India the war was defined by French success. In 1758 the French had taken the British fort at Cuddalore followed by a brief naval action off the coast in which the French won one of their few naval victories of the war.[1] This was followed by the
Siege of Madras (one of many sieges by that name) from November 1758 to January with French forces under
Comte de Lally putting the city in a vise. The British garrison in the city would surrender a mere week before an attempted relief by sea that fell back after a brief naval skirmish. In 1760 a British force under the command of
Eyre Coote would be defeated at Vandavasi at the Battle of Wandiwash by French and Maratha forces, securing French control over the
Northern Circars. A British attempt to salvage the situation with a naval descent on Pondicherry in 1761 would run into defeat as well.[2]
The war in Dravidia secured French control over the Carnatic and Northern Circars, and allowed the French to have a superior diplomatic hand in relations with the independent Indian powers of Travancore, Mysore, and, to a lesser extent, Hyderabad. This move was not viewed as positive by Mysore's new leader Hyder Ali who wanted to balance the European powers against each other. Hypothetically the French had been fighting to defend the Mughal Empire, but the war would secure French East India Company domination over the southern end of the former Mughal domains…
…In modern Bharat the British were much more successful. At first the British war effort had been disastrous, the Nawab of Bengal Siraj-ud-Daulah had grown resentful of British control influence, including British East India Company conspiracies to support his overthrow, and used the British strengthening of Fort William without his permission as a
casus belli to go to war with the BEI Company in 1756. Siraj would attack and conquer Calcutta in the same year and imprison British East India Company personnel in the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta, a rancidly overcrowded and diseased prison where many Britons died. The British were on the backfoot, but the Nawab was not a great leader of men, he had to retain armies on other fronts to confront the Afghans and Marathas and did not recognize that the greatest threat to his sovereignty was the Company. In 1757 the British had captured the French trading post of Chandernagore without interference from Bengali forces and would continue to weave conspiracies in the Nawab's court.
British commander Robert Clive would work in secrecy with the traitor Mir Jafar to usurp Siraj. Despite losses from the French capture at Madras the British would retake Calcutta in part thanks to the assassination of Siraj by a Seth trader, a move that would establish the well-deserved reputation for skullduggery the BEIC would gain on the continent. In the confusion Mir Jafar was able to take the throne and would rule as an obedient goodbody[3] of the Company until his death in 1777.[4]...
…British rule in Bangladesh was only solidified by the defeat of Mughal forces in the Bengal War of 1763 to 1765. Mughal forces and loyalists in Bengal were defeated decisively in a series of battles securing the vassalage of the
Kingdom of Awadh as a buffer state against the cavalry raids of the Marathas. This was the beginning of British power creeping across the Indo-Gangetic Plain…
…France would also face conflict with native powers during this period. From 1766 to 1768 the French East India Company would fight the Sultan of Mysore Hyder Ali. The war would break out after an invasion of Mysore by the Marathas in which the French did not come to the aid of Mysore despite treaty obligations, wanting to maintain good relations with the Marathas the French had instead used the threat of force to make Mysore and the Maratha Confederacy sign a treaty in which Mysore lost no territory but had to pay the Marathas an indemnity. Hyder Ali was outraged and would attack the French very shortly after the end of the war with the Marathas.
Hyder Ali had been engaging in military reforms to introduce European style drill and block musket infantry formations and would push French forces back with the assistance of Hyderabad whose Nizam had signed a secret treaty with Mysore. FEIC forces would retreat across southern India, being defeated by numerically superior Mysorean-Hyderabadi forces at Changama, Kaveripattinam, and pulled back to Tiruvannamalai where they would manage to beat a Mysorean assault. In 1767's campaign season the French would lose another garrison at Ambur when the commander surrendered to Hyder Ali after a large bribe and fell back once more to the coast. Then disaster began when French advances against Hyderabad in the Northern Circars caused the Nizam to switch sides after yet another secret treaty and turn his forces against Mysore.
French forces would follow up the diplomatic coup with nearly uncontested landings on the Malabar Coast taking Mangalore and Onore and destroying the Mysorean navy. Hyder Ali would pull his forces back from the Carnatic Coast and fight a series of defensive battles for the rest of the year and into 1768. That year the Marathas would also enter the conflict with French support further weakening Mysore's forces despite the brilliant generalship of Prince Tipu giving the state a victory at Dindigul. Later in the year Haider would besiege Mangalore after the French retreated from Onore without a fight and retake the city after two weeks by late August. After Tipu rushed north and west to defeat a Maratha army at Ooscota in early September, it was clear the war was at a stalemate. By this point both sides were willing to sit down for peace talks.
The war would end with Hyderabad and Mysore returning to the treaties with the French East India Company and Mysore paying the French an indemnity and giving them preferential trade access, but not losing any territory. Hyder Ali would continue to plot after his defeat and instill his son Tipu with a grave hatred of the French…
…During the American War of Independence Franco-British hostilities resumed in the Subcontinent. The war would intersect with the First Anglo-Maratha War which had begun earlier under Peshwa Narayan Rao [5] in 1775, coincidentally the start date of the war in North America. The French would back the Marathas under the table with subsidies and some European arms. In 1779 with the French declaration of war on Great Britain direct hostilities resumed in India. The French East India Company Would back uprisings in Bengal in support of the Mughal Empire, and despite previous distaste for the Mughals rebellions would ignite over bad memories from the Bengal Famine of 1770 that the BEIC had presided over. The BEIC would struggle to hold Bengal down when facing rebels and attacks from the Marathas. French naval forces were defeated at the Battle of Chandernagore in 1779 but it was not a stunning British victory. Similarly a French victory off the coast of Madras in 1780 and a successful defense of Pondicherry in 1781 were victories, but not crushing ones.
The British would successfully defend Bombay from Maratha attacks throughout the war but had lost the port of Surat in 1775 before a counterattack seized Surat once more in 1776. A British attempt to attack the Maratha capital of Pune by forcing the mountain pass of Bhor Ghat in the Western Ghat Mountains would see a battle in which the British forces were defeated on January 12th, 1779. In 1781 the British would attack again, win a battle at Bhor Ghat, and reach Karla before being forced to retreat by Maratha cavalry raids in the rear, only to be surrounded at Wadgaon before managing a breakout and a fighting retreat back to Bombay. In Gujarat the British forces had managed a defense of Surat after 1776 for several years while capturing Ahmedabad in 1779, Vasai in 1780, before being defeated in a battle at Gwalior in July of 1780. By 1781 British forces invading the Deccan were largely defeated in a series of battles by
Mahadji Shinde backed by a small expeditionary force of French sepoys…
…Hyder Ali sought to relitigate the First Franco-Mysore War using the current war to establish an advantage over the Marathas and the French. In 1780 Mysore joined the war with an army modernized much more extensively over the past decade with extensive help from the Dutch and Danish East India Companies. Mysorean forces would cross the Eastern Ghats once more and defeat the French in a series of battles with the assistance of his ally the Nizam of Hyderabad Asaf Jah II who had, once more, signed a secret treaty with Mysore before the war. Mysorean forces would use their rocket artillery to great effect in several battles, scattering French cavalry by terrifying their horses. Ali's army would invade the Carnatic with 80,000 men under arms backed by a small number of BEIC men.
At this point it should be remembered Hyder Ali is not remembered as an anti-colonial champion on the west coast of Dravidia for his actions in this campaign. His armies lived off the land and had no scruples about seizing loot and food from the peoples of the Carnatic. Mysorean victories at Arcot and even the stunning victory at Pullilure' did not give the people of the Carnatic any relief from French taxation, it only subjected them to the depredations of a new conquering army.
Hyder Ali then made a decisive mistake. Instead of choosing to either attack Madras or Pondicherry, he split his army between a force under himself to besiege Madras and a force under his son Tipu to march south and besiege Pondicherry. The move allowed the French in both ports to hold out with naval support while French forces descended on the west coast and seized Mangalore once more, showing Hyder Ali was not a man who learned from all of his mistakes. French reinforcement landed at both ports and scored a series of victories Porto Novo, Sholingphur, Cuddalore, Vellore, and Wandiwash in 1781.
1782 would see the Mysoreans win a major battle under Prince Tipu at Tanjore, only for their forces to have to fall back over the Ghats to reinforce the Malabar Coast. French reinforcements arrived in greater numbers on the Carnatic and would enact punishing reprisals on the local Muslims of the Carnatic who were accused of supporting the Muslim Hyder Ali. In July Hyder Ali would die from an unknown illness of the stomach making Prince Tipu now Tipu Sultan. Disenchanted, Asaf Jah II would switch sides to the French yet again. It would not be the last time Hyderabad switched sides under Asaf Jah II.
French forces would continue to advance on the Malabar Coast in 1783 but be defeated in September by Tipu at Bednore where a French force of 1,500 was captured or killed, including several European cannons. In late October Tipu's forces would retake Mangalore after a siege and the French would sit down with Mysore to negotiate a peace…
…In 1783 the largely independent Treaty of Pune was signed in the titular city between the Marathas, the British East India Company, and the French East India Company. French control over the Northern Circars and the Carnatic was once more recognized alongside BEIC control over Bengal, Awadh, Bombay, Surat, and Vasai. France recognized Mysore's right to trade with other European powers and did not extract any indemnities but the French-Mysore alliance was once more reiterated and France would gain basing rights for their navy at Mangalore. In essence the treaties were largely a return to the status quo on paper. Greater changes in India would have to wait for the Coalition Wars…
From "A Legacy of Colonial Wars: India from 1450 to 1960," by Aarthi Ganeshpkar circa 1981, Pondicherry Educational Publishing.
[1] It appears to take two years for the POD (point of divergence) from our timeline to reach India. News has to reach France from the New World and then reach India in turn subtly altering the decisions of the players at hand.
[2] A victory for the British OTL. Their poorer luck appears to stem from the fall of Madras.
[3] Goodbody = Quisling from a infamous collaborator of the same name.
[4] OTL Mir Jafar only ruled for a few months after betraying the British himself. Here he knows they actively killed his old boss with an assassin and decides to not play footsy with the Dutch. The British decision to assassinate Siraj may have been from desperation as they had less troops than OTL due to the fall of Madras.
[5] Assassinated early in his short reign OTL.
