Revolution to Regency#1: The Armed Forces of Mysore.

  The Armed Forces of Mysore.

"The Presence" himself: Tipu Sultan.

Introduction. 

    For me, one of the greatest joys of wargaming as a hobby lies in the background work -the research of an army, campaign or war. There can be few other hobbies that encourage reading and research to quite such a degree and for me at least, the “discovery” of a whole new area of study within my chosen period is something akin to finding the holy grail! All too often we forget that the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were a global conflict and that many of the forces involved were far from the “state of the art” armies of Western Europe. Fair enough, these weren’t exactly in the main theatres of operation but did, nevertheless have potentially important effects on the outcomes in those theatres.

     Having been interested in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars for many years -since the “Waterloo” film came out when I was about 12 years old in fact,- I have always found anything to do with them a source of fascination. To a lesser extent, this fascination spreads to the whole of the Eighteenth Century, a century of warfare and upheaval, revolutions -social, military, industrial and economic- a century that moulded modern Europe into what it is today. I had, until recently, largely ignored those perennial bones of contention the Indies, West and East, which were peripheral to the main events happening in Europe, with the Ottoman Empire being the most outré state in which I was vaguely interested. 

    It was probably boredom that first piqued my interest in the “exotic” armies of the period. I’d got tired of painting the usual French, British, Austrians etcetera and reading ever more about a fairly limited period. How some people can concentrate on the “Hundred Days” is quite beyond me, covering as it does just 4 days of real fighting involving pretty limited forces. In a fit of defiance against an increasingly uniform hobby (see what I did there?) I consciously looked for something a bit different and being an avid devourer of Napoleonic naval fiction decided to look more deeply into the Ottoman Empire. This is where I found the major hurdle to building up an “exotic” army wasn’t so much the lack of miniatures as the lack of resources to do the research. It was whilst looking for information on the Ottomans that I found Mark Bevis's book “Tangiers to Tehran- A Wargamers’ Guide to the Armies of the Middle East in the Napoleonic and Pre-Colonial Eras” which sparked not just my interest, but my imagination too in a completely different direction as I began to realise these “peripheral” areas were far from that and I found, Like Napoleon before me, that my thoughts were turning to the East. 

    

    Mark's book led to me wanting more information and the Persian (Qajar) army really piqued my interest with it’s mix of line troops, mediaeval knights, Afghan tribesmen and hundreds of camel mounted swivel guns. Whilst looking for more information I found David Brown's excellent e-book “The Persian Army of the Napoleonic Era-Qajar Dynasty 1779-1857” which sadly hinted at events and forces even further East…. the Mughals, The Mahrattas, the “Honourable” (?) East India Company, the VOC and Compagnie des Indes Orientales, Mysore, Hyderabad –names to conjour with. Images of elephants, huge cannon, masses of cavalry and ranks of wild infantry in all the glowing colours of the Orient filled my head…. But where to begin? And so I began looking at the various warring states and empires on the Indian Peninsula. I soon realised that information on the armies of the Indian subcontinent, including the forces of Britain, France, Holland and Portugal was sketchy to say the least. Apart from a couple of “Osprey” books on battles and others covering the Sikhs and Mughals that there was practically nothing covering the period before the British Raj. 

    I feel that this lack of ready information prevents a lot of wargamers becoming interested in the region, which provides so many opportunities for table-top gaming at all scales from massive battles down to skirmishes. We tend to be drawn towards those periods and regions on which details of uniforms, forces and colours /banners are known, hence this attempt Revolution to Regency vol.1: The Armed Forces of Mysore page 5at gathering and compiling brief histories of the armies of India during the Napoleonic era which, I hope, will be the first of a series of guides covering the various armies.. Of course, Indian History doesn't neatly fit into that 1793-1815 slot that the Napoleonic Wars fill, so these guides will start at around the 1780s -around the time of the first of the “Revolutionary Wars”, that between Britain and her American colonies- and finish at around 1820 which marks a watershed in British (the dominant European force in the region) uniform and re-organisation from a largely European army to that of a sepoy one, so the period should be more “Revolution to Regency” than the “Revolutionary and Napoleonic”. I had expected armies of tribal war-bands, ill equipped, ill disciplined and ill led. What I found, much to my surprise, were large, well organised -at least in partforces based around cores of regular infantry disciplined and trained in the manner of Europe and in some cases backed by surprisingly sophisticated economies and industries, though the history will begin slightly earlier in order to place events in context. 

    Just as Indian history in general doesn’t fit in with European periods, neither does that of Mysore, the end of which, as an independent entity comes in 1799, consequently, any history beyond then will be that of a British ally. For those who are prepared to make the effort, there is a tremendous amount of information available. As far as possible, I have tried to work from period sources using books readily available on-line and images taken from Indian rather than European art. Most modern books on the subject seem to add little information that isn’t available in these older works. The difficult part is separating the wheat from the chaff –in knowing what is relevant and what merely appears to be so. To that end, some information that I find of interest but of dubious value I have added as an appendix. Finally, in some cases, the original writer does such a wonderful job of describing an event or scene that it cannot be bettered. When this occurs, I have made no attempt to alter their words. Those words have stirred my imagination and curiosity and, I hope, they will stir yours in just the same way, so don’t expect some deep and fancy history book –this isn’t it. This is a simple guide to an obscure army that will, I hope, act as a spring-board for others to begin their own journey of discovery.