In 1797, a body of French troops established a Revolutionary Jacobin Club at Srirangapatnam.
The five hundred odd soldiers that had assembled for that occasion took a solemn pledge on that day, swearing ‘hatred of all Kings, except Tipoo Sultan, the Victorious, the Ally of the Republic of France.’
And that was not all! The people of Mysore were fated to hearken to the echoes of the French Revolution for some more time.
Only a year later, a product of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte was thundering from atop the ancient pyramids:
‘People of Egypt, I come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers. I respect God, His Prophet and the Quran more than did the Mamluks. We are the friends of all true Muslims.’
Napoleon’s victory over Austria and the subsequent signing of The Treaty of Campo Formio had left Great Britain fuming.
Tipu Sultans swords and ring in two Museums in London:
Britain desperately wanted a showdown, but Napoleon wasn’t going to fall for the trap: being a wise strategist, he knew that even he could not stand up to the full might of the British Navy.
So, Napoleon chose the next best thing. The idea was to deal a body blow to the British Economy.
To that end, Napoleon hatched a plan to seize Egypt, and having done that, ‘send a force of 15,000 men from Suez to India, to join the forces of Tipu Sahib and drive away the English.’
The plan was grand, no doubt, but it failed badly. The Mamluks were easy to overpower; the British not so much.
In the Battle of Nile, Admiral Horatio Nelson blew the French fleet to pieces.
Half Baked Tales and other lies: The other side of Tipu Sultan
It was an all-out devastating loss for the French in which only two ships out of thirteen managed to escape.
Less than a year after, Arthur Wellesley and his comrades stormed Srirangapatnam, putting an end to Tipu Sultan’s rule as well as his life.
Napoleon, meanwhile, recovered quickly from his defeat and went on to become the Emperor of France.
He would score many more military victories, and introduce a bunch of administrative measures, that would reform France and the world at large.
But, even Napoleon couldn’t elude for long the ghost from his past. In 1815, it finally caught up with the French Emperor.
Arthur Wellesley, that man who had once been Tipu’s undoing, now brought the mighty French Emperor on his knees.
On the 18th of June, Napoleon’s strength was decimated for good in the battlefield of Waterloo, a name that has ever since become synonymous with utter and complete defeat.
