The Story of Madras Part 3 – New Territory and the Nawab’s Palace

This is Part 3 of an eight-part series retelling Glyn Barlow’s 1921 book The Story of Madras. Previously, in Part 2, Madras built its first wall.

Expansion of Madras

Growth Beyond the Fort

We have seen that the Company were careful to develop both White Town and Black Town. They were not content, however, with mere developments, for they took pains also to extend their territorial possessions.

The strip of land that was acquired by Mr. Francis Day was not large. Roughly, it extended along the seashore from the mouth of the Cooum to an undefined point beyond the present harbour, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Cassimode, and inland as far as what was called the North River, which is now represented by Cochrane’s Canal–the canal that runs between the Central Station and the People’s Park. It will be interesting to note how some of the various other parts of the present city came into the Company’s possession.

On several occasions the representatives of various dynasties that were successively supreme over Madras made grants of additional land to the Company. The village of Triplicane was the first addition,—-some twenty years after the acquisition of Madras.

The village was granted by the representative of the Mohammedan King of Golconda, for an annual rent of Rs. 175, which ceased to be paid when the Golconda dynasty shortly afterwards came to an end.

Later, in compliance with a petition by Governor Elihu Yale to the Emperor Aurangzeb, the Company received a free grant of ‘Tandore (Tondiarpet), Persewacca (Pursewaukam), and Yegmore (Egmore).’ Still later, in the reign of Aurangzeb’s son and successor, the village of Lungambacca (Nungumbaukam), now the principal residential district of Europeans in Madras, was granted to the Company, together with four adjoining villages, for a total annual rent of 1,500 pagodas (say Rs. 5,250).

The Emperor’s officers argued that the rent ought to have been larger, but the Company, conforming to the spirit of corruption that was in fashion, were wily enough to send by a Brahman and a Mohammedan conjointly a sum of Rs. 700 ‘to be distributed amongst the King’s officers who keep the Records, in order to settle this matter.’ The village of Vepery–variously called in olden documents Ipere, Ypere, Vipery, and Vapery–lay between Egmore and Pursewaukam; and the Company, being naturally desirous of consolidating their territory, proceeded at once to try to obtain a grant of the place; but successive efforts on the part of Governor Elihu Yale came to naught; and it was not till much later (1742) when the Nawab of Arcot was lord of the soil, that Vepery was acquired from the Nawab.

The manner of its acquisition is interesting. The preceding Nawab had just been murdered, and the Carnatic army disowning the ambitious rival who had murdered him, proclaimed the dead Nawab’s son as his successor. The new Nawab was but a youth, and he was residing at the time in one of the big houses in Black Town. The Company were politic enough to celebrate the lad’s accession with grand doings.

They escorted him in a splendid procession to the Company’s Gardens, which were situated along the bank of the river Cooum, where the General Hospital and the Medical College now stand. In the Gardens there was a fine house, containing a spacious hall, which the Company had specially designed for great occasions; and there the lad’s accession was formally announced; and finally he was escorted in procession back to his dwelling.

The Company profited by their politic demonstration; for, in return for their courtesies to the young Nawab, the lad gratified their desires by making them a rent-free grant of the village of Vepery, and also of Perambore and other lands. It may be added that the boy-king was unfortunate; for he was murdered within two years of his accession, at the instance of the man who had murdered his father.

The Acquisition of San Thome

San Thome was acquired in 1749; and the story of the acquisition is not without interest. The names ‘San Thome’ and ‘Mylapore’ are often used as alternative designations for one and the same locality; but in bygone days the two names represented quite different places. Mylapore was a very ancient Indian town, which seems to have been in existence long before the birth of Christ. San Thome was a seventeenth century Portuguese settlement close by.

It is an old tradition that St. Thomas the Apostle was martyred just outside Mylapore; and when the Portuguese first came to India some of them visited Mylapore to look for relics of the saint. They found some ruined Christian churches, and also a tomb which they believed to be the tomb of St. Thomas; and soon afterwards a Portuguese monastery was established on the spot.

A Portuguese town grew up around the monastery; and in course of time the town became a commercial centre, and was surrounded with a fortified wall, and was the Portuguese settlement of San Thome, over against the Indian town of Mylapore.

An Italian dealer in precious stones who visited India in the sixteenth century wrote of San Thome that it was ‘as fair a city’ as any that he had seen in the land; and he described Mylapore as being an Indian city surrounded by its own mud wall. Mylapore was thus in effect the Black Town of San Thome; but in later days the two towns were combined. When the English came to Fort St.

George, the power of the Portuguese was already waning; and the development of the influence of the English at Madras meant a further lessening of the influence of the Portuguese at San Thome; and it was a natural consequence that San Thome, including Mylapore, became a prey to successive assailants. Its first captor was the lord of the soil, the Mohammedan King of Golconda.

Next, the French took it from Golconda; and two years later Golconda, with the help of the Dutch, recaptured it from the French. The Dutch were content with a share of the plunder for their reward, and left Golconda in possession. On the self-interested advice of the English at Fort St. George, Golconda destroyed the fortifications. He then put the town up for sale.

The Company were prepared to buy it, and so were the Portuguese; but a rich Mohammedan named Cassa Verona found favour with Golconda’s Moslem officials, and secured the town on a short lease. Next it was leased to the Hindu Governor of Poonamallee; and then for a big price it went back again to the Portuguese.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century the great Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb dethroned the lord of the soil, the King of Golconda; and, although the Portuguese were not turned out of San Thome, it was now a part of the Moghul Empire, and was put in charge of a Moslem ruler. After Aurangzeb’s death, the Moghul Empire broke up, and the Nawab of Arcot eventually became independent, and San Thome was part of his dominions.

In 1749, when Madras, after the French occupation, was restored to the English by an order from Paris, in accordance with the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, Dupleix at Pondicherry was bitterly disappointed at the rendition, and he formed designs for the acquisition of San Thome for France, as a set-off for the loss of Madras. The English at Fort St.

George had information of his schemes, and, being in no way desirous of having aggressive Frenchmen for close neighbours, they forestalled Dupleix by persuading the Nawab to make the Company a grant of ‘Mylapore, _alias_ St. Thome,’ on condition that the Company should undertake to help the Nawab with men and money whenever he should call upon them to do so.

It was thus that San Thome became a British possession; and, although it was afterwards ravaged successively by the French under Count Lally and by Haidar Ali of Mysore, it has remained a British possession ever since.

We have said enough to show the manner in which the different parts of the modern city of Madras came into the hands of the English. The methods were not always wholly admirable; but we must remember that the East India Company was a mercantile association, fighting for its existence under diamond-cut-diamond conditions; and we must remember also that, although its representatives at Madras were sent out to India not to rule but to earn dividends for the shareholders, yet the Company’s rule over Madras was so upright that crowds of people were continually flocking into Madras to enjoy its benefits.

Outposts

Guarding the Suburbs

The suburban lands which were successively granted to the Company were not protected either by the walls of Fort St. George or by the walls of Black Town, and it was accordingly necessary that special means should be adopted for their defence. The Company’s military engineers devised the erection of small suburban forts (‘redoubts’), block-houses, and batteries, which were to be mounted with cannon and to be in charge of an appropriate garrison, and were to serve as outposts for the protection of the outlying quarters of the city.

On the northern side of Black Town the batteries and block-houses were linked together by a thick-set hedge of palmyras, bamboos, prickly-pear, and thorny bushes, such that neither infantry nor cavalry could force a way through. Later it was decreed that the ‘Bound Hedge,’ as it was called, should be extended so as to encircle the whole city. The work, however, was never completed, for as late as 1785 an influential European inhabitant of Madras, addressing the Government on the subject of the insecurity of the city, wrote:–

“Was the Bound Hedge finished, no man could desert. No Spy could pass; provisions would be cheap. All the Garden Houses, as well as thirty-three Square Miles of Ground, would be in security from the invasions of irregular Horse.”

The San Thome and Egmore Redoubts

Of the suburban fortifications the two largest were at Egmore and at San Thome. Next in size were those at Nungumbaukam and at Pursewaukam. Of smaller works there were many. Of the fortifications at Nungumbaukam and at Pursewaukam all traces have disappeared; but of the larger ones at San Thome and at Egmore interesting remains are still to be seen.

The remains of the San Thome Redoubt stand within the grounds of ‘Leith Castle,’ a house that lies south of the San Thome Cathedral. The remains are ruins, but the massive walls fifteen feet high and three feet thick, are suggestive of the purpose for which the redoubt was built.

The ‘Records’ show that the San Thome Redoubt, built in 1751, was a very complete fortification, with a moat forty feet wide, a glacis, and all the other works that are usual in respect of a well appointed building of the kind. That it was of a large size is to be seen in the fact that, when the French under Count Lally were besieging Madras, an English officer was officially directed ‘to stay in St.

Thome Fort with the Europeans belonging to Chingleput, four Companies of sepoys, and fifty horse.’

The Egmore Redoubt was a good deal older than that of San Thome. It was constructed in the days of Queen Anne. It was intended, of course, for the special protection of Egmore; but in those distant days when trips to the hills were unknown, even Egmore was a health-resort in respect of the crowded Fort St.

George, and it was officially reported that the Egmore Redoubt might ‘serve for a convenience for the sick Soldiers when arrived from England, for the recovery of their health, it being a good air.’ The Egmore Redoubt was evidently a need; for the ‘Records’ tell us that on various occasions its guns were fired at the enemy.

The enemy were for the most part horsemen of Haidar Ali or of Tipu, his son and successor; and in 1799 the year in which Tipu was killed, the need for the Redoubt disappeared. Adjoining the precincts of the Redoubt were the premises of the Male Asylum, an Anglo-Indian Orphanage, which required to be extended, and in the following year the Madras Government gave the Redoubt to the Asylum, and the two premises were turned into a common enclosure.

In the beginning of the present century the Directors of the Asylum sold their Egmore estate to the South Indian Railway Company and removed to new premises in the Poonamallee road; and what remains of the Egmore Redoubt is now the habitation of some of the Railway employees.

The remains are of quaint interest. At some date or another the authorities of the Asylum had an upper story added to one of the military buildings, with the result that there is the strange spectacle of a row of windowed chambers on the top of a buttressed and battlemented wall, windowless and grim.

The upper story has been built into the battlements in such a manner that the outline of the battlements is still clearly visible, and the building is a composite reminder of old-time war and latter-day peace.

The whole of the lower part of the building, with its massive walls and its frowning aspect, is of curious and suggestive interest; and the ground around, which is extensively bricked, is a reminder of the fact that the Redoubt in its original form was large indeed. The place provides interesting material for antiquarian speculation.

Chepauk Palace

A Palace of the Nawabs

Among the interesting buildings in Madras must be included Chepauk Palace, which was built about a century and a half ago as a residence for the Nawab of the Carnatic, and which is now the office of the Board of Revenue.

The high wall that enclosed the spacious Saracenic structure in its palace days has been pulled down, and the public can now gaze at a building that was once carefully screened from the public eye, and can enter at will without having to satisfy the scrutiny of armed men at the gate.

A change indeed–from the sleepy residence of a Muhammadan ruler, with his harem and his idle crowd of retainers, to bustling offices where a multitude of officials and clerks are working out the cash accounts of the Government of Madras!

The ‘Carnatic’ was a dominion that extended over the territory that is now included in the Collectorates of Nellore, North Arcot, South Arcot, Trichinopoly, and Tinnevelly. The town of Arcot was the capital of the dominion, and the Nawab of the Carnatic was sometimes spoken of as the Nawab of Arcot. Chepauk Palace belongs to the history of the Carnatic, and a few historical notes will make things clear.

In our first chapter we intimated that Madras, when Mr. Francis Day acquired it, was within the domain of the disappearing Hindu Empire of Vijayanagar, of which the living representative at the time was the Raja of Chandragiri, from whom Mr. Francis Day accordingly obtained a deed of possession.

Seven years afterwards, the Raja of Chandragiri was a refugee in Mysore, driven from his throne by the Muhammadan Sultan of Golconda, who assumed the sovereignty of Hyderabad and the Carnatic. The Sultan of Golconda thus became the recognized overlord of Madras; and the Company were careful to secure from their new sovereign a confirmation of their possession.

But the power of the Sultan was destined to fall in its turn; for Aurangzeb, the Moghul Emperor at Delhi, being desirous of uniting all India under Moghul rule, waged war against the Sultan of Golconda–who, as a Shiah Mohammedan, was a heretic in Aurangzeb’s eyes–and defeated him. Aurangzeb put Hyderabad under a Nizam whom he named ‘Viceroy of the Deccan’ and the Carnatic under a Nawab who was to be subordinate to the Viceroy.

But the Emperor who succeeded Aurangzeb had none of their predecessors’ greatness; and soon after Aurangzeb’s death the Nizam of Hyderabad assumed independence, with the Nawab of the Carnatic as his vassal.

The Nawabs of the Carnatic

In 1749 there was a quarrel for the Nawabship. The French at Pondicherry supported one claimant, and the English at Madras supported the other. This was the gallant Clive’s opportunity. Exchanging the clerk’s pen for the officer’s sword, the youthful ‘writer’ marched with a small force to Arcot and captured it on behalf of the Company’s nominee, and then sustained most heroically a lengthy siege. Clive triumphed; and Mohammed Ali, otherwise known as Nawab Walajah, became undisputed Nawab of the Carnatic. Later, with British support, the Nawab renounced his allegiance to Hyderabad, and reigned as an independent prince.

In his capital at Arcot, Nawab Walajah, who had many factionary enemies, would assuredly have found himself in a dangerous centre of intrigue; but he was wise in his generation; for as soon as he had gained his independence he sought and obtained from the Governor of Madras permission to build a palace for himself within the protective walls of Fort St. George.

Arrangements for the work were made; and one of the streets of the Fort–the street which still bears the name of ‘Palace Street’–received its name because it was the street in which the Nawab’s residence was to be built. Eventually, however, the scheme was set aside; and in the following year the Nawab acquired private property in Chepauk, and engaged an English architect to build him a house. Chepauk Palace thus came into existence.

The grounds of the Palace, which the Nawab surrounded with a wall, formed an immense enclosure, which included a large part of the grounds of Government House of to-day and a great deal of adjoining land.

Grand Occasions

Chepauk Palace was the scene of some grand doings in its time; and soon after it was built the Nawab entertained the Governor of Madras and his Councillors, one of whom was Mr. Warren Hastings, at ‘an elegant breakfast;’ and, when the feast was over, he divided some Rs. 30,000 among his guests. The Governor got Rs. 7,000, and, on a sliding scale, the Secretaries, who were last on the list, got Rs. 1,000 each.

The relations, however, between Nawab Walajah and a later Governor of Madras were not so cordial. In 1780 Haidar Ali with an immense army suddenly invaded the Carnatic, and annihilated a British force that was sent to oppose him; and Tipu, his son and successor, continued the campaign.

The Company’s treasury at Madras was straitened with the expenses of the war, and the Nawab, whose capital was in the hands of the enemy, was unable to contribute thereto; but when Tipu was eventually defeated, the Nawab was induced to assign the control of the revenues of the Carnatic to the Company.

A few months later the Nawab felt that he had made an unwise bargain, and he declared his renunciation of the agreement; but Baron Macartney, the newly appointed Governor of Madras, kept him strictly to his word.

The Nawab wrote various official letters, complaining in one that Lord Macartney had ‘premeditatedly’ offered him ‘Insults and Indignity,’ and in another that he had shown him ‘every mark of Insult and Contempt.’ The Directors in London, expressly declaring their desire to content the influential Nawab, decided in his favour; whereupon Lord Macartney, who in the opinion of his friends had been set at naught for the sake of the wealthy potentate, indignantly resigned the Governorship of Madras, and went home.

Friendly relations between the Nawab and the Madras Government were thereupon resumed, and when Nawab Walajah died, at the age of seventy-eight, he was eulogised in an official note in the _Fort St. George Gazette.

Decline and Fall

The career of his son and successor, Umdat-ul-Umara, was less auspicious. Although his accession was the occasion of friendly letters between himself and the Government of Madras, the Nawab’s rejection of the Governor’s suggestion that the financial arrangements between himself and the Company should be made more favourable to the Company irritated the Governor, and the Governor’s efforts to induce the Nawab to change his mind irritated the Nawab.

Meanwhile Tipu Sultan was preparing for another war with the Company, and when, after a brief campaign, Tipu was killed while fighting bravely in defence of his capital, it was declared that an examination of Tipu’s correspondence showed that the Nawab of Arcot had been guilty of treasonable communications with Mysore.

It was accordingly resolved that the Company should assume control of the Carnatic; but, as the Nawab was seriously ill, nothing was done until his death, when British troops were sent to occupy Chepauk Palace.

The Nawab’s son refused to recognize the Company’s right to control his father’s dominions, whereupon the Company set him aside, and put his cousin on the throne in his stead. The Company were now the actual rulers of the Carnatic, and the future Nawabs were styled ‘Titular Nawabs.’ In 1855 the third of the Titular Nawabs died without any son to succeed him.

Lord Dalhousie was Governor-General of India at the time, and it was Lord Dalhousie’s declared policy that if the ruler of any native state died without issue, his dominions should formally lapse to the Company.

On this principle the Carnatic now became a formal part of the British dominions, and the dynasty of the Nawabs came to an end; Chepauk Palace, which was the personal property of the Nawabs, was acquired by the Company’s Government for a price, and was eventually turned into Government offices.

The many thousands of Mohammedans, however, who dwelt in the crowded streets and lanes of Chepauk, and who had looked upon the Nawab as their religious chief, would have been afflicted at the cessation of the Carnatic line; and after the Indian Mutiny the Government of India, respecting Mohammedan sentiment, recognized the succession of the nearest relative of the late Nawab and obtained for him from the King of England the hereditary title of Amir-i-Arcot, or ‘Prince of Arcot’–an honorary title but higher than that of Nawab.

A sum of Rs. 1,50,000 per annum–(not an excessive sum in relation to the revenues of the Carnatic, which are now collected by the Madras Government)–is expended annually in pensions to the Prince and to certain of his relatives; and he lives in a house called the ‘Amir Mahal’ (the Amir’s Palace), which was given to him by the Government. The Amir Mahal stands in spacious grounds in Royapettah.

At the principal entrance, the gate-house is a tall and imposing edifice in red brick. At the gateway, sentries, armed with old-fashioned rifles, stand–or sometimes sit–on guard; and the Prince’s Band is often to be heard practising oriental music in the room up above.

Chepauk Today

Regarded in relation to its history, Chepauk is something more than ‘one of the Government buildings on the Marina.’ Let us remember that, when it was enclosed within the walls that are now no more, it was the home of Mohammedan potentates–sometimes a scene of gorgeous festivity–sometimes a scene of desperate intrigue.

In imagination we may people the front garden with the gaily-uniformed Body-Guard of the Carnatic sovereign, mounted on gaily-bridled steeds; and we may see the Nawab himself coming magnificently down the front steps and climbing into the silver howdah that is strapped on the back of a kneeling elephant.

A blast of oriental music, and the procession goes on its way; and we may wonder at which of the tiled windows on the upper floor the bright eyes of the Lalla Rookhs and the Nurmahals of Chepauk are slily peeping at the spectacle. The vision vanishes.

The procession now is a procession of clerks to their homes when their day’s work is over; and the music is a ragtime selection by the Band of the Madras Guards on the Marina, close by, with ayahs and children around. We are in the twentieth century; but for a moment we have lived in the past.

Continue with Part 4: Faith in the Fort City, the story of St. Mary’s Church and the Roman Catholic churches of old Madras.

Adapted from Glyn Barlow, The Story of Madras (Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1921), a public-domain work. Barlow drew principally on the Records of Fort St. George and Colonel Love’s Vestiges of Madras for his own research.

Related Posts

• The Story of Madras Part 7 – How Education Grew in the City
• The Story of Madras Part 6 – Madras and the Sea
• The Story of Madras Part 5 – Life in the City
• The Story of Madras Part 4 – Faith in the Fort City
• The Story of Madras Part 2 – White Town, Black Town, and the Wall
• The Story of Madras Part 1 – From Fishing Village to Fort St. George
• Anchettidurgam Fort: The Forgotten Baramahal Stronghold
• Porto Novo : A 500-Year Journey Through Tamil Nadu’s Trading Past
• The Fall of Madurai’s 72 Bastions and Fort Walls: The Blackburne Story
• The Brutal Vellaloor Massacre and East India Company’s Reign of Terror