The Story of Madras Part 2

Thome with the greatest part of his horse. In the afternoon Advice came that the Enemy's horse were moving from St.

Thome round to the Northward with a design, as was supposed, to make an attempt on the Black Town.

It would have been difficult to have defended the unwalled town; and on the following day the Council of Fort St. George sent Mr. DuPre, Chief Councillor and succeeding Governor, to Haidar Ali's camp, on the other side of the Marmalong Bridge, to come to terms with the invader; and within three days a treaty had been made. The treaty, said Mr. DuPre, writing to a friend, "will do us no honor: yet it was necessary, and there was no alternative but that or worse."

After this humiliation the building of the Wall was regarded as a pressing necessity; and within a year the work was practically finished.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'THE OLD AND THE NEW'

Corner of the Medical School built into a portion of the Black Town Wall.]

It was well indeed that the work was done; for a few years afterwards, on the 10th of August, 1780, Haidar's cavalry raided San Thome and Triplicane, killing a number of people; and the terror in Black Town was so great that crowds of the inhabitants took flight. Fortunately, however, the Governor was able to issue the following notification for the rea.s.surance of the public:--'A sufficient number of guns have been mounted on the Black Town wall,' and 'nothing has been omitted that I can think of for the security of the Black Town.' Haidar was not sufficiently venturesome to attack the fortified town; but the terror of the inhabitants was by no means at an end; for a little later came the disastrous news that a British force sent out to meet the invader had been cut to pieces at Conjeevaram. Eventually, however, the Mysoreans were defeated, and the treaty of peace was a triumph for the Company.

The long delay in the building of the Wall was chiefly due to the fact that the representatives of the Company, being commercial men, naturally gave their chief attention to the Company's mercantile business, and were apt to disregard the immediate necessity of expensive schemes which the Company's military officers put forward as strategic requirements. When the Wall was first talked about, after the recovery of Madras from the French, the Directors in England, who always kept a tight hand on the Company's purse-strings, declared that the inhabitants of Black Town ought to be made to pay for the cost of their own defences, and should be taxed accordingly; and the name of the 'Wall Tax Road,' which runs alongside the Central Station to the Salt Cotaurs, is a standing reminder of the Directors' decree, while the road itself is an indication of the alignment of the western wall.

The people protested indignantly against being taxed for the purpose, and, as a matter of fact, the representatives of the Company in India doubted whether they would be within their legal rights in compelling them to pay; and the tax was never actually levied. What with the Wall Tax Road on the west and the seash.o.r.e on the east, the existing remains on the north, and the Esplanade on the south, it is not difficult to form a general idea of the direction of the four sides of the wall within which the later Black Town was enclosed.

Such is the story of 'The Wall;' and the remains are an interesting relic of lawless times when at any minute it was possible that crowds of terror-stricken folk would suddenly be pouring through the gateways of the city at the alarming news that strange hors.e.m.e.n were das.h.i.+ng here and there in one or another of the suburbs, demanding money and jewels from the people and slaughtering unhappy individuals who tried to evade a response.

CHAPTER VI

EXPANSION

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 seash.o.r.e from the mouth of the Cooum to an undefined point beyond the present harbour, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Ca.s.simode, and inland as far as what was called the North River, which is now represented by Cochrane's Ca.n.a.l--the ca.n.a.l 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADRAS (APPROXIMATELY)]

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 pet.i.tion 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 princ.i.p.al residential district of Europeans in Madras, was granted to the Company, together with four adjoining villages, for a total annual rent of 1,500 paG.o.das (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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 doc.u.ments 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 s.p.a.cious 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.

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 a.s.sailants. 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 Ca.s.sa 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 a.s.sociation, 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.

CHAPTER VII

OUTPOSTS

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, p.r.i.c.kly-pear, and th.o.r.n.y 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 pa.s.s; 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."

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: San Thome Fort.

A PORTION OF THE EXTENSIVE RUINS IN THE GROUNDS OF 'LEITH CASTLE,' SAN THOME]

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 ma.s.sive 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EGMORE FORT (SIDE VIEW)]

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 b.u.t.tressed 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 ma.s.sive 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REMAINS OF THE EGMORE FORT.

_The building is in the Male Asylum Road, and is now the residence of some railway employees. Its upper part has been built upon a battlemented wall, and doors have been let into the wall. The outlines of the original wall and of some of the battlements can be easily traced._]

CHAPTER VIII

THE CHURCH IN THE FORT

St. Mary's Church within the walls of Fort St. George is the oldest Protestant church in India, and, except for some of the oldest bits of the Fort walls, it is the oldest British building in Madras city, and even in India itself. It dates from 1680.

When Madras was rising upon its foundations, the Company's employees were not only without a church but also without a pastor; for the Company did not think it necessary to go to the expense of providing a chaplain for so small a community. But it was an age in which religious services on Sunday were seldom neglected; and it may be conceived that, in default of a chaplain at Fort St. George, the Governor himself or his delegate read the Church Service on Sunday morning and evening, in the hearing of the a.s.sembled employees of the Company, and perhaps also some selections from the published sermons of distinguished Elizabethan divines.

In the Portuguese settlement of San Thome there were numerous Roman Catholic priests, and some of them ministered to the numerous Portuguese and other Roman Catholic residents of White Town around Fort St. George, as also of Black Town close by. So numerous indeed were the Roman Catholic residents of White Town within three years of the foundation of the Fort that the Governor permitted a French priest to build a chapel in the Town. It was thus not a little anomalous that in a British settlement, founded under the auspices of such a redoubted antipapist as Queen Elizabeth, there was a Roman Catholic church with a priest in charge, yet neither a church nor a pastor of the established religion.

In 1645, however, the Company's Agent at Fort St. George forwarded to higher authority "a pet.i.tion from the souldiers for the desireing of a minister to be here with them for the maintainance of their soules health;" and in the following year a chaplain was sent out. There was still no Protestant church, but the celebration of religious services was held in careful regard; for the chaplain read morning and evening prayers every day of the year in a room in the Fort appointed for the purpose, and it was compulsory upon all the youthful employees of the Company to attend regularly, under the penalty of a fine.

Chaplains came and chaplains went, and for some sixteen years they continued their ministrations in the room in the Fort. A small church was then built; but, with the Company's developing trade, the population of White Town increased so rapidly that before long the little church was too small for the number of the wors.h.i.+ppers. When Mr. Streynsham Master, after a long term of years in the Company's service, was appointed Governor of Madras, one of his first acts was the circulation of a voluntary subscription paper for the building of a church that should be worthy of the Company's rapidly developing South Indian possession. He headed the list with a subscription of a hundred paG.o.das (Rs. 350), a sum which represented much more than it does now; for it was more than Mr. Streynsham Master's pay for a whole month as Governor of Madras. Subscriptions from the Councillors, as well as from the factors and writers and apprentices, were proportionately big; and on the 28th of October, 1680, St. Mary's Church was solemnly opened, and the guns of the Fort roared forth loud volleys in honour of the event. The steeple and the sanctuary were added later; but, for the rest, the present church, except for details, is the very same church that was built some two hundred and fifty years ago, in the reign of Charles II.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. MARY'S, FORT ST. GEORGE.]

It is interesting to note that the church at Madras was built during a period when in London a great many churches were being built--or rebuilt--after the Great Fire. Church-building was in vogue, with the distinguished Sir Christopher Wren as the builder in chief; and it is not unlikely that what was being done so energetically in London was one of the influences that inspired Mr. Streynsham Master to be so earnest over a scheme for building a church in Madras. It may be noted, moreover, that St. Mary's Church within the Fort at Madras is of a style that was very much in fas.h.i.+on in London at the time.

In deciding to build a new church, the Governor and his colleagues realized that if ever the Fort should be bombarded, a shot from the enemy's guns was as likely to fall upon the church as upon a fortified bastion; so the roof of the church was made 'bomb-proof,' in preparation for possibilities. Events proved the reasonableness of the measure; for on more than one occasion the church was a factor in war.