Bangalore Fort

According to B. Lewis Rice's gazetteer of 1897, the first fort here was of mud and is said to date from 1537, under Kempe Gowda.

Single source·B. Lewis Rice, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for Government, rev. ed., vol. II, 1897, p. 46[1]

The stone fort did not follow that older line. In 1800 Francis Buchanan saw the ruins of the old mud wall in the centre of the fort: a smaller enclosure inside the later walls.

Confirmed·Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, vol. I, 1807, pp. 44–46[8]

The fort was enlarged and rebuilt in stone in 1761, the first year of Hyder Ali's rule. Rice attributes the work to a killedar named Ibrahim Sahib; the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) board at the site also gives 1761.

Confirmed·B. Lewis Rice, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for Government, rev. ed., vol. II, 1897, p. 46[1]·Archaeological Survey of India, history board at Bangalore Fort (photograph, 2017)[5]

It was oval, with round towers at intervals. Roderick Mackenzie, writing in 1799, said it came closer to an egg, though it seemed designed as a true oval.

Confirmed·Robert Home, Select Views in Mysore, London, 1794, letterpress pp. 1–2 and 6[3]·B. Lewis Rice, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for Government, rev. ed., vol. II, 1897, p. 46[1]·Roderick Mackenzie, A Sketch of the War with Tippoo Sultaun, vol. II, 1799, p. 43[4]

Colin Mackenzie, who surveyed the fort for the British army in 1791, recorded the rampart as 26 feet thick and faced with stone. Robert Home, watching the siege guns, wrote that the facing fell quickly but the body of the rampart, of red clay, crumbled only slowly. A parapet five feet high and five feet thick ran along the top.

Confirmed·Colin Mackenzie, survey of the fort and pettah of Bangalore, 1791, with its printed key[2]·Robert Home, Select Views in Mysore, London, 1794, letterpress pp. 1–2 and 6[3]·Roderick Mackenzie, A Sketch of the War with Tippoo Sultaun, vol. II, 1799, p. 43[4]

A lower outer wall, the fausse-braye, ran all round the foot of the rampart, with a covered way beyond it. Five cavaliers, raised gun platforms, overlooked the whole work.

Confirmed·Roderick Mackenzie, A Sketch of the War with Tippoo Sultaun, vol. II, 1799, p. 43[4]·Colin Mackenzie, survey of the fort and pettah of Bangalore, 1791, with its printed key[2]·B. Lewis Rice, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for Government, rev. ed., vol. II, 1897, p. 46[1]·Robert Home, Select Views in Mysore, London, 1794, letterpress pp. 1–2 and 6[3]

Colin Mackenzie calls the moat the Great Ditch, 100 to 110 feet broad (the first figure is hard to read). Home found it deep and wide but dry in most parts, and Mackenzie marks a wet stretch. In March 1791 it was mostly dry, with water held in places.

Confirmed·Colin Mackenzie, survey of the fort and pettah of Bangalore, 1791, with its printed key[2]·Robert Home, Select Views in Mysore, London, 1794, letterpress pp. 1–2 and 6[3]·Roderick Mackenzie, A Sketch of the War with Tippoo Sultaun, vol. II, 1799, p. 43[4]

There were two gateways. The Delhi Gate faced north towards the walled town; the Mysore Gate faced south. Home describes the Delhi Gate as five strong, large gates finished with considerable elegance, and the Mysore Gate as four lower, plainer ones.

Confirmed·Robert Home, Select Views in Mysore, London, 1794, letterpress pp. 1–2 and 6[3]·Roderick Mackenzie, A Sketch of the War with Tippoo Sultaun, vol. II, 1799, p. 43[4]·Colin Mackenzie, survey of the fort and pettah of Bangalore, 1791, with its printed key[2]·H. M. Vibart, The Military History of the Madras Engineers and Pioneers, vol. I, 1881, pp. 223–228[9]·B. Lewis Rice, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for Government, rev. ed., vol. II, 1897, p. 46[1]

Colin Mackenzie's survey names the buildings inside, among them magazines, granaries and the Durbar, or Palace, of Tipu Sultan.

Confirmed·Colin Mackenzie, survey of the fort and pettah of Bangalore, 1791, with its printed key[2]

Measured by Epocheye against the scale bar of Home's engraved map of 1794, the rampart outline spans an estimated 680 by 510 yards (roughly 620 by 460 metres), to the tips of the bastions.

Estimate·Robert Home, engraved map of Bangalore "with the Attacks", 22 March 1791[10]·Bangalore Fort evidence file, site photographs and measurements[7]

The British stormed the fort on the night of 21 March 1791. Colin Mackenzie's key separates a breach in the curtain wall from the breach in the great round tower through which the storming party entered. Vibart places the curtain breach near the large round tower, "where the present gate stands".

Confirmed·Colin Mackenzie, survey of the fort and pettah of Bangalore, 1791, with its printed key[2]·H. M. Vibart, The Military History of the Madras Engineers and Pioneers, vol. I, 1881, pp. 223–228[9]

According to the ASI's board, only this part of the fort remains intact: three successive gateways that linked the royal enclosure to the town, a dungeon and a small Ganesha temple, with sloping granite walls carrying stucco carving.

Single source·Archaeological Survey of India, history board at Bangalore Fort (photograph, 2017)[5]

A British tablet on the wall reads: "Through this breach the British assault was delivered. March 21st 1791."

Confirmed·British tablet marking the 1791 breach (photograph, 2004)[11]·Archaeological Survey of India, history board at Bangalore Fort (photograph, 2017)[5]

The ASI's board also says a tablet in the dungeon records the confinement of Sir David Baird and other Englishmen before 1785. We have not found a second source for this.

Single source·Archaeological Survey of India, history board at Bangalore Fort (photograph, 2017)[5]

Measured from Epocheye's photographs of July 2026, the surviving wall leans back an estimated 7 degrees as it rises, and its joints show no pale mortar: they are the same stone, recessed and in shadow.

Estimate·Bangalore Fort evidence file, site photographs and measurements[7]

Buchanan, in 1800, walked through what he called the ruins of the fort, and wrote that Tipu Sultan had pulled it down after seeing how poorly it held against the British.

Single source·Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, vol. I, 1807, pp. 44–46[8]

Rice records that by 1897 the fort had become part of the city. The old winding entrance through seven gates had been given up some thirty years before for a straight entrance cut beside the Delhi Gate, and the walls had been opened for a road running east to west.

Single source·B. Lewis Rice, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for Government, rev. ed., vol. II, 1897, p. 46[1]

Beyond the Delhi Gate complex, the circuit, the ditch, the cavaliers and the Mysore Gate no longer stand.

Confirmed·Archaeological Survey of India, history board at Bangalore Fort (photograph, 2017)[5]·Wikipedia, Bangalore Fort (tertiary source)[6]

No source we could reach dates the removal of any particular stretch of wall after 1897.

Not recorded·Bangalore Fort evidence file, site photographs and measurements[7]

The reconstruction rises from the surviving wall. Its thickness is Colin Mackenzie's 26 feet; its parapet is Roderick Mackenzie's five feet high and five feet thick.

Confirmed·Colin Mackenzie, survey of the fort and pettah of Bangalore, 1791, with its printed key[2]·Roderick Mackenzie, A Sketch of the War with Tippoo Sultaun, vol. II, 1799, p. 43[4]

Mackenzie wrote the rampart's height on his survey, but at the best resolution we can obtain the figure cannot be read. So the rebuilt wall fades out above the surviving stone instead of ending at an invented top.

Not recorded·Colin Mackenzie, survey of the fort and pettah of Bangalore, 1791, with its printed key[2]·Bangalore Fort evidence file, site photographs and measurements[7]

The model's fit to the real wall rests on Epocheye's own site survey, and its scale is an estimate from that survey, not a recorded measurement.

Estimate·Bangalore Fort evidence file, site photographs and measurements[7]

Bastions: Robert Home (1794) gives about thirty. Roderick Mackenzie (1799) gives twenty-six circular bastions sixty-seven yards apart, plus smaller ones over each gateway. We do not choose between them.

Disputed·Robert Home, Select Views in Mysore, London, 1794, letterpress pp. 1–2 and 6[3]·Roderick Mackenzie, A Sketch of the War with Tippoo Sultaun, vol. II, 1799, p. 43[4]

Size: Home's text says somewhat more than nine hundred yards in the longest diameter, but his own engraved map measures about 680 yards along the rampart line. Our hypothesis, not established, is that his figure includes the outworks.

Disputed·Robert Home, Select Views in Mysore, London, 1794, letterpress pp. 1–2 and 6[3]·Robert Home, engraved map of Bangalore "with the Attacks", 22 March 1791[10]·Bangalore Fort evidence file, site photographs and measurements[7]

This page gives no circuit length. "About a kilometre around" does not fit: an oval with a long axis of an estimated 620 metres or more cannot be less than about 1.2 kilometres round.

Estimate·Robert Home, engraved map of Bangalore "with the Attacks", 22 March 1791[10]·Bangalore Fort evidence file, site photographs and measurements[7]

Gates: Home, both Mackenzies, Vibart and Rice give the fort two gateways. The ASI's board lists six, adding Yelahanka, Ulsoor, Kanakanahalli and Kengeri; those most likely belong to the surrounding town. Within the Delhi Gate, Home counts five gates, Rice seven in the old entrance, and three survive; these may reflect different periods.

Disputed·Robert Home, Select Views in Mysore, London, 1794, letterpress pp. 1–2 and 6[3]·Roderick Mackenzie, A Sketch of the War with Tippoo Sultaun, vol. II, 1799, p. 43[4]·Colin Mackenzie, survey of the fort and pettah of Bangalore, 1791, with its printed key[2]·H. M. Vibart, The Military History of the Madras Engineers and Pioneers, vol. I, 1881, pp. 223–228[9]·B. Lewis Rice, Mysore: A Gazetteer Compiled for Government, rev. ed., vol. II, 1897, p. 46[1]·Archaeological Survey of India, history board at Bangalore Fort (photograph, 2017)[5]