East–West Street
Tip Sahib Street
Also known as: Rue Tipu Sultan
Named after: Tipu Sultan (1751–1799), Sultan of Mysore and France's most ideologically committed Indian ally (1751–1799)
Welcome to Tip Sahib Street, named after Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, the last Indian ruler to pose a genuinely existential threat to British power in South Asia. He was also France's most ideologically committed ally: a man who established a Jacobin Club at his palace, planted a Liberty Tree in his garden, corresponded with Napoleon, and was found dead in his armour at the Water Gate of Seringapatam on 4 May 1799.
Tipu Sultan, born Fateh Ali Sahab Tipu in 1751, inherited from his father Hyder Ali not only the Kingdom of Mysore but a strategic framework: systematic resistance to British expansion through alliance with France. What Tipu added was ideological intensity. He did not merely ally with France as a military partner. He aligned himself with France as a revolutionary ideal.
His military innovations were formidable. He expanded his father's iron-cased rocket corps from 1,200 to nearly 5,000 men, organised in specialist brigades with wheeled launchers capable of firing multiple rockets simultaneously at ranges of up to two kilometres. When British forces captured Seringapatam in 1799, they found 600 launchers, 700 serviceable rockets, and 9,000 empty tubes. The technology directly inspired William Congreve's development of the rocket systems used throughout the Napoleonic Wars.
His French alliance reached its most striking expression in 1794 when he established the Jacobin Club of Mysore at Seringapatam, planted a Liberty Tree in his palace garden, and began styling himself Citoyen Tipoo. His embassy to Versailles in 1787 had asked Louis XVI for a formal offensive-defensive alliance. His correspondence with Napoleon from Egypt in 1798 sought the same. Napoleon was interested: Talleyrand's report of February 1798 had proposed sending a force of 15,000 men from Suez to India to join Tipu Sultan and drive away the English. Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the Nile in August 1798 and ended that calculation.
The Fourth Anglo-Mysore War opened in 1799. Seringapatam was stormed on 4 May. Tipu was found dead near the Water Gate, still in armour. He had refused the opportunity to escape.
Notable on this street
- He styled himself Citoyen Tipoo and established a Jacobin Club at Seringapatam in 1794. A Sultan planting a Liberty Tree in a palace garden is one of the most extraordinary images in the history of French-Indian alliance.
- His rocket corps: 5,000 men with iron-cased rockets at ranges of 2 km. The technology captured at Seringapatam in 1799 directly inspired Congreve's rockets, used across Europe in the Napoleonic Wars.
- Napoleon and Talleyrand planned a 15,000-man force from Suez to link up with him in 1798. Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the Nile in August before it could sail. Tipu died the following year.
- Found dead in armour at the Water Gate of Seringapatam, 4 May 1799. He had refused to escape. His reported last words: better to live one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep.
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