Fwd: The Battle of Colachel (Veera Madras, Adi Kol !)

[Mithila Kanugo]

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: rakesh chopra <rak...@hotmail.com>
Date: 23 August 2013 12:16
Subject: The Battle of Colachel (Veera Madras, Adi Kol !)
To: "mithila...@gmail.com" <mithila...@gmail.com>, "ankita.k....@gmail.com" <ankita.k....@gmail.com>, Amit Dugar <amitd...@gmail.com>, Sadia Khan <sadiak...@gmail.com>

An important battle from India's maritime history.
Please pass on to the class.
Some may be interested.
Thanks

Rear Admiral Dr R Chopra, VSM, PhD
New Delhi

 

From a friend

  The Battle of Colachel.

In July of the year 1741 C.E., a huge fleet of the Dutch East India Company sailed from Colombo en route to southern India. Commanded by the flamboyant Flemish officer Eustachius Benedictus De Lannoy, their mission was simple. Land on the Travancore coast, attack and subdue the capital Padmanabhapuram and 'pacify' the Maharaja Marthanda Varma, away campaigning on the northern borders of his kingdom.

The Maharaja needed time to move his forces south. The master strategist ordered the southern chieftains to muster their men-at-arms, at the same time instructing his spies to organize the fisher folk of the coastal villages. From their vessels out at sea the Dutch with their telescopes saw massed infantry (fishermen lined up with their oars on their shoulders like muskets) and cannon (bullock carts with coconut palm stems tied on) lined up along the coastline wherever they tried to disembark; they kept moving northwards till landfall at Colachel, a small seaside hamlet around 50 kilometres south of Trivandrum.

  

The armies of Travancore met the combined Dutch forces of soldiers and marines on the battlefield of Colachel on the 31st of July, 1741 C.E. In a cataclysmic engagement, the Dutch army was completely wiped out (the first and last military victory by an Asian power over a modern European army till the 1905 Battle of Tsushima Straits during the Russo-Japanese war), marking the beginning of the decline of Dutch power in Asia. The defeated de Lannoy (and 28 of his troops, the sole survivors), joined the services of the Maharaja and eventually rose to be Valiya Kapithan (Grand Admiral) of Travancore. He and his family are buried at Udayagiri Fort.

The key element of the victory was the Maharaja’s personal bodyguard, the Nair Pattalam, raised in 1704, later renamed the Nair Brigade and subsequently absorbed into the Indian Army as part of the Madras Regiment after Independence (His Highness the Maharaja of Travancore continues to be an honorary Colonel of the Madras Regiment). 

Every year on the anniversary of the battle, in a ceremony held by the Madras Regiment, the valorous dead are honoured, at the Vijaya Stambham, the granite memorial pillar.

 

 

 

 

 

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