Place · Vijayanagara moated fort · India
Vellore Fort
Also known as Aravidu, Bijapur, EIC), Vellore, Vellore (Nayaka, Vellore (Nayaka-Bijapur-Aravidu-EIC)
A Vijayanagara-period fort of about 1566 with a wet moat once stocked with crocodiles, a granite curtain wall and the Jalakanteshwara temple inside the enclosure. It was held afterwards by Bijapur, the Marathas, the Mughals, the Nawabs of the Carnatic and the Company, and it is one of the strongest surviving fortifications in the south.
- Date
- 1566 · 1806
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 12.918, 79.132
Worth knowing
Sriranga III, the last Vijayanagara emperor, is said to have been interred here, and Tipu Sultan's family was held in the fort after 1799 — his sons' presence is part of the background to the sepoy mutiny that broke out inside these walls in July 1806, half a century before 1857. The rising was put down in a few hours.
Connections (2)
- CampaignṬīpū Sultān
After Srirangapatna fell in 1799 Tipu's family was deported to Vellore fort, where they were held for years — and it was in Vellore that the sepoy mutiny of 1806 broke out, over new uniform regulations about beards, turbans and caste marks, with the mutineers raising Tipu's flag and proclaiming one of his sons. It is the first serious mutiny in the Company's Indian army, fifty-one years before 1857, and it was put down in a morning.
- Power passed toGingee Fort
Vellore and Gingee are the two great Tamil forts and both changed hands six or seven times — Vijayanagara, Bijapur, Maratha, Mughal, Carnatic Nawab, French, Company. The Carnatic was fought over rather than governed for a century and a half, and its fortifications record every transfer. The 1806 Vellore mutiny happened inside one of them, twelve years before the last transfer.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Vellore Fort”. Report of the Commission on the Vellore Mutiny (1806), Madras records; Archaeological Survey of India, Chennai circle records.
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