CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 36 of 120

Correct — D, Colachel. On 10 August 1741 the forces of Travancore under Marthanda Varma defeated the Dutch East India Company at Colachel, a coastal town in what is now Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu. The battle is remembered as the first clear defeat of a European power in India by an Indian ruler's own army, and its consequence was as striking as the result: the Dutch commander Eustachius De Lannoy was captured, took service with Travancore after his release, and rose to be the kingdom's senior admiral, the Valiya Kappithan. He drilled the Travancore army on European lines and built the Nedumkotta line of fortifications; he is buried at Udayagiri Fort. The defeat ended Dutch ambitions in Malabar, and Marthanda Varma went on to consolidate a Travancore strong enough to face Mysore a generation later.

• (a)Wandiwash — Wrong Europeans, wrong decade, wrong winner. Wandiwash in 1760 was the English East India Company under Eyre Coote defeating the French under Lally in the Third Carnatic War — the battle that settled which European power would dominate the Coromandel.
• (b)Rakshasi – Tangadi — Two centuries earlier and no Europeans in it. Rakshasi-Tangadi, better known as Talikota, was fought in 1565, when the combined Deccan Sultanates broke the Vijayanagara army and sacked Hampi.
• (c)Pullalur — Far older still and entirely Indian. Pullalur, near Kanchipuram, was fought early in the seventh century, when the Chalukya Pulakeshin II defeated the Pallava Mahendravarman I.

The Dutch East India Company reached Malabar in the seventeenth century, took Cochin from the Portuguese in 1663, and made itself the arbiter of the pepper trade by playing the small kingdoms of the coast against one another. Marthanda Varma, who ruled Travancore from 1729, spent his reign doing the opposite — absorbing the neighbouring chiefdoms of Attingal, Quilon and Kayamkulam, breaking the power of the Ettuveetil Pillamar nobles, and building a standing army paid by the state rather than a levy raised from feudatories. Colachel is where those two projects collided. After it, in 1750, he made the celebrated Trippadidanam, dedicating his kingdom to the deity Padmanabha and ruling thereafter as the god's servant.

The item is a straight recall of one battle, and the option set is built so that each wrong answer is a famous battle from a different century and a different conflict. That is a gift if you carry dates: 1565 Talikota, seventh-century Pullalur, 1760 Wandiwash, 1741 Colachel. The trap is only for a candidate who recognises all four names but has attached none of them to a year. Note also what the stem does that makes this easier than it looks — it names Marthanda Varma, so any battle from before the eighteenth century is out on chronology alone. CDS has liked this fact enough to ask it twice in two years, once with the ruler in the stem as here and once with the year in the stem, which is a fair signal to learn both anchors.

• The Battle of Colachel was fought on 10 August 1741; Travancore under Marthanda Varma defeated the Dutch East India Company.
• Colachel is in Kanyakumari district of present-day Tamil Nadu.
• The Dutch commander Eustachius De Lannoy was captured, entered Travancore service and rose to be its senior admiral, the Valiya Kappithan; he built the Nedumkotta fortifications and is buried at Udayagiri Fort.
• Marthanda Varma ruled Travancore from 1729 and in 1750 dedicated the kingdom to Padmanabha in the ceremony called Trippadidanam.
• Wandiwash, 1760 — English defeated French. Rakshasi-Tangadi or Talikota, 1565 — Deccan Sultanates defeated Vijayanagara. Pullalur, early seventh century — Chalukyas defeated Pallavas.

• Placing Colachel in Kerala. Travancore's territory later became part of Kerala, but Colachel itself is in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu.
• Attaching the wrong European power to the battle — Wandiwash is English against French, Colachel is Travancore against the Dutch.
• Assuming a captured European commander was executed; De Lannoy went on to command Travancore's own army.

As a battle-to-ruler or battle-to-year match, sometimes with the ruler named in the stem and sometimes with the date.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Dutch commander captured at the Battle of Colachel, who later became the head of the Travancore army, was

  • (a)Eustachius De Lannoy
  • (b)Robert Clive
  • (c)Comte de Lally
  • (d)Eyre Coote

  Answer(a) Eustachius De Lannoy — he took service with Travancore as its Valiya Kappithan and built the Nedumkotta line of fortifications.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Battle of Wandiwash, fought in 1760, was a contest between

  • (a)Travancore and the Dutch
  • (b)the English and the French
  • (c)the Marathas and the Nizam
  • (d)Mysore and the English

  Answer(b) the English and the French — Eyre Coote defeated Lally, effectively deciding the Third Carnatic War in England's favour.