An Officer's Justice
(2026)(The third book in the Life of William Culpepper series)
A novel by Anthony Morland
Tipu Sultan is dead. Seringapatam has fallen. Mysore, once a single, frightening power in southern India, has been broken. In private, the struggle to control what comes next is only beginning.
Victory does not create peace. It creates a vacuum, and every faction with ambition tries to fill it. Loyalists of the old regime drift into the countryside and turn to raiding. Opportunists use the confusion to settle scores. Merchants and village headmen weigh survival against loyalty, paying whoever rides in with the nearest threat. The Marathas press at the edges, ready to exploit any weakness. The East India Company, triumphant on the battlefield, now has to prove it can hold the roads, guard the convoys, and persuade the region that the Sultan’s fall was not a temporary storm.
Captain William Culpepper of His Majesty’s 33rd Regiment of Foot is placed squarely in that gap. At twenty-two, he has already been tempered by hard campaigning in Europe, India, and the brutal assault at Seringapatam. He also carries an uncomfortable inheritance from a vanished mentor, a half-seen intelligence war.
Now, William is sent into the unstable year after Mysore’s collapse. The garrison is weakened by fever. Patrols are stretched thin. Convoys that should stabilize the countryside are being shadowed and struck. A name spreads faster than any dispatch rider: Dhoondia Waugh, an insurgent leader whose strength is speed, rumor, and the willingness of desperate men to believe that the British can be driven out. William’s orders are simple on paper: keep the roads open, keep the countryside quiet, and learn what kind of enemy he is facing and how far the unrest has spread.
Far to the east, Madras and Fort St. George are a different battlefield entirely. Decisions are made in offices and drawing rooms. A delayed movement order can strand a detachment. A single altered date can shift blame. A missing receipt can hide stolen stores. While soldiers risk their lives on the roads, powerful figures inside the Company fight with ledgers, seals, and influence. Some want stability after years of war. Others see a chance to profit while the province is unsettled. In this world, reputation can kill as surely as a musket ball.
As William’s duties pull him toward Madras, he finds that the vacuum left by Tipu Sultan’s death is being contested by more than raiders and rebels. Indian politics do not pause because the British raise a flag over a fortress. Local princes watch the Company closely, weighing alliance against independence. One of them, Prince Shivaji Bahadur, offers valuable help that never comes without consequences. His agent, a courier known only as the Jackal, moves where uniforms and official authority cannot, bringing warnings and information without leaving a visible trail.
William also learns that danger can wear the same uniform as him.
Genre: Historical
Victory does not create peace. It creates a vacuum, and every faction with ambition tries to fill it. Loyalists of the old regime drift into the countryside and turn to raiding. Opportunists use the confusion to settle scores. Merchants and village headmen weigh survival against loyalty, paying whoever rides in with the nearest threat. The Marathas press at the edges, ready to exploit any weakness. The East India Company, triumphant on the battlefield, now has to prove it can hold the roads, guard the convoys, and persuade the region that the Sultan’s fall was not a temporary storm.
Captain William Culpepper of His Majesty’s 33rd Regiment of Foot is placed squarely in that gap. At twenty-two, he has already been tempered by hard campaigning in Europe, India, and the brutal assault at Seringapatam. He also carries an uncomfortable inheritance from a vanished mentor, a half-seen intelligence war.
Now, William is sent into the unstable year after Mysore’s collapse. The garrison is weakened by fever. Patrols are stretched thin. Convoys that should stabilize the countryside are being shadowed and struck. A name spreads faster than any dispatch rider: Dhoondia Waugh, an insurgent leader whose strength is speed, rumor, and the willingness of desperate men to believe that the British can be driven out. William’s orders are simple on paper: keep the roads open, keep the countryside quiet, and learn what kind of enemy he is facing and how far the unrest has spread.
Far to the east, Madras and Fort St. George are a different battlefield entirely. Decisions are made in offices and drawing rooms. A delayed movement order can strand a detachment. A single altered date can shift blame. A missing receipt can hide stolen stores. While soldiers risk their lives on the roads, powerful figures inside the Company fight with ledgers, seals, and influence. Some want stability after years of war. Others see a chance to profit while the province is unsettled. In this world, reputation can kill as surely as a musket ball.
As William’s duties pull him toward Madras, he finds that the vacuum left by Tipu Sultan’s death is being contested by more than raiders and rebels. Indian politics do not pause because the British raise a flag over a fortress. Local princes watch the Company closely, weighing alliance against independence. One of them, Prince Shivaji Bahadur, offers valuable help that never comes without consequences. His agent, a courier known only as the Jackal, moves where uniforms and official authority cannot, bringing warnings and information without leaving a visible trail.
William also learns that danger can wear the same uniform as him.
Genre: Historical
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