government of Sirpi, which is a province of the kingdom of Maissour (Mysore). That prince determined to try the fortune of arms, went forth to meet his competitor, and after a very bloody battle the Nabob of Sirpi was defeated and slain. Among the dead was Fatty (Futteh) Naick, the father of Hyder Ali, an excellent warrior in the service of the nabob." Futteh Naik, he continues, left two sons and a daughter; the eldest was named Saber Naik, and the younger, who was then ten years old, was named Hyder Naik or Ali. He was born at Divanelli, a fort situated between Oscota and Colar. They had an uncle with whom the eldest entered the service of the King of Mysore; but Hyder only remained in the vicinity of the districts where they served. At an early age he was bold, intractable, and overbearing; he could neither read nor write, nor would he receive instruction from any one. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1769, states he was first a sepoy in the Dutch service at Negapatam, where he rose to be a sergeant; at all events, when Nunderause, brother-inlaw of the King of Mysore, as well as the vizier and general of his army, assembled the troops to join the Soubah Nazir Jung, and entered with him into the Carnatic in 1750, against Mustapha Jung, who was intending to seize the soubahship of that province, Hyder Ali, now a strong and hardy young warrior, collected sixty matchlockmen and five or six horsemen, with whom he repaired to the camp of Nunderause (then besieging the fort of Deonhully, twenty-four miles north-east of Bangalore), by whom he was well received, and appointed within four years commander of 500 infantry clothed and disciplined in the European manner, with 200 cavalry and a couple of field-pieces. Hyder took part in the expedition when the Mysore troops marched from the plains of Arcot to join Nazir Jung, who had succeeded his father, Nizam-ul-Mulk, as Soubahdar of the Deccan, and when Nazir, through the intrigues of Dupleix, was treacherously abandoned by so many of his troops, Hyder Ali distinguished himself by a furious attack on the flanks of the French. When the day was lost, and Nazir had fallen into the hands of the Nabob of Kurpa, who destroyed him, Hyder lost not a moment in turning the event to his own advantage. On the first alarm he selected 300 Beder Peons, who plundered friend and foe without scruple, and when the officer in charge of Nazir's treasure began to load the camels, two of them, laden entirely with gold coins, were adroitly separated from the rest of the caravan, by the peons, and conveyed to Deonhully. This spoil, with 113 horses and arms picked up in every direction, laid the foundation of Hyder's fortune, and he proceeded forthwith to augment the number of his forces by the strange mode of pay we have stated. "Movable property of every description was their object," says Colonel Wilkes* "and, as already noticed, they did not hesitate to acquire it from friends, when that could be done without suspicion, and with more convenience than from enemies. Nothing was unseasonable, or unacceptable, from convoys of grain down to the clothes, turbans, and ear-rings of travellers or villagers, whether men, women, or children. Cattle and sheep were among the most profitable heads of plunder; muskets and horses were sometimes obtained in booty, and sometimes by plunder." So many kindred spirits joined him, that by the year 1755, he was at the head of 1,500 cavalry and 3,000 regular infantry, with four guns; but when he set out to occupy the position of Foujedar of Dindigul, a fort engirdling a stupendous rock in a valley bounded on the west by the mountains of Malabar, he marched at the head of 2,500 horse, 5,000 infantry, and 2,000 peons, with six guns, leaving Kundee Rao behind him to attend to his interests; and ere long Hyder began to aim at greater power, for now he strove by means of skilful artificers at Pondicherry, Seringham, and Trichinopoly, directed by French overseers, to organise a regular artillery, arsenal, and laboratory, and the wretched state of the government of Mysore greatly favoured his growing ambition. With all his skill and ability, which were undoubted, he still remained an Oriental barbarian, and the praises bestowed upon him by some European writers are alike uncalled for and ridiculous. "That such a man could ever have extended his sway over the greater part of India, or, at least, that he could ever have rendered that sway durable, appears a fantastic dream; and that a character stained by the darkest treachery, ingratitude, and cruelty, should have found admirers in historians pedantically moral and severe in their estimates of other actors in these wars and revolutions, must be attributable to a love of paradox and contradiction, or to the predetermined plan of praising all that prevented, and blaming all that promoted, the establishment of the British empire in India, that great result-not unattended with faults and crimes, which no conquest ever yet was—conferring more happiness upon millions of people, than they ever had enjoyed, or could hope to enjoy under their native Mohammedan or Hindoo rulers."† "Historical Sketches of India." + Knight's "England." compelled him to disgorge thirty-two lacs of rupees. Notwithstanding this mortification, he soon after acquired by conquest the whole province of Malabar, and, to keep the country quiet, put all the nairs, or Hindoo chiefs, to the sword without dis The power of his predecessor on the throne of Mysore having been set at defiance by the Rajahs and Polygars of Chitteldroog, Gooty, Harponelly, Balapoor, and Lera, they were soon reduced to obedience by Hyder, who, cunning as he was fiery, thereupon affecting to take the cause of a young impostora kind of Indian Perkin Warbeck-tinction; but he had barely achieved this, when he marched to the city of Bednore, which then consisted of a place eight miles in extent, and where found it necessary to repair to Seringapatam, which he had made his capital city, and had strongly VIEW OF MANILA. he took plunder to the value of twelve millions sterling, and changed its name to Hydernagur; keeping that rich and prosperous country for himself-for it was all the more rich and prosperous, that being girdled by lofty mountains, it had long escaped the ravages of Indian war. Sundy, on the northern frontier of Bednore, was next captured by him, and its ramparts were destroyed, nor did his freebooting army halt till it reached the banks of the Kistna, where he was assailed by Madhoo Rao, Peishwa of the Mahrattas, with an immense. cavalry force, who rent from him some of his recent conquests, and, according to Colonel Wilkes, fortified, as a necessary precaution against probable events, having heard that the British, the Mahrattas, and the ruler of the Deccan had formed an armed alliance against him. Though he could neither read nor write, the memory and acuteness of Hyder were remarkable; his agents were everywhere, and his spies overran the whole country. Thus, he had a knowledge as full, and a clearer view of the tangled web of Indian politics, than any one of his time, save Clive or Warren Hastings. The Deccan was no longer in the hands of Salabut Jung, the old ally of the Marquis de Bussy. In Golconda and Hyderabad, fresh revolutions had rent the state, and Salabut was the captive of his brother, Nizam Ali, who occupied his musnud, until the arrival of the Treaty of Paris, which recognised the deposed prince as the lawful Nizam or Soubahdar of the Deccan, on which Ali, to prevent further trouble, put him immediately to death. At first the Nizam indulged in hostility against Britain; he invaded the Carnatic and made war upon Mohammed Ali, in a manner singularly barbarous and destructive, till he was checked by Colonel Charles Campbell, at the head of a small force. After that, he concluded a treaty with the East India Company, confirming to them all the acquisitions made by Colonel Forde in the Northern Circars, on the payment of a small feudal tribute, and holding in readiness a portion of their troops to aid him if at war. By the latter clause, it became necessary for the Company to stop the astonishing career of Hyder Ali, and thus they joined the confederacy with the Nizam and the Mahrattas, with the double view of curbing him and ensuring their own safety. In this new and important movement, the first to take the field was the Peishwa, who covered the rich table-lands of Mysore with clouds of his predatory Mahratta horse, when everything was as usual ruthlessly given over to fire and sword, while Colonel Joseph Smith, with a British force followed him. CHAPTER XXII. WAR WITH HYDER ALI.-THE CHINGAMA PASS.-BATTLE OF EROOR. WHILE Hyder Ali's officers, by his orders, were everywhere cutting the embankments of the tanks, poisoning the wells, burying the grain, and driving cattle and the peasantry into the woods, to check the progress of the Mahrattas, Nizam Ali was marching against Mysore by the eastern route, at the head of a great but ill-disciplined host, and Colonel Smith at the head of our troops, moved by the northern frontier to effect a junction with him. It had been arranged with Madhoo Rao that the districts through which Nizam Ali was to march, were to be left unpillaged, that he might procure sustenance, but the Mahrattas swept them bare; thus he advanced with the utmost difficulty and privation, and did not reach Toombudra till the 9th of March, 1767, and on the 24th of the same month intelligence reached Colonel Smith, that the retreat from Mysore of our faithless allies, the Mahrattas, had been purchased. That officer, says a writer on India, "had suspected from the first that the presidency had engaged in a disjointed expedition, and urged on them the necessity of adjusting some reasonable plan of action. Nizam Ali had already begun to talk of retracing his steps and returning in the ensuing year. It is believed, indeed, that the only thing which now induced him to advance was the hope of concluding an agreement, by which Hyder was to give him a present of twenty lacs of rupees, and pay him an annual tribute of six lacs, for making common cause with him against the Company. Since his purchase of the Mahrattas, Hyder had continued to urge the treachery, but said nothing of the bribe, and the Nizam had some hopes of being able to extort it, by going forward and working on Hyder's fears.” The stupid Council at Madras paid but little attention to Colonel Smith's reiterated suspicions of a secret collusion between our remaining ally and the enemy. Their conceit and impertinence disgusted the troops, and nearly brought ruin upon everything. His suspicions became a certainty when he found the troops of Nizam Ali, after entering Mysore, treating it as a friendly country, and when Smith's forces came up to a point where it was stipulated that the two armies should form a junction, great was the astonishment of our soldiers, when, as they marched into an encampment on one quarter, they saw those of the Nizam departing by another, for he had now openly joined Hyder, and their combined armies made preparations to press upon ours. In this war, into which we had been partly deluded and were now betrayed, great was the preponderance on the side of the new allies, Hyder and the Nizam. Their combined cavalry made a total of 42,860 sabres and lances; their infantry were 28,000 strong, with 109 pieces of cannon; and to oppose all this, Colonel Smith had 1,000 natives and thirty European cavalry, with 5,000 sepoys and Soo European infantry, and sixteen guns. Colonel Smith was a brave and intelligent officer, but perfectly ignorant of the land in which he was warring. Thus, having gained but imperfect knowledge, he threw up a redoubt in the eastern gorge of a mountain pass, through which he supposed the enemy must come to reach the lower ground; and while waiting under arms to receive them, his cattle, which had been left grazing quietly in the rear, were suddenly driven off, and the cavalry which he dispatched to their rescue were attacked on all sides by superior numbers, and did not rein up in the camp till nearly a third of them were destroyed. Most perilous was now the situation of our force, which was so painfully weak as contrasted to the masses it had to oppose. Colonel Smith was unable to move till the 28th of August, when thus crippled by the loss of supplies; and in the meantime Hyder, taking advantage of his inactivity, assailed and captured the fort of Cauverypatam. At first the colonel's movements were involved in error; he guarded passes that were unlikely to be penetrated, and left unguarded those that were so; and thus in one special instance, he left entirely free a pass, through which the troops of Hyder poured like a torrent or living cataract, sweeping away outposts, baggage, cattle, and all the supplies of our army, to reinforce which, Colonel Wood was dispatched with some more troops from Trichinopoly. Hyder was aware of their approach from the direction of Trinomalee, and might have intercepted them by occupying the Pass of Singarpetta or Chingama, through which alone a junction with Smith's force could be made; but by some error on the part of Hyder, the colonel was allowed to take possession of it unopposed. The Nizam Ali was so enraged by this affair, that he openly upbraided Hyder with it, and hinted that if the war was to be conducted thus, he would make peace with the Company in his own fashion. Hyder now became more than ever active to prevent the junction, and with many rissalas of predatory horse, pressed the flanks and rear of Smith's force, and whenever it halted for the night it was harassed by flaming and roaring flights of the terrible Indian rockets. Once, when he thought the British were in an unfavourable position, he ventured to attack them, but was repulsed with the loss of 2,000 men. Though Colonel Smith lost only 170, he was unable to follow up the advantage, as once more the enemy had carried off the baggage, and with it his scanty store of rice. Famine now pressed him sorely, and he was compelled to push on for Trinomalee, which he reached on the 4th of September. When Colonel Smith made his rapid and fatiguing march to Trinomalee, a Hindoo town of great holiness among the Brahmins, and situated on a mountain fifty-two miles north-west of Pondicherry, he trusted to an assurance from Mohammed Ali, that he would there find an abundance of food stored up. But, to the terrible disappointment of him and his soldiers, there was no rice, and no more paddy-unprepared grain-could be procured than sufficed for a day's rations. So great were their past sufferings, and so great seemed those yet to come, that there occurred an event unexampled in British military annals—a Lieutenant Hitchcock deserted; but only to be captured and thrown into prison, where he died in dreadful misery of mind. 117 army was reduced to a system of marching and foraging at the same time, while 40,000 fleet and active horsemen, with lance and tulwar, flew around them, crossing every rice-swamp or paddy-field, occupying the wretched tracks that served as roads, destroying the villages, devouring the hidden stores, and ravaging everything and everywhere. As vultures gathered on a field of carrion, the Mysorean troopers found nothing too mean for their prey. Yet the undying reputation of British bravery checked the hordes of Hyder, who could only hope to conquer our troops by famine and fatigue; and in this terrible emergency some hidden stores of buried grain were found; the soldiers were fed, and again could fight. Hyder knew of their dire distress, but not of the discovered supplies or the recruited strength they brought; but, having scarcely any cavalry, Smith's efforts at defence were seldom very effective. Grasping at a favourable moment, Hyder detached his son, then only seventeen, the ferocious Tippoo Sahib of wars to come, to the neighbourhood of Madras with 5,000 Mysore cavalry. His advance was so swift and secret, that he nearly caught the members of the presidency and the wealthiest of the Europeans in their country villas; but the city, the Black Town, the warehouses, mansions, gardens, villages, and all things in its vicinity were ravaged and destroyed. It is of these affairs that a powerful pen thus wrote: "On a sudden, an army of 90,000 men, far superior in discipline and efficiency to any other native force that could be found in India, came pouring through those wild passes which, worn by mountain torrents and dark with jungle, lead down from the table-land of Mysore to the plains of the Carnatic. This great army was accompanied by 100 pieces of cannon, and its movements were In search of food, Colonel Smith was compelled to quit Trinomalee, leaving in it, though a place of little strength, his sick, wounded, and military stores. We are told that Hyder's Mysoreans came on with their hordes of cavalry, eddying like a flood, sweeping away, in every case, bullocks, rice-guided by many French officers, trained in the best carts, and footsore stragglers. Colonel Smith, after his men had marched, fought, and starved, for twenty-seven consecutive hours, at last formed the longed-for junction with Wood's corps, and returned to find Trinomalee safe, though a battery had been thrown up against it, and 10,000 horse were covering the operations; but on Smith's arrival, the whole Mysore force hurried to the west, and encamped six miles distant, yet within view of that magnificent Pagoda of Trinomalee, which is eleven storeys in height, and has forty stately windows. Still no stores or food came, and the misery of the troops deepened, for in the fanciful grandeur of their own policy, the Council made no preparations to support their forces in the presence of a powerful and barbarous enemy, thus our small military schools in Europe. Hyder was everywhere triumphant. The sepoys in many British garrisons flung down their arms. Some forts were surrendered by treachery, and some by despair. In a few days the whole country north of the Coleroon had submitted. The British inhabitants of Madras could see by night, from the top of Mount St. Thomas, the eastern sky reddened by a vast semicircle of blazing villages. The white villas, to which our countrymen retire after the daily labours of government or trade, when the cool evening breeze springs up from the bay, were now left without inhabitants; for bands of the fierce horsemen of Mysore had already been seen prowling among the tulip-trees and near the gay verandahs. Even the town was not thought secure, and the |