and in the service of the Mahrattas-all seemed to warn the Government of Fort William of the probability of the arrival in India of a French invading army. Nobody knew better the activity and energy of the French Directory and its victorious general, than the Governor-General of India; and the experience of the previous year, during which an armament of twenty thousand French troops reached Bantry Bay, on the southern coast of Ireland, demonstrated the possibility of a large force putting to sea from France, and eluding the vigilance of the British fleet, and admonished Lord Mornington to be prepared at a moment's notice to act upon the defensive. At this time Lord Mornington had not received intelligence of the French expedition to Egypt ; and those who have been anxious to darken his fame have accused him, on that account, of acting under a violent impulse, with haste and precipitation, instead of paying a tribute of admiration to the wisdom of the man whose prophetic sagacity had anticipated the movements of the enemy, and beforehand adopted the very measures which the Home Government suggested, as soon as they beheld the dangers which threatened the British empire in India developed in their full magnitude. It has been said that Lord Mornington had in June 1789 no reason to anticipate that France meditated an attack on India. As early, however, as 1785, it was generally known in England that the French contemplated the expulsion of the British from the East: "The present view of the French," says Horace Walpole, writing at that date, "is to divest us of India;" the probability of an

attack upon our Indian empire had been clearly foreseen by Mr. Dundas. The Commander-in-Chief, Sir A. Clarke, and other members of the Council at Fort William, fully coincided in the views of the Governor-General; and on the 20th of June, 1798, two days after the evidence of the authenticity of the proclamation was complete, Lord Mornington wrote to General Harris: "I now take the earliest opportunity of acquainting you with my FINAL DETERMINATION. I mean to call upon the allies without delay, and to assemble the army upon the coast with all possible expedition. You will receive my public instructions in the course of a few days. Until you have received them, it will not be proper to take any public steps for the assembling of the army; but whatever can be done without a disclosure of the ultimate object, I authorize you to do immediately, intending to apprise you by this letter THAT IT IS MY POSITIVE

RESOLUTION TO ASSEMBLE THE ARMY UPON THE COAST.

I wish to receive from you, by express, a statement of the force which you can put in motion immediately, and within what time you can make any large additions to it."

Before we enter into the development of Lord Mornington's policy, and proceed to relate the manner in which his orders were received by the Madras Government, it will be proper to give the reader some account of the ambitious and warlike sovereign who had thus provoked the displeasure of the British power.

CHAPTER IX.

Career of Hyder Ali, father of Tippoo Saib.-Wars with the British.-— Great Qualities.-Marches to the Gates of Madras, and dictates Terms of Peace.-War with the Mahrattas.-British refuse to assist him.— Invades the Carnatic.—Spreads terror through the country.-Tippoo Saib commands a Division of Horse.-Hyder Ali encounters the British under Colonel Baillie.-Utterly destroys Baillie's Force.-Cowardice of Sir Hector Munro in deserting Baillie.-British Prisoners saved from Massacre by the interposition of French Officers.-Measures of Warren Hastings.-Sir Eyre Coote takes the Field.-Fortune of the War changed.-Hyder Ali and Tippoo Saib defeated. They gain Advantages over the British.-A French Fleet arrives off the Coast of Malabar.-Cruel Treatment of the English Prisoners in the hands of Hyder.-Hypocrisy of Tippoo Saib.-Death of Hyder Ali.-Tippoo cuts to pieces the British Force under General Mathews.-Mathews cruelly poisoned by the Tyrant.-Seventeen British Officers poisoned in Prison.-Others die from the Effects of Imprisonment.—Fall of Bednore.-Siege of Mangalore.—Peace between Great Britain and France.-Termination of the War with Tippoo.-Wealth and Resources of Tippoo Sultaun.-Tippoo, in defiance of the British, makes War upon Travancore.-Marquess Cornwallis takes the Field.-Seringapatam invested.—Tippoo alarmed.—The Capital spared.-Gives his Sons as Hostages.—Deprived of a large Portion of his Territory.— Obliged to pay the Expenses of the War.-Continued Enmity to the British.—The Political Balance created by Marquess Cornwallis disarranged in 1798.-The Allies weaker.-Tippoo's Strength recovered -Corresponds with the French, &c.-His Letter to Sir John Shore, respecting Lord Mornington.-Letters to Sir Alured Clarke and Lord Mornington.

TIPPOO SAIB, Sultaun of Mysore, first attracted notice in the protracted and bloody wars of his father, the renowned Hyder Ali Khan, against the British.

During the wars between the French and the English in the Carnatic, Hyder, who had originally been a private soldier in the service of the Rajah of Mysore, raised himself first to be the captain of a band of marauders, then to commander of the army of Mysore; and finally, like Nadir Shah, Napoleon and other military dictators, assumed sovereign power. Tippoo, the usurper's eldest son, was educated in all the sciences which are cultivated by the Mohammedan sect to which Hyder Ali was devoted with all the enthusiastic ardour of a devout Mussulman. He discovered but little taste for learning, however; and at an early age addicted himself to martial exercises. During the first war Hyder carried the terrors of his arms to the gates of Madras, and dictated terms of peace to the British Government; Tippoo, at this time nineteen years of age, was entrusted with the command of a corps of cavalry. Mutual restitution of conquests and an alliance in defensive wars, were the conditions of the treaty which terminated hostilities. In 1770 the Mahrattas invaded Mysore; and Hyder Ali applied to his British allies for assistance against these formidable enemies; but assistance was not rendered to him, and he had to purchase peace on disadvantageous terms. Filled with rage and resentment against the British, who had disappointed his hopes, the active chieftain of Mysore opened communications with the French authorities at Pondicherry, and succeeded in detaching the Nizam from his alliance with the British Government. Haying collected an overwhelming force, he descended into the Carnatic like a thunderbolt. His army con

sisted of twenty thousand regular infantry, and seventy thousand horse; nearly one half of which were disciplined in European tactics, and were directed by French officers and engineers. Hyder's sudden irruption carried dismay into the council-chamber of Madras. The villas in the neighbourhood of Madras were deserted by the panic-stricken inhabitants, and the British residents of the presidency, it is even said, thought of taking refuge in their ships and abandoning the city. A little army under the command of Colonel Baillie, while endeavouring to form a junction with the force of Sir Hector Munro, but six miles distant, was attacked by the combined forces of Hyder Ali. Colonel Baillie's little band consisted of only four hundred Europeans and two thousand sepoys; but animated by the heroic spirit of their undaunted leader, they maintained their ground with firmness, in the hope of being relieved by Sir Hector Munro. Forming a square, they resisted no less than thirteen charges of the Mysore cavalry; and notwithstanding the fearful havoc created by the fire of sixty pieces of cannon and the fury of armed elephants, for some time the fortunes of the day were doubtful. Sir Hector Munro was near enough to hear the distant thunder of the artillery; but with a degree of poltroonery that neither became his Trojan appellation, nor the character of the nation to which he belonged, he retreated precipitately within the gates of Madras, and left the whole of his brethren in arms, either to be cut to pieces or to endure the horrors of a captivity worse than death. Colonel Baillie and two hundred officers.