to bar Tippoo's further progress.

Chapter 8: The Invasion Of Mysore.

For some time, there was a pause in the hostilities. Tippoo remained
with his army near Pondicherry, carrying on negotiations with the
French governor, and arranging for the despatch of an envoy to France,
with a request that the Republic would furnish him with six thousand
French troops. While he was thus wasting his time, General Meadows was
slowly moving, with the army, towards an encampment formed at Vellout,
some eighteen miles west of Madras.

On the 14th of December, a messenger arrived with the news that Lord
Cornwallis had arrived from Calcutta, two days before, with
considerable reinforcements, and that he was about to assume the
supreme command of the army. The news caused unbounded satisfaction.
By the extreme dilatoriness of his movements, and especially by the
manner in which he had allowed Tippoo to pass him near Caveripatam,
when he might easily have attacked him, while his army was still
struggling through the pass, General Meadows had disgusted his troops.
He had frittered away, without striking a single blow, the finest army
that the British had, up to that time, ever put into the field in
India; and had enabled Tippoo, unmolested, to spread destruction over
a large extent of country.

The only countervailing success that had been gained, by the British,
was a brilliant victory won by Colonel Hartley, who was in command of
a Bombay force, consisting of a European regiment and two battalions
of Sepoys. With these, he engaged Hossein Ali, who had been left by
Tippoo in Malabar, with a force of 9000 men, when the sultan first
retreated before General Meadows' advance. This force was defeated,
with a loss of 1000 men killed and wounded, 900, including Hossein
himself, taken prisoners on the field, and 1500 in the pursuit; the
total British loss being only 52 men. A few days after this victory,
General Abercrombie arrived from Madras with reinforcements, and the
whole of Tippoo's fortified places in Malabar were captured, one after
another, and the entire province conquered.

As soon as Lord Cornwallis reached the camp at Vellout, with a large
train of draught animals that had been brought by sea from Calcutta,
the Rajah and his troops received orders to join him. It was on the
29th of January, 1791, that the commander in chief arrived at Vellout,
and the Rajah arrived there on the 4th of February. As he was the
bearer of a