aring that the
conditions had been agreed upon, and that hostilities were to cease at
once. So great was the indignation, indeed, that a spirit of
insubordination, and almost mutiny, was evinced by many of the corps.
They had suffered extreme hardships, had been engaged in most arduous
marches, had been decimated by fever and bad food, and they could
scarce believe their ears when they heard that they were to hold their
hands, now that, after a year's campaigning, Seringapatam was at their
mercy; and that the man who had butchered so many hundred English
captives, who had wasted whole provinces and carried half a million
people into captivity, who had been guilty of the grossest treachery,
and whose word was absolutely worthless, was to escape personal
punishment.

Still higher did the indignation rise, both among officers and men,
when the conditions of the treaty became known, and it was discovered
that no stipulation whatever had been made for the handing over of the
English prisoners still in Mysore, previous to a cessation of
hostilities. This condition, at least, should have been insisted upon,
and carried out previous to any negotiations being entered upon.

The reasons that induced Lord Cornwallis to make this treaty, when
Seringapatam lay at his mercy, have ever been a mystery. Tippoo had
proved himself a monster unfitted to live, much less to rule, and the
crimes he had committed against the English should have been punished
by the public trial and execution of their author. To conclude peace
with him, now, was to enable him to make fresh preparations for war,
and to necessitate another expedition at enormous cost and great loss
of life. Tippoo had already proved that he was not to be bound either
by treaties or oaths. And, lastly, it would have been thought that, as
a general, Lord Cornwallis would have wished his name to go down to
posterity in connection with the conquest of Mysore, and the capture
of Seringapatam, rather than with the memorable surrender of York
Town, the greatest disaster that ever befell a British army.

The conditions were, in themselves, onerous, and had they been imposed
upon any other than a brutal and faithless tyrant, might have been
deemed sufficient. Tippoo was deprived of half his dominions, which
were to be divided among the allies, each taking the portions adjacent
to their territory. A sum of 3,300,000 pounds was to be paid for the
expenses of the war. All prisoners of the