At half-past seven in the evening of the 13th, Floyd’s signal guns were heard in General Harris’ camp, and were answered ten minutes later to show that they were understood.[41] Twenty-four hours later, the united forces of Floyd and Stuart joined General Harris in front of Seringapatam. On the same date letters reached the army from the Governor General congratulating them on the success at Mallavelly. These letters were brought by a native messenger, written on a very narrow slip of paper, and sealed up in a quill. This was the general method of communication, public and private, as would appear from the following notice in the Calcutta Gazette.
Fort William, Public Department, 10th April 1799.
“Notice is hereby given that all letters, whether public or private, for the Grand Army in the Field, are in future to be limited to a small slip of paper not exceeding one eighth of a sheet of quarter-post, rolled (not folded up), which restriction will continue until further notice.”
Some of these notes, 2 inches wide by 6⅜ inches long, are still in existence.
Some solicitude was experienced at this time concerning supplies, and the cavalry were busily employed in protecting and bringing in convoys. On the 16th, Floyd, with five regiments of cavalry and the left wing of the army, brought in a party of Brinjarries who had been sent out to the southward to collect cattle and grain. On the 19th, Floyd marched again with the whole of the regular cavalry, a brigade of infantry, and the Nizam’s cavalry, towards the Coveripoorum Pass, for the purpose of protecting two large convoys of provisions en route from Coimbatore and the Baramahal. On the 30th, he was joined by the convoy from Rykottah, at the head of the Pass, but it was not till the 6th May that the Coimbatore convoy arrived, and on the 11th, the whole returned to Seringapatam bringing with them forty thousand bullocks, most of which carried loads of grain, twenty-one thousand nine hundred sheep and other necessaries, thus placing the subsistence of the army out of danger for many days.
But the campaign was already at an end. A practicable breach having been made, at one o’clock on the 4th May, Seringapatam was stormed by the British troops, and after two hours’ desperate fighting the British colours were planted in the fortress. Tippoo’s dead body was found at night under a heap of slain, the short-lived Mahommedan Kingdom of Mysore was at an end, and the most imminent menace to British rule in India was averted. This gallant feat of arms cost the British force a loss of 367 in killed, wounded, and missing, of whom 321 were Europeans. Nine hundred and twenty-nine guns and an enormous quantity of warlike material fell into the hands of the victors. The French officers found in Seringapatam had commissions from the French Government. By Tippoo’s orders, all the European prisoners who fell into his hands during the siege had been barbarously put to death. A number of prisoners also, who had fallen into his hands in former wars, and who had been detained, in breach of agreements in 1784 and 1792, were massacred by his orders at the commencement of hostilities.
In an order published after the siege, General Harris thus spoke of the Cavalry Division:—
“The advantage derived from the exertions of the Cavalry upon every occasion, although opposed by such superior numbers on the part of the enemy, are so important, as to give this corps the strongest claims to the warmest approbation of the Commander in Chief, which he requests Major General Floyd will take an early occasion of conveying to them.”
The 19th Light Dragoons remained in Mysore during the settlement of the country, in the course of which the representative of the old ruling family was replaced on the Mysore throne. On the 13th November they parted from Wellesley at Ooscottah, and marched for Vellore, and so back to their old quarters at Trichinopoly, which they reached about the end of the year.