The army returned to Coimbatore on the 23d of September. The Sultan, disappointed in his object of destroying the divisions of the British army in detail, resolved to attack the chain of depôts; he gained possession of Errode and the stores at that place, and afterwards marched southwards. The British troops advanced from Coimbatore on the 29th of September, and, arriving at Errode on the 4th of October, found the place abandoned, and Tippoo’s army gone. He had marched in the direction of Coimbatore; but, hearing that the garrison was augmented, he advanced rapidly upon Darraporam, against which the Sultan opened his batteries on the 8th of October. The fort had no cannon mounted, and the garrison, consisting of a hundred Europeans and two hundred sepoys, capitulated on honourable terms, to which the enemy strictly adhered.
The British army moved on the 5th of October, and on the 15th of that month encamped in the neighbourhood of Coimbatore, where Lieut.-Colonel Stuart joined from Palghautcherry, after having taken the place, and left it in a tolerable state of defence. The pursuit of the Sultan was continued, the troops traversing extensive tracts of country, and undergoing much fatigue under an Indian sun. In the middle of November the army traversed the difficult pass of Tappoor, winding through deep valleys, and dragging the guns over precipices. Here the advance fell in with the rear of Tippoo’s force, but could make no impression. The Sultan resolved to leave the British troops in his own country, and to invade the Carnatic, which would bring the English back for the defence of Trichinopoly. Major-General Medows was about to carry offensive plans into execution, when the movements of Tippoo rendered it necessary to return to the Carnatic, and the army arrived at the vicinity of Trichinopoly in the middle of December.
1791.
On the 1st of January 1791, the army arrived at Terrimungulum, and on the 12th at Arnee. During this long and fatiguing march the Anglo-Indian troops frequently encamped upon the ground from which the enemy had removed in the morning; but the efforts made to overtake him were not successful. The sick and heavy guns having been placed in the fort of Arnee, on the 14th of January the advance and right wing marched for Velhout, where they arrived on the 27th, followed by the left wing.
On the 29th of January the army was reviewed by General Charles Earl Cornwallis, K. G., who had arrived from Bengal to assume the command, and who expressed great satisfaction at the appearance of the troops. His Lordship was at this period Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief in the East Indies, and had quitted Bengal on the 6th of December of the previous year, and landed at Fort St. George, Madras, on the 30th of the same month.
The army arrived in the vicinity of Vellore on the 11th of February 1791, and the troops were ordered into the fort. Tippoo was prepared to oppose any attempt to penetrate into the country under his dominion by the easiest passes; but Earl Cornwallis contrived the appearance of a march towards Amboor, which completely deceived the Sultan; and then turning suddenly to the north, traversed the difficult pass of Muglee, without the enemy having power to offer the least obstruction, and arrived on the 20th of February on the table-land of the Mysore country. Two days afterwards the troops commenced their march towards the strong fortress of Bangalore.
The following graphic description of the Fort of Bangalore is extracted from Colonel Mark Wilks’s History of the South of India:—
“The Fort of Bangalore, entirely rebuilt of strong masonry by Hyder and his son Tippoo, is nearly of an oval form, with round towers at proper intervals, and five powerful cavaliers, a fausse-braye, a good ditch and covered way without palisades, and some well-furnished places of arms; but the glacis is imperfect in several places; no part was entirely destitute of the support of reciprocal fire, but in no part was there a perfect flanking defence. There were two gateways, one named the Mysore, the other the Delhi gate; the latter opposite the pettah, overbuilt by the projection of traverses, common to Indian forts. The pettah, or town, of great extent, to the north of the fort, was surrounded by an indifferent rampart, and excellent ditch, with an intermediate berm, if such it may be called, of nearly a hundred yards wide, planted with impenetrable and well-grown thorns; and this defence was only intermitted exactly opposite the fort, where there was a slight barrier, and an esplanade of insufficient extent. The pettah had several gates, protected by a sort of flêche at the end of each sortie outside the ditch. Neither the fort or pettah had drawbridges.”
An attack on the Delhi gate of the pettah was made early in the morning of the 7th of March 1791 by the Thirty-sixth regiment, commanded by Captain Andrew Wight, supported by the Third brigade of sepoys, under Lieut.-Colonel Cockerell, and a few six-pounders under Colonel Moorehouse. The zigzag approach to the gate was scarcely twenty feet wide; two field-pieces were opened on the gate, but that being supported behind by a piece of masonry-work, three feet high and three feet thick, the shot, penetrating through the gate above, had no effect in bringing it down.
All this time the troops were exposed to a destructive shower of musketry from the turrets, on which a heavy fire was kept up by the assailants, when two pieces of ordnance were advanced, and their fire being directed at the lower part of the gate and masonry work, shattered it so much that, with the assistance of the troops, a sufficient opening was made to admit one person to enter, which happened to be Lieutenant John Eyre of the light company of the Thirty-sixth regiment. The soldiers continuing their exertions, at length pulled down the gate, and immediately entered, when the enemy fled with precipitation to the fort.