Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/27

Rh perfect cordiality and fidelity. In March, 1791, Bangalore was stormed, and Tipú fell back on Seringapatam. Cornwallis followed. But when within ten miles of that city, although he had met and dispersed the enemy in the field, he found himself unable to follow up his advantage from want of guns and material, and was compelled to return to Bangalore.

The disastrous events of this retreat are well known and have been described by historians. Tipú managed to obtain swift intelligence of all our proceedings, while our knowledge of his movements was almost a blank. Our battery train had to be buried. The heavy baggage was abandoned, and the sick and wounded had to be transported on horses borrowed from the native cavalry. Little or nothing was effected in the course of the same year, and Cornwallis wrote to his son, Lord Brome, that he was growing old and rheumatic and had lost all spirit. He had hopes however of bringing Tipú to terms either by negotiation or by an attack on his capital, and he did not think of leaving India before January, 1793. At the same time the Governor-General expressed his amazement, in a letter to his brother the Bishop of Lichfield, that any man of common sense could have ever imagined that the war could be avoided. It was indeed, to use his expression to Henry Dundas, 'an absolute and cruel necessity.' And it is not surprising to read that the attack made by the Opposition in both Houses, on the Mysore War, was not only a complete failure, but