a new aggression upon the fortress of Mahé, a place tributary to Hyder, which they attacked in order to expel the French, and which Hyder resented on the same principle as they would resent an attack upon any tributary of their own, well warranted the declaration of Hyder, that they "were the most faithless and usurping of mankind." They were these arbitrary and impolitic deeds which brought down Hyder speedily upon them, with an army 100,000 strong; and soon showed them Madras menaced, the Carnatic overrun, Arcot taken, and a war of such a desperate and bloody character raging around them, as they had never yet seen in India, and which might probably have expelled them thence, had not death released them in 1782 from so formidable a foe, who had been so wantonly provoked.
Tippoo Sultaun, with all his activity and cunning, had not the masterly military genius of his father,—but he possessed all the fire of his resentment, and it was not to be expected that, after what had passed, there could be much interval of irritation between him and the English. They had roused Hyder as a lion is roused from his den, and he had made them feel his power. They would naturally look on his son with suspicion, and Tippoo had been taught to regard them as "the most faithless and usurping of mankind." Whatever, therefore, may be said for or against him, on the breaking out of the second war with him, the original growth of hostility between the British and the Mysorean monarchs, must be charged to the former, and in the case of the last war, there appears to have been no real breach of treaty on the part of Tippoo. He had been severely punished for any act of irritation
