Page:Our Indian Army.djvu/192

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168
OUR ANGLO-INDIAN ARMY.

solved from all that he had stipulated; the prisoners were thrown into irons, and committed to the most rigorous durance in the different fortresses of Mysore.

After the fall of Biddenoor, Tippoo immediately marched down to the low district, and invested Mangalore, which, though a fortress of very secondary strength, was defended in the most gallant manner by Colonel Campbell; who, after sustaining a siege of nearly nine months, was obliged to surrender, and was so overpowered by the fatigues he had undergone that he soon afterwards died. In the meantime, the French officers having withdrawn with their troops from the army of Tippoo, in consequence of the peace between France and England, he himself had applied for two English commissioners to proceed to his camp, with a view to a treaty, which after some difficulties and delays was at length concluded. It was founded on the basis that both parties should retain their former possessions, and that the Sultan should release such of his prisoners as had survived the cruelties with which they had been treated.[1] Amongst those whom he is said to have employed direct means to deprive of existence were Captain Humley, who led the charge against Tippoo's guns on the fatal day of Colonel Baillie's defeat; Lieutenant Frazer, one of that officer's staff; Lieutenant Sampson, a gallant officer, whose name is yet remembered among the Mahrattas; General Matthews, and many of the officers taken at Biddenoor. But the British Government was too eager for peace to inquire rigidly into such matters, and too weak to protract hostilities in the hope of avenging them.

  1. "The treaty of peace was finally concluded at Mangalore on the 11th of March, 1784, when Captain Dallas immediately made a circuit through the Mysore prisons, and conducted two hundred European officers, and one thousand one hundred privates, with about two thousand Sepoys and others, out of a most wretched state of captivity." – Munro's "Operations on the Coromandel Coast." "Numbers of the black officers were barbarously murdered for their inflexible fidelity; while others, with the Sepoys, were set to hard labour upon the most scanty portion of food. The attachment of the Sepoys was equally conspicuous, in their kind attentions to some of the Europeans who happened to be confined in the same prison with them, they having frequently bought meat for them in the bazaar with the hard-earned pittance which they daily received; observing that, though the black people could do without it, they well knew that it was impossible for Europeans to exist without meat." – Munro's "Operations on the Coromandel Coast."