The increasing influence and lofty pretensions of this potentate raised against him, in 1786, a confederacy between the Mahrattas and the Nizam, the most powerful that had for a long time been formed in Southern India. They invaded his territory, and he, in turn, carried the war into theirs; but as our subject calls for no particular detail of their respective operations, it will be sufficient to say that hostilities terminated in 1787, when a treaty was patched up between the belligerents, by which Tippoo was recognised as sovereign of nearly all India south of the river Toombuddra.
As he now considered himself the undisputed ruler of this vast territory, and at liberty to propagate the Mahomedan faith by violence of every description, he descended the Ghaats into Malabar Proper; and, after many struggles, forced the Nayrs, a people possessed of the utmost bravery, to undergo circumcision and eat beef, or else to seek refuge from his ferocity in the hearts of forests, or the fastnesses of the surrounding mountains. The victor then commenced a war against the religious edifices, and publicly boasted that he had razed to the ground eight thousand temples, with their roofs of gold, silver, and copper, after digging up the treasures buried at the feet of the idols. At length he became so elated with these exploits that he appears to have considered himself as really endued with supernatural powers, and little, if at all, inferior to Mahommed himself. But he had soon to encounter a foe against whom neither his earthly nor his celestial powers were found to avail.
By the treaty of 1784, the peace concluded with Tippoo Sultan was to extend not to the English alone, but to their allies; and among these was specially named the Rajah of Travancore, a little kingdom, forming the western part of the most southerly extremity of India. It was protected not only by a lofty chain of mountains, extending as far as Cape Comorin, but by the more imperfect defence of a wall and ditch covering its whole frontier. Tippoo, however, meditated the conquest, or
