The Anglo-Mysore Wars, 1767-1799

How did the first two wars end in a draw?

The First and Second Anglo-Mysore Wars both ended with treaties that simply restored each side’s pre-war territory, settling nothing permanently.

The First Anglo-Mysore War (1767-1769) began when the Company allied with the Nizam of Hyderabad against Haidar Ali, ruler of Mysore. Haidar Ali broke that alliance apart and pushed close to Madras itself.

That advance forced the Company to negotiate. The Treaty of Madras (1769) ended the war on status-quo terms, simply restoring each side’s territory.

The Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780-1784) saw Haidar Ali’s son, Tipu Sultan, win two sharp victories. He beat enemy forces at Pollilur in September 1780, and again at Kumbakonam in February 1782, capturing enemy commanders both times.

Haidar Ali died during this war, in December 1782, and Tipu Sultan took over Mysore’s leadership. The war still ended the same way as the first: the Treaty of Mangalore (1784) restored the pre-war status quo, settling nothing permanently.

Source: standard record of the First and Second Anglo-Mysore Wars.

How did the Third War strip Mysore in half?

Tipu Sultan’s 1789 invasion of a British ally triggered a war that ended with him losing half his kingdom, a huge indemnity, and his own two young sons as hostages.

Tipu Sultan, now allied with revolutionary France, invaded the Kingdom of Travancore, a British ally, in 1789. That invasion triggered the Third Anglo-Mysore War (1790-1792).

Governor-General Charles Cornwallis personally led the British campaign this time. After a three-year war, the Siege of Seringapatam (1792) forced Tipu to sue for peace.

The Treaty of Seringapatam was signed on 18 March 1792. It forced Tipu to cede nearly half his territory to the Company and its allies, and to pay a war indemnity of 3 crore 30 lakh rupees.

Until the full indemnity was paid, Tipu had to hand over his own two sons, aged seven and eleven, as hostages. They were delivered to Cornwallis on 26 February 1792, and returned once the debt was cleared in two instalments.

Source: standard record of the Third Anglo-Mysore War and the Treaty of Seringapatam, 1792.

How did the Fourth War end in conquest, not a treaty?

Facing a coordinated attack from all sides and outnumbered nearly two to one, Tipu Sultan died defending his own capital, and Mysore came under direct Company control.

The Company saw Tipu’s continued alliance with France as a growing threat. The Fourth Anglo-Mysore War began in 1798 and reached its climax in 1799.

Mysore faced attack from all four sides at once. The Nizam and the Marathas invaded from the north, while roughly 35,000 Mysorean troops faced a combined British-led force of about 60,000.

The decisive Siege of Seringapatam followed in 1799. Tipu Sultan died defending his own capital on 4 May 1799.

Unlike the first three wars, this one ended in outright conquest rather than a treaty. Much of Mysore’s remaining territory was annexed by the British, the Nizam, and the Marathas.

The Company restored a shrunken core kingdom around Mysore city to young Krishnaraja Wadiyar III, under his grandmother’s regency. This revived the same Wodeyar dynasty Haidar Ali had originally sidelined decades earlier.

Source: standard record of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War and the 1799 Siege of Seringapatam.

How did Haidar Ali seize power from Mysore’s own kings?

Haidar Ali began as a military commander under Mysore’s Wodeyar dynasty, then took real power for himself while keeping the Wodeyars as figurehead kings.

Mysore’s Wodeyar dynasty had ruled the kingdom for generations before Haidar Ali’s rise. He began his career as a military commander in the Wodeyar army.

Through military success and political skill, Haidar Ali became the kingdom’s de facto ruler by the 1760s, while leaving the Wodeyar kings on the throne as figureheads.

This same pattern repeated in reverse at the end of the story. After the Company’s 1799 victory, it restored a Wodeyar to the throne, undoing Haidar Ali’s original takeover.

For the fuller story of how this dynasty built and modernised the kingdom before these wars, see ModHist0073 — Mysore Under Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan.

Source: standard record of Haidar Ali’s rise within the Wodeyar kingdom.

What military innovation outlived Tipu Sultan’s defeat?

Tipu Sultan’s iron-cased rockets outranged anything Europe had built at the time, and captured examples directly shaped a new generation of British rocket weapons.

Mysore’s army under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan used iron-cased rockets, a major improvement on earlier rocket designs that used weaker materials.

These rockets could reach roughly 2 kilometres, farther than most contemporary European artillery.

After Tipu’s defeat in 1799, the British captured working examples of these rockets. They directly influenced the design of the Congreve rocket, later used by British forces in the Napoleonic Wars.

A weapon built to defend Mysore ended up strengthening the very army that had conquered it.

Source: standard record of Mysorean rockets and their influence on the Congreve rocket.

Why is Tipu Sultan remembered so differently across sources?

Tipu Sultan is remembered very differently depending on the source: some view him as an early anti-colonial resister, others stress his own expansionist ambitions.

Tipu Sultan is remembered differently across sources. Some view him as an early anti-colonial resister, one of the few Indian rulers to fight the Company across four separate wars.

Others stress his own expansionist ambitions toward neighbouring states, including his 1789 invasion of Travancore that triggered the Third War in the first place.

Both views draw on the same historical record; they simply weight his resistance to the British differently against his own record of regional conquest.

Source: standard historiographical discussion of Tipu Sultan’s legacy.

Exam Angle: The Usual Traps Here

Trap 1: exams often mix up which treaty ended which war. Keep the sequence straight: Madras (1769) ended the First War, and Mangalore (1784) ended the Second. Seringapatam (1792) ended the Third on harsh terms; the Fourth War (1799) ended with no treaty at all.

Trap 2: don’t confuse the 3 crore 30 lakh rupee indemnity of 1792 with any figure from the later, unrelated Anglo-Maratha or Anglo-Sikh settlements.

Trap 3: UPSC Mains 2022, GS Paper I (Q2) asked why East India Company armies, largely staffed by Indian soldiers, won consistently against larger Indian forces. This theme applies directly to all four Mysore Wars. See the original question.

Source: UPSC Mains 2022, GS1, Q2.

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Primary sources

• Standard record of the four Anglo-Mysore Wars, 1767-1799, and the Treaty of Seringapatam, 1792.
• UPSC Mains 2022, GS1, Q2.

Related reading

• All Modern History Articles
• ModHist0073 — Mysore Under Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan — The fuller story of how Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan built and ran Mysore between these wars.
• ModHist0374 — The Anglo-Maratha Wars, 1775-1819 — The Company’s parallel, longer campaign against the Maratha Confederacy.
• ModHist0375 — The Anglo-Sikh Wars, 1845-1849 — The Company’s final major conquest, ending Punjab’s independence.

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