The July after this cruelty two
English lieutenants, Speediman and Rutlege,
arrived; they were two wounded men, who
having been left at Vellore, and, receiving
supplies, had actually sallied from that
garrison, with only one company of sepoys,
three three-pounders, and a handful of
Polygars. On their second day's march,
however, Tippoo's whole army came down
upon them. They fought till nearly every
sepoy was wounded, till the powder was
nearly all expended, and the Polygars
had deserted; then, and not till then, they
hoisted a white handkerchief, and signalled
for quarter. Fifty picked midshipmen and
seamen shortly arrived from Bangalore,
having been surrendered to Hyder at
Cuddalore by M. Suffrein, the French admiral.
Suffrein, wanting sailors in the fleet, had
offered each of them a hatful of dollars if
they would serve, and, enraged at their
refusal, had them sold to Hyder. Thirty
others had escaped at Arnee, by help of
their companions, who answered for the
missing ones at muster. Three days after
their arrival eight hundred more slaves
were brought to Seringapatam. In
November, 1782, Colonel Baillie, one of the
prisoners, died, as it was supposed, of
poison; but really of the cruelty of Hyder,
who had refused to send him doctors. In
the mean time Colonel Braithwaite escaped.

Towards the end of 1782, Hyder Ali
died, and his son, Tippoo Sahib, ascended
the throne. His first step was to appoint a
new killadar to command at Seringapatam.
The old killadar, who had been merciful,
was thrown into prison.

Bristowe and many other prisoners were
removed in December to Mysore. Three
English officers had just before been
murdered there; one had killed himself rather
than be forced to take poison; a second,
attacking his murderers, was felled by a
slab of stone thrown at him; the third was
bound and had poison forced down his
throat. Feeling now certain that a massacre
was intended, the prisoners agreed among
themselves that they would attack Tippoo's
assassins when they came, and would die
fighting. But after four months' alarm
they discovered that peace had been
proclaimed, and that Tippoo was only wishing
to secrete the captives he did not intend
to surrender; for Bristowe and his
companions were then ordered back to Seringapatam,
and became havildars and subahdars
to the different slave battalions.

During this year two European soldiers,
who had killed and wounded some guards
in their efforts to escape, were compelled
to work at carrying dirt in the streets of
Tippoo's capital, and were then
assassinated. Their children were also slain.
Ensign Clark was beaten to death by one
of Tippoo's subahdars.

Bristowe and other enforced
Mahomedans, eight in number, were now
employed to drill forty thousand Malabar
Roman Catholic slaves, dragged from the
Bedanore and Mangalore countries by
Tippoo's troopers. The escape of some of
the European officers of these Malabar
regiments led to fresh severities being shown
to the prisoners, who were now obliged
to sell part of their daily allowance of bad
rice to buy firewood and salt. A fugitive
detected in escaping was punished by the
loss of his nose and ears, and was then sent
as a slave to blow the bellows for the
native smiths. The prisoners' wretched pay,
now reduced to six rupees in forty- five days,
compelled them to borrow money of the
government paymaster at exorbitant
interest. Whenever the commander's
severities, however, became unbearable,
Bristowe and his two or three companions used
to fall on the whole Hindoo battalion, and
beat them out of the prison square, until
they offered terms— Tippoo's officers being
generally ashamed to confess these mutinies
to the tyrant.

In the year 1788, six of Tippoo's chiefs
and a Brahmin were hung for having
assisted in conveying letters for Lieutenant
Rutlege and other English prisoners.
Rutlege was then loaded with fetters, and
sent to Mundidroog, a hill fort. He was
hoisted up blindfold, and kept on the
summit under a shed, with only ten yards
area in which to move, and only raggy (a
coarse grain) and a few chillies for his
daily meal. After two years' misery, this
unhappy man was hanged for writing to
borrow money of friends at Seringapatam.
For supposed complicity with Rutlege,
Bristowe and the rest were deprived of
their allowance for two months, during
which time they lived on charity.

In 1790, in honour of the marriage of
his son with the Princess of Cannanore,
Tippoo defrayed the expenses of twenty-
five thousand marriages which were
celebrated on the same day: compelling, on
the same occasion, one hundred thousand
miserable Hindoos to embrace Mahomedanism.
He then, at the head of one
hundred thousand men, marched down the
Ghauts to attack the English, who soon after
repulsed him at the Travancore lines, the