BATTLE OF MALAVILLY. 115 



plan, however, appears to have been to contend with the 

 English, according to their own method, in regular warfare 

 and by pitched battles. To this system he had been partir.l 

 ever since Lord Cornwallis's first retreat after the battle 

 fought in front of Seringapatam. But that battle Tippoo 

 had lost ; and the retreat had been occasioned solely by the 

 want of supplies and equipments, produced by the desul- 

 tory warfare previously waged. During the peace his ex- 

 ertions had been directed to assimilate his force to a Eu- 

 ropean army, and his success had been such as to render 

 him an overmatch in the field for any of the native powers ; 

 but the cavalry, the irjstrument by which all the triumphs 

 of his family over the English were achieved, had been 

 comparatively neglected. 



The British army was now advancing into the heart of 

 his dominions. The comprehensive mind of Marquis Wel- 

 lesley instantly saw it to be his true policy not to detain him- 

 self with any secondary object, but to strike at once at Sering- 

 apatam, the reduction of which would be followed by the en- 

 tire downfall of the sultan. All the English writers agree in 

 stating that no army could be in a higher state of equip- 

 ment than that which took the field under General Harris ; 

 yet the march, though it did not encounter any serious re- 

 sistance, was very slow. It passed the frontier only on the 

 5th, and made the first united movement on the 10th March, 

 1799, the time that had been fixed as the latest at which it 

 ought to have arrived at the capital. Certain authors speak 

 as if in this tardy progress there were some mystery which 

 could never be developed ; but the delay is perhaps suffi- 

 ciently explained by the fact that he conveyed, by means of 

 sixty thousand ill-trained oxen and careless drivers, several 

 months' provisions for so great an army, and a battering- 

 train to reduce a fortress the fall of which was expected to 

 bring with it th%t of the whole kingdom. 



When the army had reached Malavilly, about thirty miles 

 from the capital, the sultan's encampment was observed 

 from the heights, and General Floyd, with the advance, 

 having approached within a mile of that village, discovered 

 their whole force posted on the elevated ground behind it. 

 An attack being immediately determined on, it was led by 

 Colonel Wellesley, supported by Floyd's cavalry, and di- 

 rected against the enemy's right. A column of their troops 





