430 
SERINGAPATAM. 
Tippoo had often been advised by his French officers, to catry 
an inner work from the Sultaun battery on the high ground, so 
as to cut off the north-west bastion, and that part of the curtain 
against which the attack was directed ; but he was obstinate and 
ignorant. He seems to have had an idea that the Cauveri added 
much to his defence, for he had brought down the fortifications 
in an angle to the north-west bastion, that they might have it as 
a ditch on two sides. During the storm of the fourth of May, a 
small party of the soldiers, in the heat of the attack, passed from 
the outer to the inner rampart, over a wall which united them, 
though it was of great height, and not above a foot wide at top. 
The attempt was indeed so hazardous, that the same men were 
afraid, on the following day, when their blood was cool, to recross 
it. These, and a larger party who made their way in another direc- 
tion, greatly assisted in the attack, by flanking the Sultaun and his 
attendants, who were bravely defending traverse after traverse, on 
the outer rampart, and were slowly retiring, before the superior 
force of the storming party, to the gateway in the inner wall. I think 
it probable, that his intentions were to retire immediately from a 
place that was no longer tenable, and to protract the war as long as 
possible, by putting himself at the head of his troops, that were 
without the town, and which amounted to about twenty thousand 
men. The Bangalore gate had been open during the whole of 
the siege ; he could not therefore have had any difficulty in 
making his escape. If he had found it impossible to carry off" his 
females, I think, from his character, there can be no doubt that he 
would have put them to death, and buried them in the ruins of 
his palace. All this was prevented by the fall of the tyrant ; so 
