43 ° 
HISTORY OF MAURITIUS. 
to nothing. The King, therefore, enraged at such inhuman treatment, assembled 
all his family, and, after having performed certain ceremonies with the principal 
Bramins, he ordered his palace to be set on fire in several different places; and it 
being constructed of wood, the unhappy Prince and all his family were immediately 
burned. 
As soon as Haider Aly was informed of the death of the King he left a garrison 
of two hundred infantry and five hundred horse, and set out with the rest of his 
army, for the country of Coimboutour, which is about forty coss on the road from 
Calicut to Maissour. About two months after he had left Calicut, a brother of the 
King appeared before the place with an army of twenty thousand men ; and having 
some intelligence with the inhabitants, took it by assault, and put all the garrison 
to the sword. Three hundred men alone escaped, by taking refuge in a pagoda. 
When Haider received an account of this event, he immediately detached 
Assouff Khan with five thousand infantry and a thousand horse, with positive orders 
to engage the enemy; the brother of the King accordingly gave him battle, but 
having been defeated in two separate engagements, and fearing lest he should be 
shut up in the town, he quitted it during the night, with his whole army and all the 
inhabitants, and retired into the woods. 
There he remained three months, without attempting any act of hostility; and 
having lulled them by his conduct into a state of security, he appeared unexpectedly 
before the place, and retook it. He condemned Assouff Khan to lose his head, 
killed a great number of his soldiers, while the rest fled away to the territories of 
Haider to inform him of this disastrous event. He accordingly set out for Calicut, 
at the head of an army of six thousand infantry and two thousand horse; but, after 
two days march, he gave the command of his troops to Sevagee Rou, a Mahratta 
Bramin, who, on arriving before the place, was attacked by the King’s brother; but 
having gained the battle, the latter retired, as he had already done, into the woods, 
and abandoned the place. 
Haider Aly had quitted the command of his army to return in haste with his best 
troops to Seringapatam, when he received an account that Mahaderou, one of the 
Mahratta chiefs, was making preparations, and had, indeed, already put himself in 
motion to recover the domains which his predecessors had ceded to Haider in 
1760. Though this circumstance was of great importance to him, he, nevertheless, 
determined to make his triumphant entry into Seringapatam. 
