Haidar Ali

Haidar Ali rose from a mercenary's son to rule Mysore, built the army that came closest to defeating the East India Company in the field, and died on campaign with the British in serious trouble. He was illiterate, entered Mysore service as a soldier, and by 1761 had reduced the Wodeyar rajas to figureheads while never taking the throne himself. He hired French officers, drilled his infantry in European formations, and invested heavily in artillery and in iron-cased rockets - the Mysorean rockets that were later taken to Woolwich and developed into the Congreve rocket used against the Americans in 1814. In the First Anglo-Mysore War he marched to the outskirts of Madras in 1769 and dictated peace at the gates. When the British failed to honour the mutual defence clause of that treaty he did not forget it. The Second war began in 1780 with his destruction of a British force at Pollilur, the worst defeat the Company had suffered in India, and his cavalry burned the Carnatic so thoroughly that Madras came near to starving. He also held large numbers of British prisoners for years, which generated an atrocity literature in Britain that shaped opinion for a generation. Eyre Coote beat him at Porto Novo in 1781 without breaking him. He died of a carbuncle in December 1782, and his son Tipu Sultan continued the war and the state until 1799. He is remembered in India as one of the few rulers who understood that European infantry discipline, not European courage, was the thing to copy.

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