page_title: Siege of Seringapatam (1799)
section_title: Death of Tipu
hierarchical_section_title: Siege of Seringapatam (1799) / Death of Tipu
caption_attribution_description: Finding the body of Tipu 'Finding the Body Of Tippoo Sultan'. Coloured engraving.
context_page_description: The Siege of Seringapatam was the final confrontation of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War between the British East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore. The British, with the allied Nizam of Hyderabad and Maratha, achieved a decisive victory after breaching the walls of the fortress at Seringapatam and storming the citadel. Tipu Sultan, Mysore's ruler, was killed in the action. The British restored the Wodeyar dynasty to the throne after the victory, but retained indirect control of the kingdom. The leader of the British troops was Major General David Baird.
context_section_description: The column that rounded the northwest corner of the outer wall was immediately involved in a serious fight with a group of Mysorean warriors under a fat officer, which defended every traverse. The officer was observed to be discharging hunting weapons, loaded and passed to him by servants, at the British. After the fall of the city, in the gathering dusk, some of the British officers went to look for the body of Tipu Sultan. He was identified as the fat officer who had fired hunting weapons at the attackers, and his body was found in a choked tunnel-like passage near the Water Gate.
  Benjamin Sydenham described the body as:
  wounded a little above the right ear, and the ball lodged in the left cheek, he had also three wounds in the body, he was in stature about 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m) and not very fair, he was rather corpulent, had a short neck and high shoulders, but his wrists and ankles were small and delicate.
  He had large full eyes, with small arched eyebrows and very small whiskers. His appearance denoted him to be above the Common Stamp.
  And his countenance expressed a mixture of haughtiness and resolution. He was dressed in a fine white linen jacket, chintz drawers, a crimson cloth round his waist with a red silk belt and pouch across his body and head.
  
  He had lastly his turband and there were no weapons of defence about him.
caption: Finding the Body of Tipu Sultan, by Samuel William Reynolds
exif: {"Image Copyright": "Public Domain, from the British Library's collections, 2013"}