Fourth Anglo - Mysore War The Fourth Anglo – Mysore War ( 1798 – 1799 ) was a war in South India between the Kingdom of Mysore and the British East India Company under the Earl of Mornington . This was the final conflict of the four Anglo – Mysore Wars . The British took indirect control of Mysore , restoring the Wodeyar Dynasty to the Mysore throne ( with a British commissioner to advise him on all issues ) . Tipu ' s young heir , Fateh Ali , was sent into exile . The Kingdom of Mysore became a princely state of British India , and ceded Coimbatore , Uttara Kannada , and Dakshina Kannada to the British . The war , specifically the Battle of Mallevey and the Siege of Seringapatam , with many of the key protagonists , is covered in the historical novel " Sharpe ' s Tiger " . Background . Napoleon ' s landing in Egypt in 1798 was intended to capture British possessions in India , and the Kingdom of Mysore was a key to that next step as the ruler of Mysore , Tipu Sultan , was a staunch ally of France . Even though Horatio Nelson crushed Napoleon ' s ambitions at the Battle of the Nile , three armies – one from Bombay and two British ( one of which contained a division that was commanded by Colonel Arthur Wellesley , the future 1st Duke of Wellington ) , nevertheless marched into Mysore in 1799 and besieged the capital , Srirangapatnam , after some engagements with the Tipu ' s armies . On 8 March , a forward force managed to hold off an advance by Tipu at the Battle of Seedaseer . On 4 May , the armies broke through the defending walls and Tipu Sultan , rushing to the breach , was shot and killed . Today , the spot where Tipu ' s body was discovered under the eastern gate has been fenced off by the Archaeological Survey of India , and a plaque erected . The gate itself was later demolished during the 19th century to lay a wide road . One notable military advance championed by Tipu Sultan was the use of mass attacks with iron - cased rocket brigades in the army . The effect of these weapons ( Mysore rockets ) on the British during the Third and Fourth Mysore Wars was sufficiently impressive to inspire William Congreve to develop the Congreve rocket s . Many members of the British East India Company believed that Umdat Ul - Umra the Nawab of Carnatic secretly provided assistance to Tipu Sultan during the Fourth Anglo – Mysore War ; and they immediately sought his deposition after the end of the conflict . Mysorean rockets . During the war , rockets were again used on several occasions . One of these involved Colonel Arthur Wellesley , later famous as the First Duke of Wellington . Wellesley was defeated by Tipu ' s Diwan , Purnaiya , at the Battle of Sultanpet Tope . Quoting Forrest , At this point ( near the village of Sultanpet , Figure 5 ) there was a large tope , or grove , which gave shelter to Tipu ' s rocketmen and had obviously to be cleaned out before the siege could be pressed closer to Srirangapattana island . The commander chosen for this operation was Col . Wellesley , but advancing towards the tope after dark on the 5 April 1799 , he was set upon with rockets and musket - fires , lost his way and , as Beatson politely puts it , had to " postpone the attack " until a more favourable opportunity should offer . The following day , Wellesley launched a fresh attack with a larger force , and took the whole position without losing a single man . On 22 April 1799 , twelve days before the main battle , rocketeers worked their way around to the rear of the British encampment , then ' threw a great number of rockets at the same instant ' to signal the beginning of an assault by 6 , 000 Indian infantry and a corps of Frenchmen , all directed by Mir Golam Hussain and Mohomed Hulleen Mir Miran . The rockets had a range of about 1 , 000 yards . Some burst in the air like shells . Others , called ground rockets , would rise again on striking the ground and bound along in a serpentine motion until their force was spent . According to one British observer , a young English officer named Bayly : " So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no moving without danger from the destructive missiles . . . " . He continued : The rockets and musketry from 20 , 000 of the enemy were incessant . No hail could be thicker . Every illumination of blue lights was accompanied by a shower of rockets , some of which entered the head of the column , passing through to the rear , causing death , wounds , and dreadful lacerations from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet , which are invariably attached to them . During the conclusive British attack on Srirangapattana on 2 May 1799 , a British shot struck a magazine of rockets within Tipu Sultan ' s fort , causing it to explode and send a towering cloud of black smoke with cascades of exploding white light rising up from the battlements . On the afternoon of 4 May when the final attack on the fort was led by Baird , he was again met by " furious musket and rocket fire " , but this did not help much ; in about an hour ' s time the fort was taken ; perhaps within another hour Tipu had been shot ( the precise time of his death is not known ) , and the war was effectively over .