On the night of March 21, 1791, the British army, led by Cornwallis, stormed Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan’s fort in Bangalore.
Two weeks earlier, the British had captured the pete, a commercial and residential area in the city adjoining the fort. This campaign had followed a series of encounters between the British and Tipu Sultan, their implacable enemy.
The British army had managed to breach the fort walls and Cornwallis mounted the attack secretly on the night of March 21. The British had crossed the ditch with scaling ladders, mounted the breach, entered the fort and captured it after a hand-to-hand battle. The British victory shaped the future of the city.
The casualty was much higher for Tipu Sultan’s army than for the British.
The fort remained with the British for only a year. After Tipu Sultan’s defeat in 1792 in the Third Anglo-Mysore War and the Treaty of Seringapatam, the fort was returned to him. But after his death in 1799 while defending Seringapatam in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, the fort came under British control again. Not much remains of it.
A few years after Tipu Sultan’s death, the British would relocate his family members in Calcutta.
