General Abercrombie was
ordered up, with a force of six thousand men, but before his arrival,
Lieutenant Chalmers was sent in with a letter from Tippoo, asking for
terms of capitulation. Negotiations were indeed entered into, but,
doubting Tippoo's good faith, the preparations for the siege were
continued; and upon the arrival of General Abercrombie's force, on the
15th of February, siege operations were commenced at the end of the
island still in British possession.
A few days afterwards, the army was astounded at hearing that the
conditions had been agreed upon, and that hostilities were to cease at
once. So great was the indignation, indeed, that a spirit of
insubordination, and almost mutiny, was evinced by many of the corps.
They had suffered extreme hardships, had been engaged in most arduous
marches, had been decimated by fever and bad food, and they could
scarce believe their ears when they heard that they were to hold their
hands, now that, after a year's campaigning, Seringapatam was at their
mercy; and that the man who had butchered so many hundred English
captives, who had wasted whole provinces and carried half a million
people into captivity, who had been guilty of the grossest treachery,
and whose word was absolutely worthless, was to escape personal
punishment.
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