When Maratha forces swooped into southern Karnataka and laid siege to his great fort of Srirangapatnam (Seringapatam) near Mysore, he immediately turned to his British allies. They turned away. Haidar repeatedly invoked the defensive alliance, and Madras repeatedly prevaricated. Albion’s perfidy, of which Haidar had no doubt heard from his French employees, was amply demonstrated. He damned the British as ‘the most faithless and usurping of all mankind’ and, if not already rabidly Anglophobe, both father and son now became so.
