The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

by William Dalrymple

Already, the Mysore casualties hugely outnumbered those of the allies: some 10,000 of Tipu’s troops were dead as opposed to around 350 of the Company and Hyderabadi sepoys: ‘It would be scarcely possible,’ wrote one British observer, ‘to describe, in adequate terms, the objects of horror, the ghastly spectacle, presented to the senses by the bodies of the slain, in every attitude, and in every direction; lying in the verandas and along the principal street.’55 But the horrors had barely begun. That night the city of Srirangapatnam, home to 100,000 people, was given over to an unrestrained orgy of rape, looting and killing. Arthur Wellesley told his mother, ‘Scarcely a house in the town was left unplundered, and I understand that in camp jewels of the greatest value, bars of gold etc etc have been offered for sale in the bazaars of the army by our soldiers, sepoys and followers. I came in to take command of the army of the morning of the 5th and with the greatest exertion, by hanging, flogging etc etc, in the course of that day I restored order …’