Richard Caton Woodville Jr’s depiction of the 1799 storming of Seringapatam in which Tipu Sultan was killed
Hyder Ali was a Mysorean soldier, who rose to prominence as a military leader. As commander-in-chief he created a modern army and equipped and trained it along European lines, with assistance from the French, which would later pose a significant threat to the British. As William Dalrymple writes in The Anarchy: “Having learned modern infantry warfare by observing French tactics, he offered strong resistance to the East India Company, gaining his most notable victory… at Pollilur in 1780.”