AGREEABLY to your suggestion, we have written to Bûrhânûddeen, desiring him, in the event of the hat-wearer,* Monsieur Tuviâs,* passing over to our army from the forces under Kishn Pundit, to advance the aforesaid [hat-wearer] something to defray his expences [on the road], and dispatch him to the Presence.

N. B. A letter, of the same tenor and date, was written to Bûrhânûddeen.

The person here spoken of was probably some French adventurer in the Mah­rattah service, who may have made overtures to the Mysore envoys at Poonah for deserting to their master, or may have been tampered with by them for that pur­pose.

Kishn Râo, I believe, commanded the division of the Mahrattah army, which passing the river Kishna, had advanced, towards the end of February of this year (1785), with the ostensible view of supporting the Zemindâr of Nergûnd; but which would appear to have very soon retired again, leaving Bûrhânûddeen at liberty to resume the siege of that place, and subsequently to reduce both it and Ramdoorg, as well as to seize upon Kittoor, without offering him any interruption. I am unable to account for the apparent inactivity of the Mahrattahs during so many months. They were, probably, waiting to concert a plan of operations with the Nizâm. In the mean while, the Sultan seems to have contented himself with acting on the defensive. It was not, accordingly, till the month of October in the following year (1786), that the main armies of the contending powers could be said to have come into contact with each other, or to have entered upon offensive operations, on a large or general scale. What had preceded, was considered mere skirmishing; and, indeed, Tippoo himself appears, in his Memoirs (as will here­after be seen), to have dated the actual commencement of the present war, from the period when the Mahrattahs, in conjunction with the Nizâm, proceeded to the attack of Bâdâmy.