Place · battle site · India
Pollilur
Also known as Pollilur, Polilur, Perambakkam, Battle of Pollilur
The field near Kanchipuram where Tipu Sultan's cavalry and rocket batteries destroyed Colonel Baillie's detachment on 10 September 1780 — the worst defeat the East India Company suffered in India until then, with the survivors marched to captivity at Srirangapatna.
- Date
- 1780 CE
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 12.870, 79.720 (approximate)
Worth knowing
Tipu had the battle painted as a mural around a room at the Daria Daulat Bagh, with the Company's officers shown in disorder — a rare case of an Indian victory over the Company recorded as monumental art by the winner. The Company's own histories long understated it.
Connections (2)
- Succession in timeSrirangapatna / Srirangapattana
Nineteen years separate Mysore's greatest victory over the Company from its extinction. Pollilur in 1780 was won by mobility, rockets and the destruction of an isolated column; Srirangapatna in 1799 was lost to a siege train, a coalition with Hyderabad and the Marathas, and a treasury already drained by three wars. The Company could absorb one Pollilur; Mysore could not absorb one siege.
- CampaignṬīpū Sultān
Tipu commanded the cavalry at Pollilur under his father Haidar Ali and had the engagement painted around a room at the Daria Daulat Bagh, with the Company's officers in confusion and its powder tumbril exploding. He also had his rocket corps expanded after it; the Woolwich arsenal reverse-engineered captured Mysorean rockets twenty years later as the Congreve pattern.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Battle of Pollilur”. Innes Munro, A Narrative of the Military Operations on the Coromandel Coast (1789); the Daria Daulat Bagh mural, Srirangapatna.
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