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 Dictionary of Indian Biography (Buckland) |
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 Dictionary of Indian Biography G to I
| Date transcribed | 2011-04-00 | | Transcribed by | Peter Bailey | | Comment | Note that notables of Indian, Afghan, etc. origin do not always follow the alphabetical name pattern established by Buckland in his original work. |
| | Surnames | Hyder Ali | | | Year of Birth | 1717 or 1722 | | | Year of Death | 1782 | | | Entry | Son of Fatah Muhammad, a military commander, and jagirdar of Budikota in Mysore : born in 1717 or 1722 : first known as Naik : employed by the Mysore Raja as a volunteer in the siege of Devanhalli in 1749 : next against Arcot, and in the subsequent struggle for the Nizamat : by 1755 he was military governor of Dindigul, then a Mysore stronghold : by 1759 he commanded the Mysore Raja's Army, and received the title of Fatah Bahadur. He gradually obtained the control of affairs and assumed the sovereign power, deposing the Hindu Raja, Chikka Krishnaraj Wodiar, captured Bednore and conquered Malabar in 1766. Allied with the Nizam, he invaded the Carnatic in 1767, and, on the Nizam's retirement, prosecuted the war alone : in 1769 he was within five miles of Madras, when the Madras Governor concluded an offensive and defensive treaty with him, and the Bombay Government made another treaty with him in 1770. He was more than once reduced to great straits by the Mahrattas, who several times invaded the Mysore dominions, but the English declined to assist him. When the French and English declared war in 1778, and the English took Mahe, Hyder, who had become the most formidable power in the Peninsula, received the missionary, Schwartz, as an envoy from the Governor of Madras, but, negotiations failing, invaded the Madras territory in 1780, defeated Colonel Baillie at Perambakam, took Arcot and other places : he was defeated at Porto Novo on July 1, 1781, by Sir Eyre Coote, who relieved Vellore, and met him in the indecisive action at Ami on June 2, 1782 : he died near Chitore, Dec. 7, 1782. Hyder was a born soldier, a first-rate horseman, heedless of danger, full of energy and resource, severe, cruel, cold, indifferent to religion, shrewd in business— though quite uneducated—with a retentive memory : he inspired great terror : with better support from the French, he might have driven the English out of Southern India. |
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A List of eminent persons who served in British India, together with short biographical notes of each
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