The army advanced along the Baramahal valley, which led west from Amboor. The floor of the valley was wide and flat and dotted with small low-rising groves of trees, or topes, so that the army made good progress. Arthur’s column marched on the left, three miles from Harris. In between the two forces sprawled the vast train of brinjarris, the families of the sepoys and merchants and traders of all kinds.With them lumbered strings of bullocks, horses, camels, mules and here and there the grey swaying masses of elephants. A huge cloud of dust rose up in the wake of this host, announcing the approach of the army for a great distance. Each day they covered ten miles before camping for the night. Then the merchants moved through the tent lines selling curried tripe, sop, and boiled sausages to the hungry soldiers.

In the morning the sepoys used straw to light the morning fires, and fuelled the fires with cow dung that filled the air with its rich cloying odour. The shrill chatter of the women camp followers rose up on all sides as they hurriedly prepared a morning meal for their families, and then packed their belongings for the day’s trek to the next camp.

Arthur regarded the apparent chaos of the camp with a degree of tolerance, since the writ of British military discipline extended only to the 33rd Foot and the six Company sepoy battalions. The rest were native levies with their own customs. The men of the 33rd were enjoying the status of being the elite formation in such a large force and marched with a swagger that pleased their colonel greatly. When the time came to fight they would inspire the other battalions and the Nizam’s men to hold their places in the line.

When they reached the Ryacotta pass the wagons and guns ascended the slope on the road prepared for them by Harris’s engineers, while the infantry and camp followers climbed over the broken ground on either side. Once through the eastern ghats the army was in the territory of Mysore and at once small groups of enemy horsemen began to shadow the columns. Tipoo’s strategy was apparent the moment the army approached Kellamungallam. A huge pall of smoke hung over the remains of the city. Vast swaths of buildings had been burned and the defences pulled down or blown up. Beyond the city the route before General Harris’s army had been torched.

‘Tipoo has clearly decided to pull his soldiers back to defend Seringapatam,’ General Harris concluded, as he addressed his senior officers once the army had camped a short distance from the charred ruins of Kellamungallam.‘He aims to lure us through his lands, denying us forage on the way, in the hope that we will fail to lay siege to his capital for long enough to take it, just as Cornwallis failed the last time a British army attempted to defeat Mysore.’