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.”
It would be around 1761 that Ali became de