Seringapatam

A procession of soldiers, a camel, a palanquin, and an aristocratic rider in a howdah on an elephant make their way toward the fortified town of Seringapatam (now called Srirangapatna) in southwestern India. Just five years before the creation of this print, Seringapatam had been the scene of an important battle between the forces of Tipu Sultan, the king of Mysore, and the British and their allies. The British succeeded in breaching Seringapatam's defenses, and Tipu Sultan was killed. Mysore fell under indirect British rule. Thus this apparently idyllic landscape would have had, for its original British audience, associations with the expansion of British power in India.