Fourth Anglo-Mysore War in the context of "Duke of Wellington"

Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (né Wesley; 1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish British Army officer and statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures in Britain during the early 19th century, twice serving as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was one of the British commanders who ended the Anglo-Mysore wars by defeating Tipu Sultan in 1799, and among those who ended the Napoleonic Wars in a Coalition victory when the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Wellesley was born into a Protestant Ascendancy family in Dublin, in the Kingdom of Ireland. He was commissioned as an ensign in the British Army in 1787, serving in Ireland as aide-de-camp to two successive lords lieutenant of Ireland. He was also elected as a member of Parliament in the Irish House of Commons. Rising to the rank of colonel by 1796, Wellesley served in the Flanders campaign before being sent to India, where he fought in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, ending the conflict with a victory at Seringapatam in 1799. He was appointed governor of Seringapatam and Mysore and, as a newly appointed major-general, won a decisive victory over the Maratha Confederacy at the Battle of Assaye in 1803.

The Anglo-Mysore wars were a series of four wars fought during the last three decades of the 18th century between the Kingdom of Mysore on the one hand, and the British East India Company (represented chiefly by the neighbouring Madras Presidency), Maratha Empire, Kingdom of Travancore, and the Kingdom of Hyderabad on the other. Hyder Ali and his succeeding son Tipu Sultan fought the wars on four fronts: with the British attacking from the west, south and east and the Nizam's forces attacking from the north. The fourth war resulted in the overthrow of the house of Hyder Ali and Tipu (the latter was killed in the fourth war, in 1799), and the dismantlement of Mysore to the benefit of the East India Company, which took control of much of the Indian subcontinent.

The siege of Seringapatam (5 April – 4 May 1799) was the final confrontation of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War between the British East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore. The British, with the allied Nizam Ali Khan, 2nd Nizam of Hyderabad and Marathas, achieved a decisive victory after breaching the walls of the fortress at Seringapatam and storming the citadel. The leader of the British troops was Major General David Baird, among the lesser known allies were the Portuguese in Goa and Damaon. Tipu Sultan, the ruler after the death of his father, was killed in the action. The British restored the Wodeyar dynasty back to power after the victory through a treaty of subsidiary alliance and Krishnaraja Wodeyar III was crowned the King of Mysore. However, they retained indirect control (British paramountcy) of the kingdom's external affairs.