Lakshmi Ammani Devi

"We have been writing to you of our affairs from time to time. It is twenty-two years since you left the province. We are daily being persecuted by Tippu. We cannot say at what moment he may send assassins and get us murdered. And for the restoration of our kingdom, you have been exerting your best, winning the sympathies of English Sirdars in our favour, entering into treaties with them etc. and at what an amount of sacrifice and suffering! For our sake, 700 families of your kith and kin have been allowed to be ruthlessly murdered [the pre-Diwali massacre of the Manydam Iyengars], all your immense wealth has been spent and you are a ruined person . . . for now we learn that the French vakeel at the court of Tippu has been strongly advising him to put us all to death, as we may possibly one day be the cause of his ruin. We have now sent along with this a copy of the treaty which Tippu has lately made with the French. If you show this to the Governor of Madras and get him to invade the country with a large army before the arrival of French assistance to Tippu, it will save not only us, but the English also. But if on the contrary there be any vacillation as on the two or three previous occasions, Tippu and the French will unite like fire and air, and the whole country will be ruined. Please do tell the Governor and the English there that if they may not care for us, at least in pure self-defence in order to preserve their own safety, they must put down Tippu at once before he gets French aid. Under the circumstances, you will see, our life is quite uncertain, and even if we are no more, as you are the best well-wisher of the state, you should keep exerting your best, see Tippu destroyed, and get a member of the royal family placed on the throne . . . if however, it should happen by God’s grace that we should also be alive, and the English conquer Tippu and restore us our kingdom, we shall pay the expenses of the English army to the extent of one crore of pagodas. And for this they must abide by the terms of our old treaty with Sullivan and Macartney. You should communicate all this to the English and get the army to march at once. And it cannot be timed to arrive here at a more opportune moment. For Tippu is acting here in the most foolish manner. He does not know who are his best friends, and who his worst enemies. And hence he has lost control even over his own army. He has no good military officers. And everybody here is wishing for his discomfiture, and he is very unpopular. By whatever way the army may come, it can have ample supplies and water."