"Of course, this is a theme on which I am silent here and on which I shall speak and write with great caution and reserve elsewhere. I am possessed of much information on this curious and edifying event [fall of Tipu in 1799], which is still lodged in my mind and from whence I may never have the leisure to extract it before many of the most important traces are erased from the tablets of my memory. But I can never forget on how many slender hairs and threads the fortunes of this great event has been suspended, almost any one of which breaking would have dangerously retarded, if not entirely frustrated, the grand object of the measure."