"Tipu…had no compunction in cutting [the prisoners’] throats, or strangling and poisoning them; while…numbers of them were sent to die of malaria and starvation on the fatal mountain of Kabaldrug [Kabbaladurga]. The English prisoners were specially selected as victims of his vengeance, not omitting officers of rank such as General Matthews; while, in direct contravention of the treaty made at Mangalore in 1784, he did not scruple to retain in captivity considerable numbers of Europeans. Many of these, particularly young and good-looking boys, were forcibly circumcised, married haphazard to girls who had been captured in the Coromandel districts, and drafted into the ranks of the army, or compelled to sing and dance for the amusement of the sovereign... those who conspired against him were put in a cage… [and] were allowed half a pound of rice a day, with salt, but no water, so they soon expired under this frightful ordeal.. There were other punishments nearly equally dreadful, such as making men bestride a wooden horse on a saddle studded with sharp spikes. On a spring being touched the horse of torture reared, and the spikes penetrated the unfortunate wretches. A more common mode of punishment was to bind tightly the hands and feet of condemned men, and then to attach them by a rope to the foot of an elephant, which, being urged forwards, dragged them after it on the rough ground, and painfully terminated their existence. Some again were ruthlessly thrown into the dens of tigers to be devoured."