I'm the Dauphin in France

Chapter 435 British Tactics
The next day, in the dense rain, a team of British soldiers, under the cover of cloudy sky, slipped into the innermost layer of "Pa" through a gap blasted by a cannon.

The defending Mysore soldiers fled hastily through the tunnel, while the man left behind to ignite the gunpowder barrel took out the flint, but the sparks he struck three times were extinguished by the rain blown in by the wind.

Two British soldiers appeared at the tower entrance and raised their Brown Bess flintlocks at him.

An hour later, the Marquis of Wellesley looked at the seven or eight bodies soaked in the rain with a gloomy face. He had wasted 14 days on this simple fortress before finally breaking it. And the Mysore people had less than 30 deaths.

He glanced at the more than 200 flintlock rifles and a 4-pound cannon piled not far away, and was about to return to the tent when he suddenly stopped.

He turned to the officer in charge of sorting out the spoils and asked, "Why don't you see any enemy gunpowder and shells?"

The officer pointed to a dozen small wooden boxes under the tree and said, "Over there, Lieutenant Colonel."

Wellesley came from a family of military officers. Although he was young, he already held the rank of lieutenant colonel.

He was a little surprised and asked, "That's all?"

"Yes, Lieutenant Colonel. In fact, this is the first time we have seized their weapons. In the past, they would detonate the gunpowder when evacuating."

Wellesley squinted his eyes as he stood in the rain. The ammunition was only enough for the soldiers defending the fortress for another 10 days at most. In other words, they had only prepared ammunition for more than 20 days from the beginning.

He wiped the rain off his face and looked at the narrow tower on top of the "Pa". Suddenly, the corners of his mouth curled up and he turned to Cornwallis and said, "I think I have found the weakness of this thing."

Two days later.

Forty or fifty Hyderabad soldiers, in a very loose formation, tremblingly attacked the "Pa" on the mound in front of them.

Soon, gunshots were heard from inside the "Pa", and a Hyderabadi man had half of his head blown off by a lead bullet.

The others were horrified and subconsciously wanted to run away, but when they turned around, they saw hundreds of British soldiers in red uniforms pointing their guns in the distance.

Their hearts suddenly tightened, recalling the scene in the morning where dozens of people who escaped were shot on the spot. They hurriedly turned around, looking for a place to hide around, and then gritted their teeth and fired back.

The British commander ordered them to attack for an hour and then retreat to allow the next group of people to arrive.

However, in less than half an hour, these dozens of people were killed one after another by Mysore soldiers.

The British officer in the distance put down his telescope and turned to look at Wellesley. When he saw Wellesley nod, he immediately shouted to the small group of Maratha soldiers next to him: "It's your turn, go and capture that fort!"

Driven by the British soldiers, the Marathas moved towards "Pa" with pale faces.

"Are you sure this will work?" Cornwallis looked at the Indian soldiers who were shot and fell to the ground one after another, and said to Wellesley sideways, "We seem to have gained nothing except huge casualties."

"Just wait and see." The latter said calmly, "If I'm not mistaken, we can capture this fortress before dark."

Nearly 50 Maratha soldiers were quickly killed, and another group of British vassal troops were forced to rush forward. They began to use the bodies of the former as cover, but they only lasted for more than 40 minutes, and then the next group...

At about 5 p.m., Cornwallis looked at the corpses scattered around the "Pa" and roughly estimated that more than a dozen teams of Indian soldiers had died there, at least 600 people. He was about to say something else to Wellesley, but he unexpectedly found that the Mysore fortress had become quiet.

"Well, it seems that my judgment is correct." Wellesley smiled and said to the officer beside him, "Let our men go."

"Yes, Lieutenant Colonel!"

Immediately, nearly a thousand British "lobster soldiers" surrounded the "Pa", but they only encountered very sporadic counterattacks.

The British leisurely used gunpowder to blast through several layers of the wall, driving the Mysore soldiers into the tunnel.

The retreating defenders then detonated a powder keg, and more than half of the tower on top of "Pa" collapsed.

In the afterglow of the setting sun, Cornwallis saw the British flag planted on the fortress that had troubled him for half a year. He looked at Wellesley in shock and said, "How did you do it? You took it down in just one day!"

"Ammunition reserves." Marquis Wellesley pointed calmly to the tower on top of "Pa", "The main body of this fortress is a three-layer wall, and only the middle one can be used to store ammunition.

"I estimated from its narrow dimensions that, after part of the space was taken up by food and water, they could only store 300 artillery shells and more than 1 rounds of ammunition, as well as the corresponding gunpowder.

"So, I ordered them to attack in batches. When the Mysores are under pressure, they will ignore their ammunition reserves. And long-term continuous shooting will also greatly reduce their hit rate.

"Eventually, they ran out of their ammunition, and our soldiers rushed in. That was it."

In fact, he omitted one thing: after killing a large number of enemies, the Mysore soldiers would become extremely excited and bloodthirsty, and would only know how to shoot non-stop without thinking about tactics at all.

Cornwallis was stunned as he listened to the young officer in front of him calmly describing the tactic of "using human lives to exhaust the enemy's ammunition" - it turned out that his previous efforts to reduce casualties and cherish the lives of soldiers also gave the enemy time to rest and arrange tactics.

In fact, continuing to exert pressure regardless of the consequences is the best tactic to deal with the Mysoreans who have poor military literacy!
"But," he thought of another question, "Although we quickly broke through this fortress, the casualties were too many..."

At least 600 people died in the day's attack. According to this number, it would cost to thousand people to conquer all the fortresses in Mangalore!

"They are just some Indians," Wellesley waved his hand dismissively. "They are so numerous that it doesn't matter."

As he was speaking, he saw the commander of the Hyderabad Army walking towards him with a dark face, but he continued to say to Cornwallis with a normal expression:
"And my goal is not to capture Mangalore. It is only necessary to let Tipu know that we can quickly break through his fortress."

The Hyderabad officer came up to the two men and without even a greeting shouted in a hoarse voice:

"You can't let my soldiers die like this. Nearly 400 of them died today alone!"

The Marquis of Wellesley looked at him with a smile and said:

"It is a soldier's duty to die in battle. There will be many more such attacks in the future, so you must get used to it as soon as possible."

(End of this chapter)