The siege of Vellore was an intermittent series of

siege A siege is a military blockade of a city, or fortress, with the intent of conquering by attrition, or a well-prepared assault. This derives from la, sedere, lit=to sit. Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict characteriz ...

s and

blockade A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force. A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are leg ...

s conducted during the

Second Anglo-Mysore War The Second Anglo-Mysore War was a conflict between the Kingdom of Mysore and the British East India Company from 1780 to 1784. At the time, Mysore was a key French ally in India, and the conflict between Britain against the French and Dutch in ...

by forces of the Kingdom of Mysore against a

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...

garrison holding the fortress at

Vellore Vellore (English: ), also spelt as Velur (), is a city and the administrative headquarters of Vellore district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located on the banks of the Palar River in the northeastern part of Tamil Nadu and is separ ...

, located in the present-day

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

n state of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...

. First besieged in 1780, Mysore's ruler

Hyder Ali Hyder Ali ( حیدر علی, ''Haidarālī''; 1720 – 7 December 1782) was the Sultan and ''de facto'' ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in southern India. Born as Hyder Ali, he distinguished himself as a soldier, eventually drawing the at ...

eventually reduced the siege to a blockade due to the need for troops elsewhere. The blockade was ineffectively maintained until 1782 before being abandoned. The British successfully resupplied the garrison of Colonel Ross Lang four times.

References

*Vibart, H. M (1881)
''The military history of the Madras engineers and pioneers, from 1743 up to the present time'', Volume 1
Conflicts in 1780 Conflicts in 1781 Conflicts in 1782 Sieges involving the British East India Company Sieges involving the Kingdom of Mysore Siege of Vellore Siege of Vellore Siege of Vellore Battles of the Second Anglo-Mysore War History of Tamil Nadu {{India-hist-stub