Napoleon Bonaparte's landing in Ottoman Egypt in 1798 was intended to further the capture of the British possessions in India, and the Kingdom of Mysore was a key to that next step, as the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, sought France as an ally and his letter to Napoleon resulted in the following reply, "You have already been informed of my arrival on the borders of the Red Sea, with an innumerable and invincible army, full of the desire of releasing and relieving you from the iron yoke of England."

[6] Three armies, one from Bombay and two British (one of which contained a division that was commanded by Colonel Arthur Wellesley, the future 1st Duke of Wellington), marched into Mysore in 1799 and besieged the capital, Srirangapatnam, after some engagements with Tipu.

Quoting Forrest, At this point (near the village of Sultanpet, Figure 5) there was a large tope, or grove, which gave shelter to Tipu's rocketmen and had obviously to be cleaned out before the siege could be pressed closer to Srirangapattana island.

The commander chosen for this operation was Col. Wellesley, but advancing towards the tope after dark on the 5 April 1799, he was set upon with rockets and musket-fires, lost his way and, as Beatson politely puts it, had to "postpone the attack" until a more favourable opportunity should offer.

According to one British observer, a young English officer named Bayly: "So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no moving without danger from the destructive missiles ...".

Every illumination of blue lights was accompanied by a shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of the column, passing through to the rear, causing death, wounds, and dreadful lacerations from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet which are invariably attached to them.During the decisive British attack on Seringapatam on 2 May 1799, with the help of Marathas and Nizam, a British shot struck a magazine of rockets within Tipu Sultan's fort, causing it to explode and send a towering cloud of black smoke with cascades of exploding white light rising up from the battlements.

Many members of the East India Company believed that Umdat ul-Umara, the Nawab of Carnatic, secretly provided assistance to Tipu Sultan during the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War; and they immediately sought his deposition after the end of the conflict.

The war, specifically the Battle of Mallavelly and the siege of Seringapatam, with many of the key protagonists, is covered in the historical novel Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell.