हिंदीOn this day

Siege of Vellore (1780–82)

VictorEast India Company garrisonColonel Ross Lang
1780vs
Kingdom of MysoreHaidar Ali

When Haidar Ali poured into the Carnatic in 1780, the moated fort of Vellore was one of the few strong places the Company still held inland. It was besieged, blockaded and fed four times by relief columns, and never fell.

Date: 1780–1782Where: Vellore fort, Tamil NaduType: Siege
Photo: Unknown author · Public domain
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Cite

MLA

“Siege of Vellore (1780–82).” Hindu History, 2026, https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/siege-of-vellore-1780/. Accessed .

APA

Hindu History. (2026). Siege of Vellore (1780–82). Retrieved , from https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/siege-of-vellore-1780/

Result

The garrison held out; Haidar turned the siege into a loose blockade, which was given up in 1782.

01A fort in Haidar’s path

Vellore’s granite walls and wide moat date from the Vijayanagara period, when the Nayakas built the fort and the Jalakanteswarar temple within it. By 1780 it was held for the Nawab of Arcot and the Company. After destroying Baillie’s column at Pollilur in September 1780, Haidar took Arcot and set about reducing the forts around it. Vellore, under Colonel Ross Lang, was put under siege, and later in the war Tipu’s troops pressed it too.

02Held by relief

Haidar needed his men for the field battles against Eyre Coote and reduced the siege to a blockade. The garrison grew short of food more than once, and each time Coote fought his way through to resupply it; the battle of Sholinghur in September 1781 was fought on one of these marches. The blockade was never tight enough to starve the fort and was given up in 1782. Vellore stayed a Company stronghold, and in 1806 it saw the sepoy rising against new dress rules.

Why it matters

Vellore’s survival gave Coote a base in the northern Carnatic through the hardest years of the Second Anglo-Mysore War.

Places near the battlefield 4

Jalakandeswarar Temple, Vellore FortRebuilt
Sultanates, Vijayanagara and the kingdoms that stood

Jalakandeswarar Temple, Vellore Fort

A Vijayanagara temple inside the moated Vellore Fort, famous for the carving of its kalyana mandapa. It stood without worship for long years while the fort passed from hand to hand, and puja was restored in 1981.

Vilwanatheswarar Temple, TiruvallamStanding
The Age of Great Kingdoms

Vilwanatheswarar Temple, Tiruvallam

A temple on the Ponnai river whose walls hold records from the Pallava age, among them one of the earliest inscriptions to speak of the Tevaram singers. Sambandar sang it.

Yoga Narasimha Temple, Thirukkadigai (Sholinghur)Standing
The Age of Great Kingdoms

Yoga Narasimha Temple, Thirukkadigai (Sholinghur)

A ghatika is twenty-four minutes, and the temple says that one ghatika on this hill is worth a lifetime of prayer elsewhere. Narasimha sits here in yoga at the top of 1,305 steps, and Hanuman faces him from the smaller hill.

Varasiddhi Vinayaka Temple, KanipakamStanding
Cholas and the Southern Seas

Varasiddhi Vinayaka Temple, Kanipakam

A self-manifest Ganesh who rose from a well in a field on the Bahuda river, and before whom disputes are still settled by oath. The murti, devotees say, keeps growing.