ir Alexander Allan served in the Madras Native Infantry from 1780 as Lieutenant (1786); Captain (1796) and Major (1803) He resigned in 1804, and from 1814 was a Director of the East India Company. Allan, like Mackenzie, Robert Colebrooke and Thomas Auburey, served in the Third Mysore War as a surveyor and skilled amateur artist. Colebrooke, a veteran of the Second Mysore War, was the first to send his drawings to London for engraving, announcing his proposal in the Calcutta Gazette early in 1792. His 'Twelve Views of Places in the Kingdom of Mysore' was published in 1794, and followed in the same year by Allan's 'Views in Mysore Country'. Both artists included views of Oootradurgum, Savandroog and Nandidrug but the aquatints after Allan included twelve additional views of hill forts and one of the mausoleum at Colar, Haidar's birthplace.

Allan described Nandidrug as 'a strong spacious fortress with the best constructed works of all the hill forts and one of those that Tippoo deemed impregnable.' His 'Notes during the Campaigns of 1790-91' make frequent reference to the exhausted state of the cattle: 'the scarcity of forage on the march to Seringapatam, the heavy rains, the cold bleak wind and the severity of the weather while near the Cauvery reduced the cattle of every description to the lowest state,' he wrote on 24th May 1791. As a result, the troops, with laudible public spirit, dragged the Battery Train themselves.

The three soldiers depicted in the foreground are probably intended to represent, from the left : the 71st (Highland) Regiment of Foot (red plume); the 36th (Herefordshire) Regiment of Foot, Light Company (green plume); and a Grenadier (white plume). The 1st Bn 73rd (Highland) Regiment of Foot had been renumbered the 71st in 1786. Behind these men are two Indian horseman, and, looming over all, the great rock of Nandidrug.