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In 1724, major hostilities resumed between Coorg and Mysore.[63] Changing his modus operandi from guerrilla skirmishes in the hilly Coorg jungle to open field warfare, Dodda Virappa, attacked the Mysore army in the plains.[63] Catching it off guard, he took in rapid succession six fortresses from Piriyapatna to Arkalgud.[63] The resulting loss of revenue, some 600,000 gold pagodas, was felt in Mysore, and several months later, in August or September 1724, a large army was sent from Seringapatam, the Mysore capital, to Coorg.[63] Upon the Mysore army's arrival in the western region, however, the Coorg forces, returning to guerrilla warfare, retreated into the woods.[64] Emboldened by the lack of resistance, the Mysore forces next mounted an attack on the Coorg hills.[64] There too, they met no resistance.[64] However, a few days into this invasion, the Mysore forces, recalling their ignominious ambush in the 1890s, panicked and retreated during the night.[64] Soon, the Coorg army was attacking the Mysore outposts again.[64] This pattern of back and forth was to continue until the Mysore army was recalled, a few months later, to Seringapatam, leaving the region again vulnerable to the periodic raids of the Coorg army.[64] According to historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam,
The entire episode yields a rare insight into one aspect of war in the 18th century: the (Coorg) forces, lacking cavalry, with a minimum of firearms, lost every major battle, but won the war by dint of two factors. First, the terrain, and the possibility of retreating periodically into the wooded hillside, favoured them, in contrast to their relatively clumsy opponents. Second, the Mysore army could never maintain a permanent presence in the region, given the fact that the Wodeyar kingdom had several open frontiers.[65]More than a century earlier, Lewis Rice, had written:
Dodda Virappa evinced throughout his long and vigorous reign an unconquerable spirit, and though surrounded by powerful neighbours, neither the number nor the strength of this enemies seems to have relaxed his courage or damped his enterprise. He died in 1736, 78 years old. Two of his wives ascended the funeral pile with the dead body of the Raja.[66]The ruler was succeeded by his grandson, Chikka Virappa, whose unremarkable rule lasted until 1768, when Coorg was conquered by Haidar Ali, the new sultan of Mysore.[66]
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