Negotiations were indeed entered into, but, doubting Tippoo's good faith, the preparations for the siege were continued; and upon the arrival of General Abercrombie's force, on the 15th of February, siege operations were commenced at the end of the island still in British possession.
A few days afterwards, the army was astounded at hearing that the conditions had been agreed upon, and that hostilities were to cease at once.

So great was the indignation, indeed, that a spirit of insubordination, and almost mutiny, was evinced by many of the corps.
They had suffered extreme hardships, had been engaged in most arduous marches, had been decimated by fever and bad food, and they could scarce believe their ears when they heard that they were to hold their hands, now that, after a year's campaigning, Seringapatam was at their mercy; and that the man who had butchered so many hundred English captives, who had wasted whole provinces and carried half a million people into captivity, who had been guilty of the grossest treachery, and whose word was absolutely worthless, was to escape personal punishment.
Still higher did the indignation rise, both among officers and men, when the conditions of the treaty became known, and it was discovered that no stipulation whatever had been made for the handing over of the English prisoners still in Mysore, previous to a cessation of hostilities.

This condition, at least, should have been insisted upon, and carried out previous to any negotiations being entered upon.
The reasons that induced Lord Cornwallis to make this treaty, when Seringapatam lay at his mercy, have ever been a mystery.

Tippoo had proved himself a monster unfitted to live, much less to rule, and the crimes he had committed against the English should have been punished by the public trial and execution of their author.

To conclude peace with him, now, was to enable him to make fresh preparations for war, and to necessitate another expedition at enormous cost and great loss of life.