Cornwallis arrived at scene at a time when Marathas were becoming weak. Haider Ali died in 1782 after Second Anglo Mysore war due to cancer. He led Third Anglo Mysore War in which Mysore faced defeat in 1792. The war broke out in late 1789 when Tipu Sultan, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, attacked Travancore, an ally of the British East India Company. After a little over two years of fighting, forces of the company led by Lord Cornwallis, along with allied forces from the Maratha Empire and Hyderabad, laid siege in February 1792 to Mysore’s capital, Seringapatam. Rather than attempting to storm the works at great cost to all sides, Cornwallis entered into negotiations with Tipu to end the conflict. Cornwallis had hoped to use the treaty as a wide-ranging peace settlement that would, in addition to reducing or removing the threat of Mysore, prevent conflict between Hyderabad and the Marathas.
The Treaty of Seringapatam was signed on 18 March 1792 which ended the Third Anglo-Mysore War. Its signatories included Lord Cornwallis on behalf of the British East India Company, representatives of the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Mahratta Empire, and Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore. Under the terms of the treaty, Mysore ceded about one half of its territories to the other signatories. The Peshwa acquired territory up to the Tungabhadra River, the Nizam was awarded land from the Krishna to the Penner River, and the forts of Cuddapah and Gandikota on the south bank of the Penner. The East India Company received a large portion of Mysore’s Malabar Coast territories between the Kingdom of Travancore and the Kali River, and the Baramahal and Dindigul districts.