The Lion of Tamil Nadu 🦁| MARUTHANAYAGAM PILLAI | RISE TO POWER | Part 1

On the evening of the 15th October, 1764, Muhammad Yusuf,
Khan Bahadur, Governor of Madura and Tinnevelly, was
hanged as a rebel in front of the British camp before Madura,
by order of Muhammad Ali, Nawab of Arcot.
The historical interest of this tragic event lies in the fact
that the man thus executed, Muhammad Yusuf—better known
in his time as Yusuf Khan—was by far the ablest of the Indian
soldiers who fought in the early wars between the English and
French for the possession of Southern India. In the words of
Sir John Malcolm,

" The name of this hero, for such he was, occurs almost as often in the page of the English historian [Eobert Orme] as that of Lawrence or Olive." ^

Orme's History concludes abruptly in 1761, when Yusuf

Khan had been nearly ten years in the service of the English
and had arrived at the zenith of his reputation. His services, as we read in Orme, had on two occasions, viz. the campaign
of Trichinopoly in 1752-4 and the siege of Madras in 1758-9,
been of immense, if not of vital, importance to the English
in the Madras Presidency, and during the years 1756-1761 he
had, as their Governor, brought back to peace and prosperity
the provinces of Madura and Tinnevelly, which actually
belonged to the Nawab, but had been placed by him under
the control of the Madras Council.