Part 14
Major-General Sir Thomas Reynell succeeded to the baronetcy upon the decease of his brother Sir Richard Littleton Reynell in September 1829; and on the 30th of January 1832 was appointed by His Majesty King William IV. to be colonel of the ninety-ninth regiment, from which he was removed to the eighty-seventh Royal Irish fusiliers on the 15th of August 1834. On the 10th of January 1837, he was promoted to the rank of lieut.-general, and on the 14th of June 1839 was appointed a member of the consolidated board of general officers for the inspection and regulation of the clothing of the army. On the 15th of March 1841, he was appointed by Her Majesty to the colonelcy of the SEVENTY-FIRST regiment. The decease of Lieut.-General Sir Thomas Reynell, Bart., K.C.B., occurred at Avisford, near Arundel, on the 10th of February 1848.
SIR THOMAS ARBUTHNOT, K.C.B.
_Appointed 18th February 1848._
This officer entered the army as ensign in the twenty-ninth regiment on the 23d of November 1794, and was promoted lieutenant in the fortieth regiment on the 1st of May 1796. He was advanced to the rank of captain in the eighth West India regiment on the 25th of June 1798, and on the 26th of May 1803 was appointed captain in the royal staff corps, and on the 7th of April 1808 was promoted major in the fifth West India regiment, in which year he joined the staff of the army in the Peninsula, first as assistant adjutant-general, and afterwards as assistant quartermaster-general. Major Arbuthnot was present at the battles of Roleia, Vimiera, and Corunna.
On the 24th of May 1810, he received the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the army, and was appointed deputy quartermaster-general at the Cape of Good Hope, where he arrived on the 25th March 1811. Lieut.-Colonel Arbuthnot was appointed aide-de-camp to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent on the 7th of February 1812, and in May 1813 proceeded from the Cape to the Peninsula, and was present at the battles of the Pyrenees, Nivelle, and Orthes. For these services in the Peninsula and south of France he was decorated with a cross and one clasp. On the 24th of March 1814, Brevet Lieut.-Colonel Arbuthnot was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the fifty-seventh regiment, and on the 4th of June following received the brevet rank of colonel in the army. In January 1815 he was nominated a Knight Commander of the Bath, and on the 12th of August 1819 was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the SEVENTY-FIRST regiment. On the 27th of May 1825 he attained the rank of major-general, and on the 15th of August 1836 was appointed colonel of the ninety-ninth regiment. Sir Thomas Arbuthnot was advanced to the rank of lieutenant-general on the 28th of June 1838, and was removed to the fifty-second regiment on the 23d of December 1839. In August 1842 he was appointed to the command of the northern and midland districts of Great Britain, which he retained until his decease. On the 7th of December 1844 Lieut.-General Sir Thomas Arbuthnot was removed from the fifty-second to the ninth foot, and on the 18th of February 1848 was appointed colonel of the SEVENTY-FIRST regiment. Lieut.-General Sir Thomas Arbuthnot, K.C.B., died at Salford, near Manchester, on the 26th of January 1849.
SIR JAMES MACDONELL, K.C.B. and K.C.H.
_Appointed from the seventy-ninth regiment on the 8th February 1849._
APPENDIX.
_Memoir of Captain_ PHILIP MELVILL _of the_ SEVENTY-FIRST _Regiment_.
Captain Philip Melvill was the fourth and youngest son of John Melvill, Esq., of Dunbar, and was born on the 7th of April 1762. At the age of sixteen he obtained a commission, on the 31st December 1777, as a lieutenant in the seventy-third now the SEVENTY-FIRST regiment, commanded by Colonel John Lord Macleod, on condition of raising a certain number of men, which, by the influence of his relatives in the north of Scotland, he effected. Lieutenant Melvill joined the regiment at Elgin, and was appointed to the light company. In 1779 he embarked for India with his regiment, and arrived at Madras in January 1780. His services now became identical with those of Captain Baird, under whose command he proceeded as part of a reinforcement to Lieut.-Colonel Baillie, as detailed in the foregoing pages. In the action on the 10th of September 1780, at Perambaukum, Lieutenant Melvill was severely wounded in both arms; his left being broken, and, after surrendering, the muscles of his right arm were cut in two by a sabre. He was dashed unmercifully to the ground, and as he lay exhausted, a horseman wounded him in the back with his spear. In this miserable situation he continued for two days and two nights, exposed to the intense heat of a burning sun, and to the danger of being torn to pieces by beasts of prey. He was afterwards conveyed to Hyder’s camp, and was confined at Bangalore with the other prisoners. After three years and a half of confinement, they obtained their release in March 1784.
Lieutenant Melvill had been advanced to the rank of captain on the 22d of June 1783; and being disabled from military duty by the condition of his wounds, was, on being released from captivity, enabled to visit his brother at Bengal, where he remained until the beginning of the year 1786. Captain Melvill then returned to England, when he was appointed, on the 3d of January 1787, to the command of an invalid company stationed in Guernsey, where he remained for five years. He subsequently exchanged into a company at Portsmouth, and was afterwards placed on the retired list, in consequence of ill-health. After remaining a year in retirement at Topsham, in Devonshire, Captain Melvill, on the 29th of September 1796, exchanged his full pay as a retired captain for the command of an invalid company stationed at Pendennis Castle in Cornwall.
In the year 1797, when preparations were made by France for invading Great Britain, Captain Melvill, who had been appointed lieut.-governor of Pendennis Castle, was mainly instrumental in forming a corps of volunteers, which was subsequently retained, first as the Pendennis Volunteer Artillery, and afterwards as a body of local militia.
Lieut.-Governor Melvill died on the 27th October 1811, aged forty-nine, and was interred in Falmouth Church.
_Memoir of the services of General the Right Honorable Sir David Baird, Bart., G.C.B. & K.C., formerly Lieut.-Colonel of the_ SEVENTY-FIRST _Regiment_.
This celebrated commander commenced his military career as an ensign in the second foot, his commission being dated the 14th of December 1772. He joined the regiment at Gibraltar in April 1773, and in 1775 returned with it to England. In February 1778 he was promoted lieutenant in the second foot, and on the 16th of December 1777 was promoted to a company in the seventy third regiment, then being raised by Colonel Lord Macleod, which was afterwards numbered the SEVENTY-FIRST regiment. This corps Captain Baird joined at Elgin, from whence he marched to Fort George, and embarked for Guernsey. In January 1779 he embarked with his regiment for India, and arrived at Madras in January 1780. The regiment, shortly after its arrival in India, was called upon to take part in the war against Hyder Ali, the powerful sovereign of the Mysore, whose army exceeded eighty thousand, besides a strong body under a general of the name of Meer Saib, who had entered the Company’s territories on the north. This force was rendered still more formidable and effective by the aid of Monsieur Lally’s troops, and a great number of French officers who served his artillery, and even directed all his marches and operations. The British army ready to oppose this invasion did not consist of five thousand men. These were commanded by Major-General Sir Hector Munro, K.B., and were stationed at St. Thomas’s Mount, in the immediate neighbourhood of Madras, in order to cover that city. Here they were joined by Colonel Lord Macleod and the seventy-third regiment.
Hyder Ali, after a march across the country, which he marked by fire and sword, suddenly turned upon Arcot, and on the 21st of August 1780 sat down before that city, as the first operation of the war. Arcot was the capital town of the territory of the nabob of that name, the only prince in India who was friendly and in alliance with the Company. It contained immense stores of provisions, and, what was equally wanted, a vast treasure of money. There was another important reason, which required on the part of the British an immediate attention to this movement. Lieut.-Colonel Baillie, with a body of troops, was in the Northern Circars; and Hyder Ali, by besieging Arcot, had interposed himself between this detachment and the main army under Major-General Sir Hector Munro. Orders were immediately sent to Lieut.-Colonel Baillie to hasten to the Mount, to join the main army; and Sir Hector Munro, at once to meet Lieut.-Colonel Baillie and to raise the siege of Arcot, marched on the 25th of August with his army for Conjeveram, a place forty miles distant from Madras, in the Arcot road.
The British troops were followed during the whole way by the enemy’s horse. They were four days on their march to Conjeveram, and when they arrived, they found the whole country under water, and no provisions of any kind to be procured. So relax were the commissaries appointed by the Madras government, that the army had but four days’ provisions; in the midst of the most fertile region of India, and in the very onset and commencement of a war, the troops were in danger of being famished. The army had no other resource than to spread itself individually over the fields, and, at the risk of being destroyed in detail by the enemy’s horse, collect the growing rice, up to their knees in water.
Hyder Ali, as the British general foresaw, raised the siege of Arcot upon this movement towards Conjeveram; but, what he had not foreseen, his politic enemy threw his army in such a manner across the only possible road of Lieut.-Colonel Baillie’s detachment, as to prevent the desired junction, which had been expected to have taken place on the 30th of August, the day after the arrival of the army at Conjeveram. Lieut.-Colonel Baillie, before this last movement of the enemy to cut him off, had been stopped for some days, at no great distance, by the sudden rising of a small river. Hyder made use of this time to throw his army between them. On the 5th of September Lieut.-Colonel Baillie effected his passage over the river, but Hyder, being informed of it, made a second movement, which completely intercepted him. In order in some degree, however, to defeat this movement, but with slight hopes of success, Sir Hector Munro changed his position likewise, and advanced about two miles, to a high ground on the Tripassoor road, which was the way that the expected detachment was to come. By these movements the hostile camps were brought within two miles of each other, the enemy lying about that distance to the left of the British.
Lieut.-Colonel Baillie had passed the river in his way on the afternoon of the 5th of September, and encamped for the night. Hyder, on receiving this information, made the movement before related, and other arrangements on the following morning, the 6th of September, and Sir Hector Munro changed his own position at the same time. This change was scarcely effected when the evident bustle in the enemy’s army explained its purpose. In fact the purport of Hyder’s movement was to cover and support a great attack at that moment making on Lieut.-Colonel Baillie’s detachment. He had already sent his brother-in-law, Meer Saib, with eight thousand horse upon that service, and immediately afterwards detached his son, Tippoo Saib, with six thousand infantry, eighteen thousand cavalry, and twelve pieces of cannon, to join in a united and decisive attack. They encountered Lieut.-Colonel Baillie at a place called Perambaukum, where he made the most masterly dispositions to withstand this vast superiority of force. After an exceedingly severe and well-fought action, of several hours’ continuance, the enemy was routed, and Lieut.-Colonel Baillie gained as complete a victory as a total want of cavalry and the smallness of his numbers could possibly admit. Through these circumstances he lost his baggage. His whole force did not exceed two thousand sepoys, and from one to two companies of European artillery.
This success, however, by diminishing Lieut.-Colonel Baillie’s force, only added to his distress. The British camp was within a few miles, but Hyder’s army lay full in his way, and he was, moreover, in the greatest want of provisions. Under these circumstances, Lieut.-Colonel Baillie despatched a messenger to Major-General Sir Hector Munro, with an account of his situation, stating that he had sustained a loss which rendered him incapable of advancing, while his total want of provisions rendered it equally impossible for him to remain in his present position. A council of war being held, at which Colonel Lord Macleod assisted, it was resolved to send a reinforcement to Lieut.-Colonel Baillie, to enable him to push forward in despite of the enemy. Lieut.-Colonel Fletcher, Captain Baird, and other officers were sent off with a strong detachment to the relief of Lieut.-Colonel Baillie. The main force of this detachment consisted of the flank companies of the first battalion of the _Seventy-third_, afterwards numbered the SEVENTY-FIRST regiment, the light company being commanded by Captain Baird. There were two other companies of European grenadiers, one company of sepoy marksmen, and ten companies of sepoy grenadiers. In all about a thousand men. The junction was effected with some difficulty on the 9th of September, and the following day was appointed for the march of the united detachment. Accordingly, day-light had scarcely broken when it commenced its march. By seven o’clock in the morning of the 10th of September the enemy poured down upon them in thousands. The British fought with the greatest heroism, and at one time victory seemed to be in their favour. But the tumbrils containing the ammunition accidentally blew up with two dreadful explosions in the centre of their lines. The destruction of men was great, but the total loss of their ammunition was still more fatal to the survivors. This turned the fortune of the day, and after successive prodigies of valour the brave sepoys were almost to a man cut to pieces.
Lieut.-Colonels Baillie and Fletcher, assisted by Captain Baird, made one more desperate effort. They rallied the Europeans, and, under the fire of the whole of the immense artillery of the enemy, gained a little eminence, and formed themselves into a fresh square. In this form did this invincible band, though totally without ammunition, the officers fighting with their swords and the soldiers with their bayonets, resist and repulse the myriads of the enemy in thirteen different attacks, until at length, incapable of withstanding the successive torrents of fresh troops which were continually pouring upon them, they were fairly borne down and trampled on, many of them still continuing to fight under the legs of the horses and elephants.
The loss of the British in the action at Perambaukum was of course great; and it is a reasonable subject of surprise that any escaped. Lieut.-Colonel Fletcher was amongst the slain. Lieut.-Colonel Baillie, Captain Baird, after being severely wounded in four places, together with Captain the Honorable John Lindsay, Lieutenant Philip Melvill, and other officers, with two hundred Europeans, were made prisoners. They were carried into the presence of Hyder, who, with a true Asiatic barbarism, received them with the most insolent triumph and ferocious pride. The British officers, with a spirit worthy of their country, retorted his pride by an indignant coolness and contempt. “Your son will inform you,” said Lieut.-Colonel Baillie, appealing to Tippoo, who was present, “that you owe the victory to our disaster rather than to our defeat.” Hyder angrily ordered them from his presence, and commanded them instantly to prison, where they remained for three years and a half, enduring great hardships, Captain Baird being chained by the leg to another prisoner.
In March 1784 Captain Baird was released, and in July joined his regiment at Arcot. In 1786 the _Seventy-third_ was directed to be numbered the SEVENTY-FIRST regiment. Captain Baird was promoted to the rank of major in the SEVENTY-FIRST regiment on the 5th of June 1787, and in October obtained leave of absence, when he returned to Great Britain. He was advanced to the lieut.-colonelcy of the regiment on the 8th of December 1790, and in 1791 proceeded to India, and joined the army under General the Earl Cornwallis. Lieut.-Colonel Baird commanded a brigade of sepoys, and was present at the attack of a number of droogs or hill forts; also at the siege of Seringapatam in 1791 and 1792; likewise at the storming of Tippoo’s lines and camps on the island of Seringapatam. In 1793 the Lieut.-Colonel commanded a brigade of Europeans, and was present at the siege of Pondicherry. On the 21st of August 1795, he was promoted to the brevet rank of colonel, and in October 1797 embarked at Madras with the SEVENTY-FIRST for Europe, but on arrival at the Cape of Good Hope, in January following, he was appointed brigadier-general, and placed on that staff in command of a brigade. He was promoted to the rank of major-general on the 18th of June 1798, and was removed to the staff in India. Major-General Baird sailed from the Cape of Good Hope for Madras in command of two regiments of infantry and the drafts of the twenty-eighth dragoons, and arrived at his destination in January 1799. On the 1st of February he joined the army forming at Vellore for the attack of Seringapatam, and commanded a brigade of Europeans. On the 4th of May Major-General Baird commanded the storming party with success, and, in consequence, was presented by the army, through Lieut.-General, afterwards Lord Harris, Commander-in-Chief, with Tippoo Sultan’s state sword, and a dress sword from the field officers serving under his immediate command. In 1800 he was removed to the Bengal staff, and on the 9th of May of that year was appointed colonel-commandant of the fifty-fourth, and colonel of that regiment on the 8th of May 1801, in which year he was appointed to command the forces which were sent from India to Egypt, and arrived at Cosseir in June, afterwards crossed the desert, and embarked on the Nile, arriving in the following month at Grand Cairo. He joined the army under Lieut.-General Sir John Hutchinson, afterwards the Earl of Donoughmore, a few days before the surrender of Alexandria, which capitulated on the 2d of September, and terminated the campaign in Egypt.
In 1802 Major-General Baird returned across the desert to India, and was removed to the Madras staff in 1803, and commanded a large division of the army forming against the Mahrattas. He marched into the Mysore country, where the Commander-in-Chief, Lieut.-General James Stuart, joined him, and afterwards arrived on the banks of the river Jambudra, in command of the line. Major-General Wellesley, the present Duke of Wellington, being appointed to the command of the greater part of the army, Major-General Baird proceeded into the Mahratta country, and subsequently obtained permission to return to Great Britain. He sailed in March with his staff from Madras, and was taken prisoner by a French privateer. In October he was re-taken as the ship was entering Corunna. He arrived in England on the 3d of November, having given his parole that he should consider himself as a prisoner of war; but shortly after Major-General Baird and staff were exchanged for the French General Morgan and his staff.
Major-General Sir David Baird, who had received the honour of knighthood, was promoted to the rank of lieut.-general on the 30th of October 1805, and commanded an expedition against the Cape of Good Hope, where he arrived on the 5th of January 1806, and effected a landing on the following day. On the 8th, the Dutch army was defeated; on the 10th, the castle and town of Cape Town surrendered; and on the 18th, General Janssens surrendered the colony. In 1807 Lieut.-General Sir David Baird returned to England, and on the 19th of July of that year was removed from the colonelcy of the fifty-fourth to that of the twenty-fourth regiment. His next service was in the expedition to Copenhagen under Lieut.-General Lord Cathcart, at the siege of which he commanded a division, and was twice slightly wounded. In 1808 Lieut.-General Sir David Baird was placed on the staff in Ireland, and commanded the camp on the Curragh of Kildare. In September of that year he embarked at the Cove of Cork, in the command of a division, consisting of about five thousand infantry, for Falmouth, where he received reinforcements, and sailed in command of about ten thousand men for Corunna, where he arrived in the beginning of November, and formed a junction with the army under Lieut.-General Sir John Moore. Lieut.-General Sir David Baird commanded the first division of that army, and in the battle of Corunna, on the 16th of January 1809, he lost his left arm. Sir David Baird received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament for his services at Corunna; “an honor of which,” he remarked in his reply to the House of Peers, “no one can be more fully sensible than myself, having had the good fortune to be deemed worthy of this eminent distinction on four several occasions;” alluding to his name having been included in the votes of thanks for the operations of the army in India in 1799, for those of Egypt in 1801, and in the Danish expedition in 1807.
In testimony of the Royal approbation, Lieut.-General Sir David Baird was created a baronet, by patent dated 13th April 1809, and was promoted to the rank of general on the 4th of June 1814; on the 2d of January 1815 he was nominated a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and was appointed governor of Kinsale on the 11th of March 1819, and of Fort George, North Britain, on the 4th of December 1827. He was also a privy councillor for Ireland. His decease occurred at his seat, Ferntower, in Perthshire, on the 18th of August 1829.
_Memoir of the services of Major-General Sir Denis Pack, K.C.B. and C.T.S., formerly Lieut.-Colonel of the_ SEVENTY-FIRST _regiment_.
This distinguished officer entered the army as a cornet in the fourteenth light dragoons, his commission being dated 30th November 1791, and joined that regiment in Dublin in January 1792. He served in Ireland, and was engaged in quelling some disturbances, between that period and 1794, when he embarked at Cork for the Continent, and landed with the forces under Lieut.-General the Earl of Moira at Ostend. After his lordship’s march from thence to form a junction with the army under His Royal Highness the Duke of York, Cornet Pack offered his services and was employed to carry an important despatch to Nieuport, in which attempt he fortunately succeeded, and was thanked for it by Major-General Richard Vyse. His commanding officer’s squadron of the fourteenth light dragoons was destined, after the embarkation at Ostend, to retreat to Nieuport, which it effected by the advance of a corps from that place to its support. Nieuport being almost immediately invested, farther retreat from thence became extremely hazardous and difficult. Cornet Pack was in a boat with about two hundred emigrants, and did not gain the sea without a sharp action and a severe loss. It conveyed the last of those who escaped the horrors which befell that ill-fated garrison. He joined the Duke of York’s army near Antwerp, and was in the action at Boxtel, and some partial affairs. He served that severe winter campaign, and in 1795 returned to England, and was promoted to a lieutenancy in the fourteenth light dragoons on the 12th of March of that year.