Early in the following year welcome reinforcements arrived from England, the 73rd (then the 2nd Battalion of the 42nd) Highlanders, the 98th and 100th Regiments disembarking on the Malabar coast, the 72nd coming to Madras to reinforce Coote. These reinforcements came none too early. Tippoo Sultan (Hyder Ali's son, his most able Lieutenant and his successor) had surprised and annihilated a British force under Colonel Braithwaite, all the officers save one being either killed or carried prisoners to Seringapatam. A few months later fresh reinforcements arrived in the 23rd Light Dragoons (now the 19th Hussars), the 101st and 102nd Regiments (long since disbanded, and not to be confused with the 101st Royal Bengal and 102nd Royal Madras Fusiliers), with two Hanoverian battalions. With these forces Stuart inflicted a severe defeat on Tippoo Sultan at Cuddalore, taking from him thirteen guns. For this fine action no battle honour was granted, though there are many names on many colours less hardly earned.

Casualties at Cuddalore.

Regiments.Officers.Men.
K.W.K.W.
Royal Artillery-21967
71st H.L.I.2684112
101st Regiment464255
Hanoverians41262144
64th Pioneers--616
67th Punjabis---8
72nd Seaforths1-2347
Dublin Fus.-2829
72nd Punjabis-3639
18th Madras In.-3450
20th M.N.I.11614
Bengal Infantry751290

On the opposite or Malabar coast Colonel McLeod, with the 2nd Battalion of the 42nd, details of the 98th, 100th, and 102nd Regiments, and the 8th Battalion of Bombay Sepoys, won a decisive victory at Paniani on November 27, 1782, the 42nd losing 3 officers and 57 men in the action; but the chief honours were reserved for the 42nd at Mangalore.

Mangalore, 1783.

The Royal Highlanders and 101st Grenadiers alone bear this battle honour, and surely in the many names inscribed on the colours and appointments of the Black Watch, there is not one which redounds more to the glory of the regiment than this little-known achievement, one of the brightest in the military history of our own or of any other country.

A glance at the map of India will show Mangalore on the west or Malabar coast of the peninsula. During our operations against Hyder Ali, and subsequently against his son, the redoubted Tippoo Sultan, its possession was of vital importance to both ourselves and to the Mysoreans. Tippoo Sultan was in direct communication with Napoleon, and through the Malabar ports reinforcements and supplies reached him from France. When, in 1783, General Matthews, the Commander-in-Chief in Bombay, led a column to reduce the fortress of Bednore, in which Tippoo's treasure was stored, he left garrisons at Mangalore and Onore to keep open his communication with the sea. At first successful, Matthews was in the end compelled to capitulate, and he, with the bulk of his army, were done to death by the Mysoreans. Mangalore was held by a force of about 1,800 men, under Colonel Campbell, of the 42nd; Onore by an officer of the Bombay Army named Torriano, with whom at present I have nothing to do.

Early in May Colonel Campbell learned of the disaster to General Matthews, and at the same time he received a summons from Tippoo Sultan demanding the surrender of the fort and town of Mangalore in virtue of the terms of the capitulation arranged with the Commander-in-Chief. Now, it is necessary for me here to interpolate that General Matthews and the officers of the King's regiments had not been on the best of terms. He, a servant of the East India Company, refused to recognize their superior rank, and two of the Colonels of the King's regiments (McLeod, of the 42nd, and Humberston, of the 100th) had left his camp and formulated complaints against the Commander-in-Chief to the Governor-General. Campbell therefore replied to Tippoo Sultan's envoy that he refused to recognize any arrangements which might have been made by the Commander-in-Chief, and that he intended to defend the fort to the last.

On May 9 the siege commenced on the land side, and for the next six months Campbell was hemmed closely in by some 60,000 men. It is true that communication by sea was still precariously maintained. On May 23 the Indiaman Fairford appeared off the port, and threw ashore a small party of English recruits destined for the Bombay European Regiment, which had been practically annihilated with Matthews.[7] That day, May 23, Colonel Campbell made a vigorous sortie, and destroyed a portion of the enemy's siege-works and batteries; but in the retirement three companies of native troops were cut off, and three British officers with 225 sepoys fell into Tippoo Sultan's hands. On the morrow Campbell prepared for a determined resistance. The women of the 42nd were told off to the hospitals, and a stern code of orders published. The men were forbidden to fire without explicit orders, and officers were enjoined to remember that the bayonet, and the bayonet alone, was the weapon of the British soldier. "Englishmen must recollect," runs the order, "that the bayonet is the service required of them, and that they demean themselves by firing at such a dastardly foe."