It arrived at the high table-land of the Cape of Good Hope on the 4th of January, 1806, and shortly afterwards came to anchor. The whole of the following day the surf upon the shore of the bay was too violent to admit of any attempt to land. Brigadier-General William Carr, afterwards General Viscount Beresford, was detached, with such of the cavalry as had horses, and the Thirty-eighth Regiment, to Saldanha Bay.
In the morning of the 6th of January a landing was effected by the Highland brigade, consisting of the Seventy-first, Seventy-second, and Ninety-third Highlanders, and numbering 2,200 men, under the command of Brigadier-General Ronald Craufurd Ferguson, in the performance of which service Lieut.-Colonel Pack, the commanding officer of the Seventy-first Regiment, was wounded. The following day was devoted to landing the supplies and the remainder of the army.
Early in the morning of the 8th of January, Major-General Sir David Baird formed his troops in two columns, and moved up to the heights of Bleuberg, from whence the enemy was seen, drawn up in order of battle, in two lines, with twenty-three pieces of cannon, his numbers being calculated at 5,000, of which a large proportion was cavalry.
The British lines were formed with promptitude and correctness, and the enemy was attacked with the utmost spirit. He maintained his ground with some firmness, until a charge of the Highland brigade dislodged and completely routed him, with the loss of three guns and 700 men.
In this affair the Seventy-first had Brevet Lieut.-Colonel Robert Campbell wounded. 5 men were killed, and 2 sergeants and 64 rank and file were wounded[5].
The troops halted for the night at the Reit Valley, and on the 9th of January the army moved towards the Salt River, where it was intended to take up a position previously to the attack of Cape Town, when a flag of truce appeared from the town, which produced some negociations, that terminated in its surrender to His Majesty’s arms. Lieut.-General Janssens, the Governor of the colony, after his defeat of Blenberg on the 8th, had retired towards the interior of the country by the Hottentot Holland Kloof, or Pass, from whence, on the 19th of January, he signed and ratified the treaty that placed the whole of the Cape of Good Hope and its dependencies in the possession of Great Britain, under whose sway it has since continued.
1st bat.
The following letter from Brigadier-General Ferguson to Major-General Sir David Baird, relative to the regiment and its commander, is here inserted:—
“Cape Town, 19th January, 1806.
“Sir,