1801
The troops sailed from India in December, and arrived at Cosseir on the Red Sea in June, 1801. On this occasion, in the fourteen days’ march across what is called the “Long Desert” from Cosseir on the Red Sea to Kenna on the Nile, the Eighty-Eighth formed the van of Sir David Baird’s army, preceding the rest of the troops a day’s march, and it was thus the first British regiment to tread this dangerous route.
From Kenna it sailed in boats down the Nile, and reached Grand Cairo on the day on which that fortress surrendered to the British troops under Major-General (afterwards Lord) Hutchinson.
1803
On the final evacuation of Egypt by the English, the Eighty-Eighth, instead of returning to India, as had been originally intended, proceeded to England in order to be reduced, but arrived at Portsmouth on the very day that the war with France was renewed, the 5th of May, 1803, and was consequently saved from that fate. Its numbers being then much weakened by time and casualties, and its effective strength still more so by the ophthalmia, which the soldiers had contracted in Egypt, the corps was ordered into quarters in Kent and Sussex, where it remained three years.
Amongst the measures of defence taken at this time by the government to secure the country against the invasion with which it was threatened by Buonaparte, a general order was issued from the Horse-Guards on the 2nd of December, 1803, commanding that (in case of the enemy’s effecting a landing in any part of the United Kingdom) all officers below the rank of general officers, and not attached to any particular regiment, should report themselves in person to the general officer commanding the district in which they might happen to reside; and requesting all general officers not employed on the staff to transmit immediately their addresses to the Adjutant-General. The Colonel of the Eighty-Eighth, the Veteran General Reid, was then in his 82nd year; yet he immediately obeyed the summons, and transmitted his address in a letter so spirited as to deserve a place in the memoirs of the regiment which he commanded, and upon which his gallantry reflected honour.
“London, 6th December, 1803.
“Sir,—In obedience to the orders of His Royal Highness the Commander in Chief, expressed in the London Gazette of Saturday last, for all General Officers not employed on the Staff to report to you their address, I have the honour to inform you, that I am to be found at No. 7, Woodstock Street, near Oxford Street; that I am an old man, in the 82nd year of my age, and have become very deaf and infirm, but I am still ready, if my services be accepted, to use my feeble arm in defence of my King and Country, having had the good fortune on former occasions to have been repeatedly successful in action against our perfidious enemies, on whom, I thank God, I never turned my back.
“I have, &c.,
(Signed) “John Reid, General,
“Colonel of the Eighty-Eighth Regiment.
“To the Adjutant-General.”